What does Abbott's win mean for Cameron?

By Paul Goodman
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Few attempts are made, either on the left or the right, to read across what's happening in the rest of Europe and apply it to Britain.  That far more are made when it comes to America or Canada or Australia is a tribute to the spread of English and the power of the Anglosphere - as an idea, at any rate.  During the past 25 years or so, the Left has gazed abroad to study the electoral success of Bill Clinton and the Right to ponder that of George W.Bush, at least until the Iraq War.  In recent years, we have also had a long look at Stephen Harper's success in Canada: Downing Street aides have visited there to study his success in winning ethnic minority votes.  And today, our eyes will turn to Australia.  Tony Abbott is an old friend of the site (by which I mean that he's a friend of Tim Montgomerie's: I haven't met him, though I hope to), and ConservativeHome congratulates him warmly on his victory.

I can add nothing to the comprehensive study of Abbott which Tim published on the site last week, and am thus automatically in the position of many Tory MPs and party members.  Perhaps the best answer to my question is: "not much" - but some of those members and MPs will be following the news from Australia, will have done a bit of reading up on Abbott, and will draw three conclusions.  First, they will note that, like Harper, Abbott began on the right and moved to the centre (have a look at his parental leave plans), whereas David Cameron is, in important ways, doing the reverse (on immigration, on welfare, on an EU referendum - the so-called "Crosbyisation" of his leadership).  Second, they will clock that Abbott is a Christian, specifically Catholic, conservative, with a strong commitment to social justice and, like Harper, a sense of outreach to minority groups.  Tim wrote about Abbott's commitment to aboriginal Australians and his wife's to abused women. That looks and sounds a lot like the compassionate conservatism that Tim has done much to propagate here. 

Ten things you should know about Australia’s next prime minister, Tony Abbott

By Tim Montgomerie in Sydney
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I’m jumping the gun a bit. Australia doesn’t even vote until tomorrow but it’ll be one of the biggest shocks in the country’s electoral history if the incumbent Labor prime minister, Kevin Rudd, survives.

Here are ten things you should know about Tony Abbott, leader of the Conservative Party’s sister party in Australia.

1. He will defeat a government that has enjoyed good economic times: In the last year Australia has grown by 2.6% (easily enough to put a smile on George Osborne’s face). That’s the 22^nd successive year of growth. Australia isn’t even close to losing its triple A status from ratings agencies. All governments get ejected eventually but, six years ago, Kevin Rudd led Labor to power as one of Australia’s most popular ever leaders. Rudd then boasted he was the prime minister who saved his country from the global recession and this resource-rich country did escape negative growth. But, according to every poll, Labor loses tomorrow’s general election and it will lose badly.

2. He’s a model Leader of the Opposition: Do you remember when David Cameron promised to end Punch and Judy politics? Even before he became leader of Australia’s Liberal Party (the Tories’ sister party, led by John Howard until ’07), Abbott embraced Punch’s pugilism. He ousted Malcolm Turnbull, his Liberal predecessor, who was preparing to back Rudd’s climate change agenda. Since becoming Leader of the Opposition in 2009 he has opposed Labor’s expensive carbon policies and its failure to control immigration. Labor became incredibly unpopular – first dumping Rudd for Gillard and then, hilariously, Gillard for Rudd. 

3. His four-fold message has focused on immigration, tax, infrastructure and above all, the carbon tax: Most politicians get bored with repeating the same message. Pundits needing to fill their pages or broadcast slots with ‘new news’ certainly do. Abbott doesn’t get bored. A man famous for his physical fitness he has the stamina to conquer arduous bike journeys and marathons. Knowing that voters only start to hear a message when politicians are sick to death of hearing themselves repeat it for the squillionth time he has stuck relentlessly to four big themes: Scrap the carbon tax; Stop the boats (via which illegal immigrants enter Australia); Cut taxes; and, more recently, Build new roads.

