Via The Australian:
Crossbench MP Bob Katter says he would be willing to switch his allegiance to Tony Abbott and support a government led by the former prime minister.
A week after telling Malcolm Turnbull he could no longer rely on his support, Mr Katter said he wanted to meet with Mr Abbott in the next parliamentary sitting week and would consider backing a hypothetical Abbott government.
Mr Katter said he expected Mr Abbott to be back in the running for the top job, with the Prime Minister behind in the polls and being held back by the citizenship scandal and division in the Coalition on same-sex marriage.
“If I had to place a bet at the moment, as unlikely as it sounded initially, I would place that bet on Abbott (being the next prime minister),” he told Sky News last night.
“I listen to both sides of the parliament and, in this case, particularly the Liberals. I like Tony and I think he has the right inclinations but he has got to deliver.”
No doubt about it, the Abbott agenda would bring an huge shake-up:
- slashing immigration;
- slashing the RET;
- slashing the Human Rights Commission, and
- slashing the Budget.
I think it likely to comprehensively sink Coalition polls. The last three are proven losers and would not be offset by the immense popularity of the first. The last could be done but only in the hands of a subtle reformer and gifted communicator that could explain at length how the post-mining boom adjustment should be shared.
That said, the Abbott agenda would destroy One Nation even as it lost the Coalition the centre, so it does at least offer one major structural benefit even if big cyclical downsides.
It’s all so very obvious. For the Coalition to put itself back in contention all it needs to do is the first while deploying sensible centrist policy in the last three. That would kill One Nation and apply enormous pressure to Labor’s negative gearing reforms and population extremism without taking the party into the political dead end of the culture wars.
Instead, Colonel Matthias Cormann declared war on Labor’s socialism:
Finance Minister Mathias Cormann has accused Labor of trashing the Hawke/Keating economic legacy by embracing socialism which, he says, will crush aspiration and drive successful people out of the country.
In a hard-hitting speech to the Sydney Institute on Wednesday night to rebut Labor’s inequality push, Senator Cormann said opposition policies which targeted high-wealth individuals and business would undermine its stated support for a social welfare net.
“If we want a solid economic foundation on which to build and maintain a generous and sustainable social safety net, then we need to support aspiration not flatten it,” he said.
“Dragging down one group of Australians won’t lift other Australians up. To the contrary, it would actually achieve the opposite of what Labor claims.”
Citing Labor policies such as taxing trusts, opposing business tax cuts, increasing the top marginal income tax rate by 2 percentage points and capping negative gearing, Senator Cormann accused Mr Shorten of trading on fading memories of Soviet-era communism.
“As he looks ahead to the next election, he has made the deliberate and cynical political judgment that enough Australians have forgotten the historical failure of socialism,” he said.
Who has forgotten what socialism was? It sure wasn’t fighting useless corporate tax cuts, tiny increases in taxes for the wealthy and aiming for massive competitiveness increases by cutting property giveaways. None of these is going to resonate with angry households experiencing zero wages growth throughout the reign of the Coalition thanks to being lumped with the entire post mining boom adjustment. You can’t bluster your way through that reality.
Alas, no matter who leads it, this government really has no idea how reality, ideology and policy combine successfully.
It is dumb!
