Super backflip breaks dam for Abbott

by: Paul Kelly, Editor-At-Large

November 09, 2011 12:00AM

THE Tony Abbott-led Coalition's buckling before Labor's increase in the superannuation guarantee from 9 per cent to 12 per cent is a great victory for the Gillard government and signals the Coalition's admission that its political strategy is off the rails and needs correction.

With the superannuation guarantee tied into Labor's mining tax package, the next question for the Coalition is obvious: will it recommend a replacement tax for the mining tax that Abbott is pledged to repeal?

Once Labor's mining tax is legislated, Abbott's repeal policy becomes unsustainable. How can he campaign to have no mining tax whatsoever when the big three miners accept the principle of such a tax anyway? At that point his policy becomes absurd.

Assuming the latest Newspoll is correct and not a rogue poll, Labor is trailing only 53-47 per cent in the two-party-preferred vote with Abbott's dissatisfaction rating at a record 57 per cent. Labor can win from here.

Many politicians and much of the media have badly missed the trend of the past three months. Abbott has been busy entrenching his negativity and offering no message of hope or coherence while the gradual recovery that Julia Gillard has long predicted has begun.

It may not endure. However, the idea that Labor's primary vote would stick below 30 per cent was always remote. The Coalition has assisted Gillard's mini-recovery by its own blunders, notably Abbott repeating his technique of "rejection and repeal" on issue after issue beyond the point of public tolerance.

Gillard's further triumph yesterday of winning passage of the Labor-Green carbon pricing scheme only makes Abbott's rethink imperative. His real policy goal is repeal of the carbon package. For Abbott, this is the repeal that matters, not the mining tax. The campaign against the carbon tax is the absolute key to Abbott's political future.

Can Abbott sustain his anti-carbon tax campaign? Yes, he can. Indeed, he has many pluses: power prices for homes are guaranteed to rise significantly; our domestic carbon price is very high by world standards; the economic tribulations in Europe and America will last for years, keeping global climate change action on the backburner; and Gillard's carbon policy is a core breach of trust with the public.

Why is Abbott vulnerable? He is vulnerable because he has become Dr No, rejecting policies on populist grounds regardless of principle and past Coalition belief. By opposing virtually everything, he cheapens his case and credibility for opposing what matters.

The retreat to accept Labor's superannuation policy is deeply illuminating. This constitutes one of the Coalition's greatest policy reversals since it lost the 2007 election. Superannuation is highly sanctified ALP-ACTU territory. The policy's origins lie with Paul Keating and Bill Kelty and it is a near-unique Australian model of mandated contributions to private superannuation funds.

For Labor, this edifice is one of its glories. In his July 1991 speech campaigning for leadership, Keating said the objective should be a 12 per cent contribution rate by the year 2000. His 1996 pre-election strategy was to lift super savings to 15 per cent from the legislated 9 per cent, and after his defeat Keating lamented that he did not legislate this figure.

The incoming government led by John Howard and Peter Costello, wary of such Labor-loving compulsion, kept the contribution rate at 9 per cent and never increased it over 11 years.

But the dam wall has broken under Abbott in strange circumstances. With the Henry tax review opposed to this action, Labor defied Treasury advice and in May last year linked its new mining tax to an increase in the SG rate to 12 per cent to be reached in stages by 2019-20.

The Coalition, unsurprisingly, opposed this policy -- until late last week when faced with its passage through parliament.

This means if Abbott wins the 2013 poll, at which point the SG rate will be a modest 9.25 per cent, he will preside over its steady increase towards 12 per cent. (The schedule for the entire lift to 12 per cent is included in the bill now before parliament.)

Why did the Coalition change? There are several explanations but the most convincing is politics. It was fighting on too many fronts. It was pledged to abolish too many Labor policies. It was locked into perceptions that were too negative. It faced the prospect of unpicking enterprise agreements that included super contributions as a trade-off. So, it quit the battle.

This meant abandonment of Liberal thinking that super contributions should reflect individual choice and the embrace of Labor boosting national savings via compulsion. Many senior Liberals are angry, not just opposition finance spokesman Andrew Robb. Much more will be said about this.