It turns out that Kevin Rudd is not Australian Labor's messiah

By Tim Montgomerie in Melbourne
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Kevin Rudd first became Australia’s prime minister in 2007 after a presidential campaign built almost entirely around his then stratospheric popularity. He enjoyed approval ratings of over seventy per cent but the public acclaim went to his head. He started running his country’s government and his Labor party in a dictatorial style. His colleagues came to detest him and three years ago Julia Gillard toppled him and became Australia’s first female leader.

In a play about this political assassination Ms Gillard is portrayed as a brutal killer. She stabs her victim repeatedly in a determination to ensure he can never live to fight another day. At the end of the drama Rudd is laying at the centre of the stage. As the curtain falls the audience sees the bloodied body twitch. Rudd was not so dead after all and earlier this year, on 27th June, he turned the tables on Ms Gillard and toppled her.

Yesterday, at a Brisbane campaign launch (Times £ report), a very lively Mr Rudd presented himself as the comeback kid. ''I have been in tougher spots before,” he said, “and come back from behind.'' Gillard was not at the event. She has hardly said a word since Rudd got his revenge. Her allies won’t stay silent if, as every opinion poll and pundit predicts, Rudd loses.

Abbott is gambling that Rudd will continue to flounder in the run-up to Australia's polling day

By Mark Wallace
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For a nation famous for bullish straight-talking, Australia's election campaign is proving to be a surprisingly tentative affair. 

As Paul reported last week, Tony Abbott has the air of a man playing it safe. His coalition has maintained a poll lead for a long time, and neither Rudd's return nor Abbott's poor personal approval ratings have so far affected that headline voting intention.

It's a measure of what kind of campaign this is that one of the few sources of controversy is a proposal to buy up old fishing boats in Indonesia in order to prevent them being used by asylum seekers. This has not been a titanic clash of radical ideas (though it's worth noting that, unlike us, Australian politicians are able to seriously proposing a return to government surpluses during the next few years).

Abbott's Liberals "on track comfortably" to win Australia's election

By Paul Goodman
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Polling day is two weeks away, but the Liberal Party's Tony Abbott would make it over the finishing line were the election held today, according to two separate polls.  One was of the four most marginal sears held by the two main parties, published in the Australian Financial Review, which found that the partt would take at least five seats off Labour.  The other, published in the Sydney Morning Herald, found that Labor would lose two other seats in New South Wales.

Those results would take Abbott over the 76 seat-threshold which he needs to win the election outright.  The Liberals currently have 72 seats and Labor 71.  The latter has been propped up by the Greens and by independents since the 2010 election, and Christian Kerr wrote an entertaining account on this site recently of how Kevin Rudd, Labour's Prime Minister, was first outed by Julia Gillard and then ousted her in turn.  Kerr clocked his relative popularity: "Abbott has never been hugely liked. But Rudd – or as ordinary voters greet him, Kevin, is a different matter."

Bloomberg quotes Penny Wong, the Finance Minister, as saying: “There’s no doubt we’re still the underdog, and there’s no doubt that Tony Abbott, if the election was held on the day it was announced would be the prime minister." Voice of Australia reports that Abbott "is on track to comfortably win", and that Labor's support has fallen "to its lowest level since Kevin Rudd's return as Prime Minister". "In two-party terms, the Coalition enjoys a 54-46 per cent lead and, if repeated across the board on election day, Labor would lose 14 seats," it reports.

Abbott is what my Canadian friends and others closer to home would call a "movement Conservative", but I see that according to ABC he has just announced a planned tax rise which wasn't cleared by his party - namely, new paid parental leave provisions to be funded by "big business", as he puts it: that's to say, a 1.5 per cent levy on the 3000 largest firms in Australia.  (The Liberal Leader also proposes a 1.5 per cent company tax cut and budget savings, including $2 billion from abolishing existing leave provisions.)

Parallels between one Anglosphere country and another can mislead, but part-funding a tax cut for smaller businesses through a tax rise on larger ones has echoes on the debate here about where any Tory tax cuts would fall - and to what degree the Party should put itself "on the side" of "strivers".  Two weeks out, the election looks like Abbott's to lose.  I enclose a clip of his opening remarks at the recent election debate with Rudd, reportedly an indecisive affair, in which the opposition leader is clearly playing it safe.

