The perils of zero sum government

John Howard has, for a considerable term as PM, commanded respect from a significant portion of the community for being a good economic manager. He has done this by defining his economic management record (aided by a resources boom and a regional surge in the finance industry, plus the global trend toward low-tarrif workforces of which Keating as Treasurer was the Australian standard bearer) in opposition to the combination of personal pain suffered by voters under Keating and their innate suspicion of Labor governments which is genetic in some parts of the Australian psyche. Of course, a large slice of the remainder despised his social views on almost everything, being cut from a completely different generational cloth. He cast these people as 'the elites', some kind of pseudo-McCarthyist label meaning their opinions were not worthy of engagement.

The existence of these two dichotomies made a directionless opposition overly reliant on its leaders, who ranged from cuddly but not especially tough to downright scary. Howard's government viewed the economy as the alpha and omega of life, experienced through interest rates and tax cuts. Their ideological programme was only palatable to the community when sugarcoated with safety nets and soothing advertising. The great risk Howard ran by this style of leadership is that if the agenda moved off the economy, his neutral leadership would start to look mediocre and inadequate.

Being a staid, narrow-minded economic PM made him vulnerable to any leader who could convert their honeymoon, which would inevitably be fairly long given how much of the field was left open for Labor to run on, into a serious standing with the electorate. Kevin Rudd's pitch to the future, greatly aided by Howard's Chifleyesque madness of Workchoices, exposed the simple fact that the Liberals dismissed from focus any issue other than the economy, treating it as an inconvenience. Calls for more funding for public services were repeatedly met with tax cuts. Howard's Liberals have limited their view to the economy because they have contempt for true liberal traditions.

Because Howard's Liberals did not rate the concerns of true liberals seriously, locked into the circular thinking that economics trumped all, they allowed a reservoir of issues to bank up. Rudd is a new, competent and reassuring alternative who has run the campaign Latham couldn't run in 2004. Latham had more baggage than an airport carousel, a nasty temper and a predilection for picking fights. He also had no mobilising issues to define his party. Rudd has workchoices and climate change plus the urgency of health as defining issues. He has also wedged Howard on his own economic strength, and is in the processing of even wedging his advertising campaigns.

Hence the alignment that existed since 1996 is in the process of breaking down. The Liberals under Howard appear completely clueless, all they can run on is another blockbuster tax cut. The great problem with leaving the field open is that you are vulnerable if your opponent gets their act together. Beazley's no target strategy in 2001 was overwhelmed by events. In contrast Rudd has seized the field that Howard has left vacant for his entire prime ministership and is reaping the positive results.