Should Abbott step down?

[mellie]

Why don't you join the Palmer United Party and be done with it Roach.... if you havent already?




Rather than cut'n'paste walls of text, (no one can be bothered reading anyway) how about you make a meaningful contribution to this thread.


Abbotts doing fine btw.

.... Much to Clives despair.

[Rorschach]

The Spectre of a Turnbull return has raised its ugly head. How desperate are the Libs at the moment?

Mutterings in unhappy Tony Abbott ranks – is mutiny on the horizon?
Date January 22, 2015 - 10:27PM
Mark Kenny

Luck's been elusive in 2015. Abbott's first talk-back caller on Neil Mitchell's top-rating 3AW radio program was from a self-described "through-and-through" Liberal supporter named Andrew.

The danger for Abbott is that it is in the heartland where disillusionment with the government seems at its strongest.

"I've got to be honest and truthful with you, Mr Prime Minster, you're on the nose with Liberal voters and that's a real concern to me because I don't want to see you give the keys to Bill Shorten at the Lodge … I have got to tell you, you are the world's worst salesman, Prime Minister," he said.

"What is the specific problem, is there a policy thing you don't agree with?", Abbott inquired.

"Prime Minister, it's the way you do things, like the Medicare thing, with the education, you've done so many backflips, people don't know where you are going and business is saying there are roadblocks because there is no direction and no leadership … as a Liberal voter, I don't particularly like you," Andrew replied.

Ouch!

"Yes it has been a messy start," intoned one of Tony Abbott's ministers wearily amid nascent leadership chatter. The year had barely started when a plan "B" slashing the Medicare payment to GPs by $20 for short consultations, had been summarily abandoned on the eve of its commencement.

And since then, a senior source wanted it known the idea of the cut had been the Prime Minister's from the start. Health Minister Peter Dutton had argued forcefully against it in Cabinet's Expenditure Review Committee, and been backed by Joe Hockey, but they were overruled. The leak was telling.

Just like the friendless $7 per-patient co-payment barnacle it had partly replaced, the short-consult penalty was suddenly "off the table". Once again, the government had sustained serious political damage for zero budgetary gain. Not for the first time, backbenchers were flummoxed.

What was going on? Had Abbott learnt the lessons of a woeful 2014 and replaced his legendary stubbornness with a new fleet-footed pragmatism? Perhaps, but a blunter interpretation saw only a triple defeat – a backflip from what had already been a backflip which had only been necessary in the first place because of a politically toxic broken promise, which was never sold to voters.

Abbott wanted more than anything to begin the game afresh having tied off the least productive fights as unwinnable. Last year had ended in desultory fashion characterised by a series of grudging half-retreats – the kind that left the government carrying both the humiliation of admitting its errors while still being lumbered with elements of the primary problem.

The Prime Minister had assured colleagues his pre-Christmas clean-up would facilitate a repositioning in the new year. Yet 2015 has commenced amid confusion at least as severe. Now, the "judgment" word is being muttered.

The horror for many Liberals, and the danger for Abbott is that it is in the heartland where disillusionment with the government seems at its strongest. MPs say they are picking up genuine anger within their own membership.

Abbott is well aware his leadership has entered its most fraught period, having already been forced to address the question before Christmas. "I think the one fundamental lesson of the last catastrophic government was that you don't lightly change leaders," he had told reporters. He was at it again on Thursday when asked on 3AW if he was aware of "increasing speculation" that he would consider stepping down if the problems continued?

"Yeah that's nonsense, absolute nonsense," he said. "… you do not change leaders; you rally behind someone and you stick to the plan."

Yet the very fact that the PM is having to field such questions when he is trying to talk about other matters, speaks to his situation. Colleagues wonder anyway what the plan is given that it keeps changing.

A working assumption in Canberra has held that Abbott's leadership is more secure than a Labor leader faced with the same problems. First, Liberals are culturally less inclined than Labor to embrace the percussive brutality needed to tear down a prime minister. In addition, the Coalition witnessed up-close in 2010 what voters thought about knifing a sitting PM and would simply not flirt with that. Yet another interpretation of the tumultuous events of 2010 is that they not so much reinforced the rules, as tossed them out. Hence forth, anything is possible in politics.

