CPA - The Guardian

Opposition leader Tony Abbott has been working hard to re-establish some point of noticeable difference between the Libs and the Rudd government. For Abbott, an uncomfortable consensus had set in under former leader Malcolm Turnbull about major issues including industrial relations and measures to tackle climate change. No doubt Abbott and his fellow plotters saw this as the reason for the declining support for the Liberal Party and the Coalition despite the switch of leadership from previous leader Brendan Nelson to Turnbull. Abbott clearly sees himself as the man for the job of reclaiming reactionary sentiment in the electorate and would be happy at the effect his interventions are having on public debate so far.

In recent weeks, Abbott has been laying down his alternative to Rudd’s Emissions Trading Scheme. The Liberal leader is portraying the ETS as a huge tax grab on ordinary Australians. He is careful to avoid the observation that his party’s major benefactors, the big polluters in industry like coal-fired electricity generation, would be granted taxpayer funded permits under the ETS to carry on emitting as always. In its place, Abbott is proposing a “standing green army” to plant masses of trees, better soil management to create “carbon sinks” and changed building codes to ensure better energy efficiency. There would be no new tax to pay for this. Who could possibly object to tree planting and more energy efficient buildings? Even the most sceptical of climate change doubters would not be put out.

It is being sold as a hands-on, practical alternative to Rudd’s long-promised, bureaucratic ETS. Unfortunately for his spin doctors, departmental estimates are that 30 million hectares of trees would need to be planted to reach the unambitious greenhouse gas emission target reduction of 5 percent by 2020. The Nationals are reported to be concerned it might lock arable land away from food production and threaten Australia’s food security. The Nationals can rest easy; Abbott’s green “army” and tree planting would be low priorities and would be part of the quickly forgotten policy window dressing like Rudd’s Green Jobs Corps and Howard’s Green Corps before it. It is a promise to big business to do even less than Rudd on climate change.

Despite the intentional do-nothing stance on climate change, Abbott is keen to embarrass Rudd on a number of stalled programs. He is reviving Howard’s demand that control of the Murray-Darling Basin be ceded to the Commonwealth. If that doesn’t happen by 2012, he will make it an election issue at the 2013 federal election. He is demanding Rudd act on his promise of a federal takeover of public hospitals if states do not fall in behind his reform agenda. Abbott says he will seek a mandate for a federal takeover of funding to be directed by local hospital boards. Abbott the man of action – that is the mantra.

None of the action would take the community in a more progressive direction. Some of the interventions have harked back to another age. There was Abbott’s notorious advice in an interview with The Australian Women’s Weekly for women to keep their virginity until their wedding day. And there was the taunt made to Rudd to show his “steel” and tow boats carrying asylum seekers back out of Australian waters.

This reckless and inhumane call typifies the Libs’ latest swing back to the far right. It is the sort of rightwing populism Howard rode for over a decade. The fact is that big business is currently well pleased with Rudd & Co. Big polluters are not feeling any heat to reform. Employers still have the essentials from the old WorkChoices kit with which to attack the unions. Education and health are being lined up for wholesale privatisation. Mandatory detention still awaits desperate asylum seekers. Abbott’s policies are having the appalling effect of making Rudd’s program seem relatively progressive to some in the community. They provide that extra bit of ambit for the claims of the monopolies and drag the field for debate over burning issues to the right.

There is an urgent need for the opponents of the current direction in Australian politics to unite and present the real alternatives to the current agenda. The Australian people do not support these neo-liberal policies and were led to believe they were voting for significant change in 2007. A new political force committed to delivering on those expectations must be built.

Next article – Homage to Jyoti Basu

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