Chris Gatenby and Isaac Levido: Previewing election year in Australia

Chris Gatenby has previously worked for Policy Exchange and is a Conservative Party activist. He is currently Vice President of Australian Liberals Abroad UK and writes in a personal capacity. Isaac Levido is an Australian who has recently moved to London from Washington DC, where he worked with Republican Senate campaigns before advising on Congressional and electoral politics at the Australian Embassy.

The passing of 2012 ushers in the most welcome of junctures for long-suffering Australian conservatives: a federal election year. Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s minority Labor Government has been in an election losing position since early 2011 and, according to the Newspoll published by The Australian, ended 2012 in the same place they started it. They face an intimidating eight point (54%-46%) two-party preferred deficit to the Liberal/National Opposition led by Tony Abbott. If this outcome were translated into votes Abbott would be elected Prime Minister in a landslide.

The PM formed a minority government in 2010 by securing the support of just one Green MP and three Independents. This razor-thin majority means the Government needs to gain seats to have any certainty of remaining in power; a massive task for Gillard given the polling headwinds Labor faces. 

Speculation abounds about election timing but in all likelihood it will be held sometime between August and October. While a poll could technically be called by Gillard any day, the earliest possible date for a joint House and half-Senate election (the normal format) is 3 August, the latest being by 30 November. A good summary of the mechanics of the whole thing is available here.

We suspect both sides of politics, not least the Australian public, will be glad to leave 2012 behind them. It was a year dominated by a series of distracting scandals and acrimonious personal attacks. In a word: forgettable.

Cory Bernardi withdraws from European Young Conservatives' conference

After making controversial remarks about same-sex marriage an Australian parliamentarian, Cory Bernardi, has withdrawn from a conference in Oxford, where he was due to address a gathering of the European Young Conservatives.

Cory Bernardi said:

“I contacted the organisers yesterday to say that my attendance at their conference had become a distraction. I had intended to talk about Australia and the Commonwealth, but that message would be lost, and I don’t want to drag an unrelated issue into this important conference”.

A spokesman for EYC said:

“We undertand Sen. Bernardi’s decision. He’s a respected and popular politician in South Australia, and was until this week parliamentary secretary to the Leader of the Oppoistion, and we wish him and our allies in the Australian Liberal Party well”.

Kevin Andrews MP: Australian Labor is on the ropes

The Hon Kevin Andrews MP is a member of the Australian Parliament and publisher of the Australian Polity. This will be the first of an occasional report he'll be submitting for ConHome readers. Follow Kevin on Twitter.

The Australian Parliament is in recess until the annual Budget session in May. Despite the break from proceedings in Canberra, much has happened on the political landscape in the past few weeks.

First, the Labor Party were thrashed in the Queensland election. In what is essentially a ‘first-past-the-post’ system (optional preferential voting) for a unicameral Parliament, the Liberal National Party, led by the former Lord Mayor of Brisbane, Campbell Newman, scored the biggest landslide in Australia’s political history, winning 77 of the 88 seats, and sweeping Labor from office. Neither the Greens, nor the Australia Party, an agrarian socialist movement led by former National Party minister, Bob Katter, made any significant headway.

The outcome was a result of a number of factors. First, the Queensland voters had been waiting for years to oust Labor from office, but there had not been a credible alternative. The unification of the previously warring Liberal and National Parties was a significant step in creating an alternative. The election of Newman, the popular Lord Mayor of Brisbane as opposition leader, albeit outside the Parliament, competed the process.

Finally, Labor ran a totally negative campaign, focused almost entirely on attacking Newman and his family. When they were forced to concede a few days before the polls that there was no substance to the mudslinging, the voters reacted with anger.

Oops! Australian Labor MP caught red-handed plagiarising Hollywood

By Tim Montgomerie
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Anthony Albanese MP, the Minister for Transport and Infrastructure in Australia's minority Labor Government, launched an attack on Leader of the Opposition Tony Abbott. Abbott's aides thought they'd heard the speech before. They had. Mr Albanese had lifted the remarks from the Hollywood movie 'The American President', starring Michael Douglas.

Australia's John Howard receives great honour from Queen

By Tim Montgomerie
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Oned of the greatest conservative leaders of our time - Australia's John Howard - has been appointed to the Order of Merit. Only 24 people are members of this Order at any one time and all are handpicked by the Queen.

'I'm very honoured,'' Mr Howard told the Sydney Herald. ''It's a compliment to Australia and a recognition, among other things, of the respect the Queen has for this country. I'm very grateful for it.''

Mr Howard has long been a supporter of the constitutional monarchy and was Prime Minister when the Australian people voted against an elected head of state.  "I've never hidden my support for the constitutional monarchy," he has said, "as part of the good governance of Australia."

The Australian has a lengthy report on Mr Howard's award. Lady Thatcher, Baroness Boothroyd and former Canadian PM, Jean Chretian, are other current members.

