For the past two years or so I have been begging a politician of any stripe to step up with a narrative that helps genuinely explain the lousy Australian economy. As we watched Wayne Swan try to impose narcissistic optimism upon people’s difficult circumstances and we watched Kevin Rudd toy with realism about the end of the mining boom before reverting to thought-bubble giveaways, it was obvious that both were radically out of step with the mood of the electorate. Today a second poll confirms an Abbott Government rebound and it is my belief that Joe Hockey can be congratulated for it:
The Abbott government has regained the lead in the latest Fairfax-Nielsen opinion poll for the first time in two months, helped by a sharp drop in support for Bill Shorten’s performance and a Labor primary vote lurching back into the low 30s.
The result has all but restored the balance that saw the Coalition easily elected last September.
After several weeks in which the Coalition government has successfully linked industrial relations reform, union power, and corruption allegations in the building industry in national debate, Mr Shorten’s personal approval has slumped by an unusually decisive 11 points.
Union bashing is not new or unexpected. What was new in the last month is the Government’s seemingly random acts of toughness have been pulled together in a narrative that fits both the big story of the times and household’s struggle to deal with it. Joe Hockey’s “end of the age of entitlement” gives the Government a vision for both.
The Government has not done a very good job at rationalising or articulating the detail of its policies. Nor has it done a very good job of explaining the macroeconomic settings of the end of the mining boom. But the economy itself is making these things plain to the polity and the “end of the age of entitlement” is a rubric that gives the country a goal towards which it can comfortably work to improve its material circumstances in the world of risk that is the new normal.
It’s the tough love that the electorate has been begging for and with Bill Shorten dedicated only to whinging about this loser or that, the Government is free to write a grand narrative for the times.
It’s only one poll and the Government will need to be cautious of hubris and overdoing the tough love (lest it kill the economy) as well as find greater consistency in its decision-making, but the polity will give it latitude to deliver a vision that finally resonates with reality, despite the missteps.