What is undeniable is that murmurings have started and that cracks are appearing in the government facade. On Tuesday, The Australian splashed with a story beginning "Joe Hockey has ruled out any backdown on government plans to deregulate university fees …"

The very next day, the Oz's splash read: "The Abbott government is preparing to sacrifice up to $2 billion in budget savings in a bid to regain momentum and kick off the new year with a much-needed political victory on higher education reform". Same government. Same subject. And yet completely contradictory positions.

For the first time since 2009 when he was bundled out of the leadership, Malcolm Turnbull's name is being mentioned positively by influential figures on the party's right – something that was inconceivable not so long ago.

Asked if conservatives really would consider lining up behind the moderate Turnbull now, one right-wing figure said events had already gone beyond left-right divisions.

In reality, Abbott probably has more time than his critics claim and plans to forge ahead using a National Press Club address on February 2 to chart the course for his political year.

But heavy weather externally is no longer his only existential threat. Now he must be alive to the threat of mutiny as well.

As for the lesson learned from Labor's mess is that people should rally 'round and support him as Leader and the "plan"... how short are Liberal memories when they supported a not quite as toxic Howard and lost the election to Rudd. The lesson should be... not to be cowards and address reality...

[Rorschach]

You don't have to believe me... what would I know right?

Party-room disaffection is widespread, with the government lagging behind Labor in the polls and a scrappy start to 2015 stoking concerns that the problems of last year have not been resolved.

Much of the criticism centres around the operation of the Prime Minister's office, which is under the strong direction of his chief of staff, Peta Credlin.

Liberals are divided but detractors say Ms Credlin has become a political liability, drawing media attention, and acting as a lightning rod for a gathering storm of discontent.

One senior figure said MPs believed her tendency to micro-manage coupled with her constant presence around Mr Abbott had made it almost impossible to have a private conversation with the Prime Minister.

"Either she goes or he does," said one, expressing a sentiment shared by others.

After returning to their electorate over the Christmas break MPs and senators were now keenly aware that "the perception of the government isn't good".

The MP dismissed suggestions that Mr Abbott could, at some point, make way for a successor, likening the Prime Minister's determination to tough it out to former prime minister John Howard.

A second MP said Coalition MPs had left Canberra tired in December after a difficult political year and "heard bad things" about the government back in their electorate.

That same MP singled out the need for the Prime Minister to be more inclusive and to consult a wider circle of advisers.

"People are not coming to him and talking, they don't feel like they can talk to him."

[Neferti]

[Rorschach]

[Neferti]

Cartoon by Pickering who is now having a go at our Tony.

[Rorschach]

He's not my Tony.... never has been.
I vote policies not personalities.

[Neferti]

I was referring to "our" Tony as they used to refer to "our" Pauline. He definitely isn't "my" Tony.

[Rorschach]

Gotcha...

[Rorschach]

Tony Abbott's trust deficit disaster is paralysing his government
Lenore Taylor, political editor
@lenoretaylor
Friday 23 January 2015 19.31 AEST

Are we really back there again? Ministers putting on their best serious face and declaring their leader is not electoral poison. Colleagues “backgrounding” the obvious fact that he is. A government paralysed by policies it cannot legislate and a backlog of big ideas but no political capital to push them through.

Yep, we are back there. But let’s forget this horribly familiar scenario for a second and imagine that a new prime minister dropped in from outer space and delivered the agenda-setting press club speech Tony Abbott has scheduled for 2 February.

In my view, he or she would probably raise at least some of the same things Abbott intends to. Australia does need to reduce spending over time. We do need to overhaul the tax system, since much of our budget dilemma is due to declining revenue. Our population is ageing and that fact does raise big policy questions. Our federal system is dysfunctional.

But Abbott has a major disadvantage compared with the imaginary alien leader. He has already squandered the most important commodity to achieve any change at all – trust. Voters have to believe a government is open-minded and listening before a major policy can be debated. The government has to actually BE open-minded and listening to win public support for reform. The Abbott government has been neither.

