From the AFR:
In addressing the party room meeting of Coalition MPs and senators on Tuesday morning, the Prime Minister addressed the manufacturing job losses which have mounted under the Coalition’s watch.
“There have been economic shocks and there will be more to come,’’ he was quoted as saying.
But he added “we can’t abandon the truth that governments don’t create jobs, businesses do’’.
“We feel the concern for people in painful; economic circumstances but our concern shouldn’t allow us to depart from the truth that only profitable businesses create jobs.’’
He said the government was not in the business of “chasing businesses down the street with a blank cheque’’.
…“It’s not as if the government could have leapt in at the eleventh hour and said, ‘here’s $100, $200 million and please, please stay’. We’ve tried that with the motor industry and it hasn’t worked,” Mr Abbott said.
Actually, it worked fine until we stopped paying. Perhaps I’m wrong but I’d say the national mood today is one of anxiety about the future. Why is the PM stoking that? A good politician reads the mood and modulates his frame of reference accordingly. John Howard was a master of it. It doesn’t mean backing down. It means explaining and offering the reassurance of deeper knowledge. Abbott has a habit of striking a position and digging in with simple platitudes while all around him changes.
I’m not sure “tin ear” covers it.