Downunder, Tony Abbott champions a more muscular conservatism

By Tim Montgomerie
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Tony Abbott, leader of Australia's Liberals, has been in London this week and has met a range of UK politicians including Iain Duncan Smith, Michael Gove, William Hague and, more surprisingly, Chris Huhne. I write more surprising because Abbott is no Liberal in the Liberal Democrat sense. The socially and economically conservative Abbott is riding high in Australian opinion polls by strongly opposing the Labor government's carbon tax. Abbott has also promised to cut taxes, take a tough line on immigration by "stopping the boats", and introduce more competition into the Australian economy. His full programme for government can be read here.

Abbott isn't just a more conventional conservative than David Cameron in policy terms. They are oceans apart in style, too. Cameron's approach is more consensual while Tony Abbott stakes out ground and fights for it. Cameron spent much time in opposition wooing the metropolitan vote and placed very regular OpEds in The Guardian and Observer. Abbott's focus is the "respectable" blue collar vote and he spends a lot of time on his country's talk radio stations. There's an urbane sophistication to David Cameron whereas Abbott is the blunt speaking sports fanatic.

After taking control of the party from Malcolm Turnbull - a politician very much in Cameron's image - Abbott has transformed his party's standing. Labor is only one by-election away from losing office and Abbott is on constant election alert. If he becomes Australia's next PM many UK conservatives will have renewed questions about the wisdom of Cameron's liberal conservatism.

Australian Labor steps into its environmentally-friendly electoral coffin

By Tim Montgomerie
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The Australian Labor government is now in meltdown. A short history...

1. Julia Gillard replaced Kevin Rudd as Labor leader.
2. She called a snap election and Labor became the first, first term post-war Australian government not to win an outright majority.
3. Gillard governs with a majority of one.
4. That majority will be wiped out if one of her MPs is found guilty of using his union credit card to pay for the services of escort girls.
5. At the root of Labor's problems is that Gillard promised not to introduce a carbon tax and then announced one.
6. Cameron - crazily - backed her judgment.
7. Support for Labor is now at 27% in the primary vote; 23% behind the conservative opposition.
8. The conservative opposition leader - Tony Abbott is preferred as PM to Gillard by 43% to 34%.
9. At a state level, Labor is being massacred.
10. The man Gillard ousted as Labor leader - Kevin Rudd - is now preferred as Labor leader by 57% to 24%.

There ends your snap shot guide to the latest in Australian politics.

It's the same all over the Anglosphere. Canada. America. Australia. Climate change policies are political poison. Cameron needs to be careful for the reasons set out by Matthew earlier.

Patrick Cusworth: Thomson credit card scandal gets worse for Australian PM Julia Gillard

Patrick Cusworth is a consultant adviser on science, research and energy policy, and a member of Brentford and Isleworth Conservative Association. He tweets at @Patriccus.

Life just doesn’t seem to get any better for Julia Gillard. Almost a year to the day from Australia’s last Federal Election, the latest crisis to engulf the Labor Prime Minister threatens to bring down her fragile coalition Government.

Following recent allegations that Australian Labor Party (ALP) MP Craig Thomson used trade union funds to hire a prostitute, Julia Gillard’s Labor-Green coalition Government – which has a majority of just one over Tony Abbott’s Liberal-National Opposition – further developments appear to cast doubt on his claims of innocence. Court documents published by the Sydney Morning Herald have confirmed that Mr. Thomson’s union credit card was used to pay $2,475 to an escort agency on April 8, 2005. Equally damaging, the mobile phone used to call the escort agency in question was also used to call political and union contacts from the ALP on April 7, 2005. The publication of these documents pours doubt on Thomson’s initial claim that someone else had used his credit card to pay the agency.

Australia's minority Labor government will collapse if it loses one MP and one Labor MP has just been caught using his union credit card to rent a prostitute...

...allegedy. You'll enjoy this ten minute report...

Cameron backs Julia Gillard on carbon tax, embarrassing Australia's conservative opposition

By Tim Montgomerie
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British Toryism is out of step with Anglosphere conservatism in a number of key respects. Solidarity with Israel and a belief in the supply-side effects of lower taxation are two stand out examples. The biggest difference though is on climate change where conservatives in America, Canada and Australia are all opposed to unilateral* action on global warming that (i) accelerates deindustrialisation of the west but (ii) does so without reducing global emmisions, because it doesn't include the likes of fast growing China, India and Brazil.

Australian conservatives have revived on the back of opposition to a carbon tax that the minority Labor Prime Minister promised not to introduce. Watch this video in which Julia Gillard said there would no carbon tax under any government she led. She lied and Australian voters are furious. Our sister partry in Australia - the Liberals - led by Tony Abbott has championed this fury. The graph on the right shows the boost that the issue has given him and his party (Liberals in blue).

Not surprisingly Tony Blair endorsed Ms Gillard on a visit downunder last week. More surprisingly David Cameron has done the same. In a letter to Ms Gillard that is making waves in the Australian media Mr Cameron has said that "your announcement sends a strong and clear signal that Australia is determined to make its contribution to addressing this challenge." "It will," Cameron continued, "add momentum to those, in both the developed and developing world, who are serious about dealing with this urgent threat."