Paler shade of Crean

It appears that the most effective opposition to Kevin Rudd is coming from the grave. Not the graven undertaker like-manner of the Opposition Leader, but the political grave of one JW Howard and the physical one of one Joh Bjelke Petersen. Howard has lacerated Rudd's IR reforms and Iraq policy in one of his paid junket American conservative love-ins. Rudd turned up on Four Corners' Joh retrospective the other night in his former incarnation as 'Dr Death'. One of young Kev's coup de grace was the locking of a bunch of Joh-engrained civil servants in the basement until they dutifully resigned. Given this masterstroke, it is clear when the PM talks about dealing with the public service, he is not kidding.

From the actual opposition, we have the kind of attitude usually seen by schoolkids in the last days of Year 10, before the reality of study in senior school really kicks in. Downer, Vaille, MacGauran and the rest seem to be on an endless summer, turning up when they want and generally treating Nelson with the disdain usually reserved for casual teachers. His authority is crumbling at roughly the same speed as the programme that put him there, with nuclear power, workchoices, AWAs, Kyoto and the apology being dropped in the most mangled and painful fashion conceivable. Other than putting up candidates against Labor, there is not a lot left of the old Howard legacy and even less in its place. Nelson and Turnbull have mounted a token defence of the economic record, but quite frankly a bit of mea culpa about productivity might give the Liberals a bit more credibility in the eyes of punters still smarting at having their private economic hell consistently denied by Howard.

Herein we come to Nelson's problem. His poll numbers are lower than Crean because his voice disappears into a haze before it reaches the viewers, he is caught in the continuing gravitational vacuum left by the collapse of the Howard government and he has absolutely no policy ideas on the table. His opposition performance relies on picking holes in positive policy, but even this is ham-fisted. Until he at least comes up with something, those numbers will remain trapped in their downward spiral.