The consequences are clear in the response to the Productivity Commission review into workplace relations. The employment minister, Eric Abetz, is now reassuring everyone it will be fair and factual and listen to the views of “all parties”. But his government responded to allegations of corruption in some unions not by referring them to the police, but by launching a sweeping royal commission into all unions. It has happily ignored recommendations it doesn’t like from other evidence-based Productivity Commission inquiries (like the need to conduct proper cost benefit analyses before promising huge amounts of money to infrastructure projects). It has made its views on industrial laws abundantly clear. Of course the unions don’t trust the process. And it’s not clear the government will have the authority to convince the public to trust it either.

Abbott will use his speech to lay out his plan for the year. He’ll talk about the “families package” in the budget, taking money from his paid parental leave scheme and using it to pay for more flexible childcare subsidies. He’ll talk about the soon-to-be-released tax paper, which will open every can of worms – superannuation tax breaks, broadening or raising the GST and the prospect of personal income tax cuts. He’ll probably talk about the intergenerational report, also out soon, and all the challenges as the population ages.

But his government already ambushed Australian voters with previously-unmentioned health, education and welfare changes in last year’s budget which were decisively judged to be unfair.

And he and his ministers have spent the past year ignoring, defunding and sidelining groups that advocate for the poor, the sick, the disabled and disadvantaged.

The Australian Council of Social Service wrote to Abbott early last year proposing that he set up a welfare advisory body, similar to the business advisory group headed by Maurice Newman that was up and running within three months of the election. It still hasn’t received a response.

The government abolished the Social Inclusion Board, the National Housing Supply Council, the Prime Minister’s Council on Homelessness, the National Policy Commission on Indigenous Housing, the National Children and Family Roundtable, the Advisory Panel on Positive Ageing and the Immigration Health Advisory Group, citing “red tape”. It has cut $270m in funding to other community organisations over four years, including from groups that advocate for the homeless, refugees, youth and the disabled.

It has abolished the Climate Commission and rewritten funding agreements with community legal services to prevent them from advocating for changes to laws that affect their clients.

To political warriors, refusing to hear or offer assistance to those who might challenge your ideas and arguments probably seems an obvious course. But for a leader who really wants to have a debate, rather than just impose an outcome, it’s dumb. It leads to bad policies and an erosion of the confidence and trust that are necessary for lasting political success.

It also lets political opponents off the hook. Just as Abbott used former prime minister Julia Gillard’s carbon tax “lie” to delegitimise all she undertook and stood for, Bill Shorten is using the electorate’s disillusionment and suspicion of Tony Abbott and this government’s broken promises to undermine the prime minister’s standing on whatever new subject he touches.

Debating big, necessary questions – like tax, or workplace laws or federalism – and taking the result to the next election is the right thing for a government to do, if it is willing to listen to all sides of the argument.

But Coalition MPs are worried that their government will be fighting rather than debating, and on too many fronts, and in front of an electorate that has already stopped listening.

They can see that last year’s “reboot” was just spin. The prime minister has made it clear he thinks the problem is not the policy but the sales job – he just needs to “skite” more.

Some are despairing, and are increasingly willing to say so to any journalist who calls (anonymously of course). But they don’t know what comes next. If pressed they mutter something about how things have to get better soon, or after the budget, or by later this year.

This is not dissent fuelled by rival leadership contenders, and the two most likely alternatives – Julie Bishop and Malcolm Turnbull – are politically close. There is no plotting, although there are “what if it came to that?” conversations, and some careful bridge-building between former factional rivals in case the time does come.

Overwhelmingly, Liberal MPs are trying to send the prime minister a message because they are still willing him to restore the government’s fortunes, and his own.

They want him to know they are dismayed by the policy flip-flops, for example over the Medicare copayment. They remain resentful of the influence and control exercised by Abbott’s chief of staff, Peta Credlin, and the narrow sources of advice reaching the prime minister’s ears directly. They want him to outline a 2015 agenda he can actually deliver. All of which I have pointed out as the problems... If Abbott does not or cannot change his ways and the path the party is following he must go...

But to achieve any of it, he can’t “crash through”, he has to rebuild trust. And that requires an approach this government may really find alien. Like I said...