The point, however, is the belated recognition that Abbott has gone too negative for too long on too many fronts. He should have spent...

Opposition anger at Tony Abbott's policy consultation

    by: Matthew Franklin, Chief political correspondent
    From: The Australian
    November 09, 2011 12:00AM

TONY Abbott faces criticism from within his own party for not seeking frontbench approval for a new anti-dumping policy attacked by Labor as out of step with World Trade Organisation rules.

And Labor has derided the Opposition Leader as an economic xenophobe in a strong attack designed to consolidate its campaign to portray him as a political opportunist stuck in a cycle of constant negativity.

The pressure came yesterday after the The Australian published a Newspoll showing public dissatisfaction with Mr Abbott's performance had reached a high of 57 per cent.

Although the survey found Labor's primary vote support had risen three percentage points in the past fortnight to 32 per cent, the Coalition retained a clear election-winning lead of 53 per cent to 47 per cent on two-party-preferred terms.

The increase in voter dissatisfaction with Mr Abbott followed a concerted Labor attempt to paint him as too negative in light of his strident opposition to the carbon tax, a planned new mining tax and Labor's bid to legislate to reinstate the offshore processing of asylum-seekers. Liberal sources yesterday strongly backed their leader, but some questioned whether the Newspoll might mark the need for a shift in tactics.

Several MPs said they were concerned Mr Abbott was not consulting colleagues closely enough in policy formulation and had become too close to the Nationals.

They said an anti-dumping policy released on Monday, which reversed the onus of proof of dumping from Australian companies to their overseas competitors, had not been approved by the opposition front bench.

Their complaint came just a day after The Australian revealed that a Coalition decision to back Labor plans to boost superannuation savings of low-income earners came without any reference to the Coalition's finance spokesman Andrew Robb -- the man responsible for ensuring a Coalition government would be able to fund its election promises.

"I thought we elected Tony because (former leader) Malcolm Turnbull was not observing proper process," one MP told The Australian. "I think Tony has done a great job but I think he gets most of his advice from people like Christopher Pyne, George Brandis and Barnaby Joyce, who are all focused more on politics than policy."

Another Liberal MP said: "The problem is that it's harder to defend policies if we haven't taken them through the full process and this anti-dumping policy is a good example."

Mr Abbott was unable to respond to the criticism yesterday because he was travelling to Britain. But sources said the opposition front bench had considered about 80 per cent of the anti-dumping policy about two months ago, while the leadership group, including Mr Abbott and frontbenchers Joe Hockey, Julie Bishop, Eric Abetz, Senator Joyce, Warren Truss and Nigel Scullion, had given the policy full backing last week.

Other sources confirmed Mr Robb had confronted Mr Abbott in recent days about being sidelined from decisions with big financial implications and had been assured he was not being frozen out.

Last night, Trade Minister Craig Emerson seized on recent Coalition announcements to accuse the Opposition Leader of adopting an anti-trade policy to snare political support.

Dr Emerson cited the anti-dumping policy, the Coalition's call for Australia not to contribute money to the International Monetary Fund to help fund a plan to stabilise the European economy and its advocacy of barriers to New Zealand apple imports.

He insisted the anti-dumping proposal was at odds with WTO rules. "As protectionist sentiment rises in Australia, the Coalition parties have calculated there are political dividends for them in embracing xenophobia," he said.

In a radio interview, apparently recorded during a stopover en route to London, Mr Abbott said he had not been negative but was advocating a better future.

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Your a f####### idiot the vote was in the senate not the house of reps  

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Your a f####### idiot the vote was in the senate not the house of reps  

As bushfire Bill a commentor that is a favourite to quote from crikey and who I see is usally right on the money with his insight;

Kelly, Shanahan, Franklin, Albrechtsen, McCrann, Savva and the rest of the crew have been being highly paid for getting most things wrong, for too long, in the Holt St. sheltered workshop. Kelly, van Onselen and Shanahan have been pleading with Abbott to leave off with the thought bubbles and the naysaying for a while now. Not because it makes Abbott look bad, but because it makes them look like the lazy fools they are.