Christian Kerr: Is Labor's Kevin Rudd on the verge of one of the greatest political comebacks in history?

Christian Kerr is a senior reporter with The Australian newspaper and a former adviser to two Australian Liberal federal cabinet ministers and a state premier. Follow him on Twitter.

At the moment there is only one certainty in Australian politics – that an election will be held on September 7. Just six weeks ago, things were very different indeed. Julia Gillard, the Prime Minister, and her minority Labor government were doomed, with polling putting support for the party at its lowest point in 80 years, and Liberal leader Tony Abbott was guaranteed to be our next premier. The only question unresolved was the size of his majority.

Then Kevin Rudd returned as our Prime Minister. Rudd is Prime Minister for two reasons; his bastardry and mastery of breakfast television. Just as his skills set is unusual, Rudd himself is an unusual choice for a leader of a political party: a nerdy, moon-faced, Mandarin-speaking former diplomat turned senior bureaucrat.

His diplomatic career never progressed that far. His time in the bureaucracy was more successful. He rose to become director-general of the office of cabinet under a Labor government in his home state of Queensland. But his nickname from the time, “Dr Death”, speaks volumes about how he was regarded.

Chris Gatenby: In Australia, Labor face meltdown after vengeful Rudd returns as PM

Chris Gatenby is a Conservative Party activist and Vice President of Australian Liberals Abroad UK. Follow him on Twitter here.

Kevin Rudd has dramatically returned to the Australian Labor Party leadership following a 57-45 caucus ballot against Julia Gillard on Wednesday evening in Canberra.

Rudd was sworn in the following day by the Governor General, Quentin Bryce, making then Leader of the House Anthony Albanese his Deputy Prime Minister. Senator Penny Wong emerged as Labor Leader in the Senate. Gillard will retire from politics at the next election.

Rudd’s relentless pursuit to return to the leadership seemingly hung on the balance of Cabinet member union powerbroker Bill Shorten. Shorten - himself a touted future leader - appeared before the media minutes before the party room vote to announce he was switching his support from Gillard to Rudd, effectively sealing the outgoing PM’s dramatic fate. Shorten was instrumental in making Gillard Prime Minister in the first place and having now wielded the knife a second time may have badly damaged his future leadership prospects, in the process.

The result also led to the resignation of senior Ministers from Cabinet including Deputy Prime Minister and Treasurer Wayne Swan. Gillard is set to resign from Parliament altogether following her calls for the ballot loser to resign as an MP at the next election, with other Cabinet colleagues following suit.

With rumours of an early election before the14 September date set be Gillard, Labor has set its sight on a campaign aimed at salvaging seats in Kevin Rudd’s own State of Queensland and Western Sydney, whilst creating a narrative that the Opposition’s plans for public spending will result in austere times – all in an effort to stem the losses predicted by recent opinion polls.

The move will no doubt be seen as the party’s best chance of survival in campaign against Opposition Leader Tony Abbott’s looming victory at the upcoming election. With Gillard’s performance pointing towards to a primary vote for Labor of just 30 per cent and Abbott far outstripping her in the preferred PM stakes, recent polls have shown voters feel that Labor’s prospects will improve vastly under Rudd’s leadership; though a large proportion of voters did not like the idea of a change when put to them.

Big questions now loom for Rudd on Labor’s policy priorities he will take to the next election, as well as the focus on key seats.  With less than 100 days he has little time to re-cast and resolve many of the internal battles on policy direction and attempt to wedge the opposition as he returns to the Prime Ministership. Key issues include the bemoaned carbon tax, border control, education reforms with State Governments and ultimately the budget and public spending.

For the opposition, their campaign to remind voters of Kevin Rudd’s tumultuous terms as PM begins through a series of ad campaigns, highlighting current and former ministers advocating their staunch views against his premiership. Rudd won’t be able to escape the reasons why his first attempt at PM was a failure.

Julia Gillard’s three year tenure at Prime Minister has been dramatically ended at the hands of the vengeful Rudd and the key backing of the Unions in an attempt to salvage a victory or minimise the losses at the next election. The big question looming for Rudd and Labor for the next election is; is it all too little, too late? 

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.