Conservatives Might Win in Australia
John O'Sullivan explains why the conservatives might win in Australia's very close election:
First, amid all the uncertainties, one thing is clear and undeniable: Labour lost an election it should have won easily. The last time that a first-term Australian government lost an election was 80 years ago — and that was in the middle of the Great Depression. In the last two years, by contrast, Australia is one of two countries that have gone through the international economic crisis without having a domestic recession. Both Rudd and his conservative predecessor, John Howard, share the credit for this achievement. It helps explain why Rudd was one of Australia’s most popular prime ministers a year ago; and Gillard was at least as popular as he was. Sitting governments usually (and reasonably) get the electoral credit for prosperity if only because they have not prevented it. So Labour’s failure to benefit from these economic advantages and electoral precedents is, well, historic.
Second, Julia Gillard is a wounded leader, but not yet a dead one. As deputy prime minister she was almost as responsible as Rudd for the failings of his government. By conspiring to oust him, she helped to divide her party and to give it an image of covert and unfraternal viciousness. Several of her own policies — for instance, creating a citizens’ council to advise on climate change — looked shifty and proved unpopular. And though she fought bravely and effectively to the end, she lost what many thought was an unlosable election. Her party, as she well knows, is a harsh and unforgiving one. If she fails to persuade the independents to keep Labour in power, she will lose the Labour leadership too. She must either remain prime minister or face the end of her political career. That gives her wooing of the independents a slightly embarrassing edge of desperation. Several commentators have noted that on election night she praised each of them by name. She has rushed to accept their conditions unreservedly (whereas Abbott has refused some of them and defended the “Westminster constitution”). Still, she might yet cobble together a temporary gimcrack coalition of Labour, Greens, and, er, cranks — and as the French say, nothing lasts like the provisional.
Third, Tony Abbott is the moral victor. He came closest of any leader to winning the election — and it was an election that by all the axioms of conventional wisdom he should have lost. This was a political struggle between parties of the Left and Right, of course; but it was also a cultural struggle of liberal metropolitan elites versus the socially conservative classes of suburban and rural Australia. To the elites, Abbott was unpopular because he represented resistance to their cultural dominance of both political parties and thus of Australian life as a whole. His skepticism about climate change (he believes that its extent, and thus the policies needed to deal with it, are as yet unclear), his pro-life convictions, his firm opposition to illegal immigration, even his colloquial outspokenness — these all marked him out as culturally unacceptable in the leafier parts of Sydney and Melbourne. You catch the tone of this in Germaine Greer’s post-election lament: “In any grown-up country . . . Tony Abbott would have been unelectable. He looks and sounds like a clown.”
But the volunteer fireman and lifeguard looked like a good bloke to most Australian voters, even some who voted against him.
Abbott is a blend of three things: an authentic, honest, and unapologetic conservative; a tough, self-disciplined, pragmatic politician who worked out a clear message and put it across vigorously; and a pleasant, affable, good-natured man. Think of him as a blend of John Howard and Ronald Reagan. Indeed, one columnist described him in a sentence that could have been (and probably was) written about Reagan: “Even people who hate Tony Abbott like him.” All three parts of his personality helped him to victory. His firmness of personal (especially religious) conviction made him appealing to those who disliked the “spin-doctor” poll-tested insincerities of recent Australian (and American . . . and British . . .) politics. His self-discipline meant that he concentrated not on winning every argument across the board but on honing a clear message on the issues of greatest importance to the voters. And his affability meant that the voters listened, liked him, and saw him as someone like themselves. In the debates he was often addressed by the voters as “Tony.”
Whoever emerges from the present confusion as prime minister, Abbott is in the stronger position. If he gets power, he will benefit from its famous “Royal Jelly” effect: Because he is prime minister, he will look like a prime minister and shed what remains of his “larrikin” image. If he remains out of power, he will look like the strong leader of a united opposition facing a defeated and illegitimate government resting on the shakiest of majorities. In either event he will join Stephen Harper of Canada and David Cameron of Britain as a major figure on the international center-right.
Indeed, he will be a persuasive alternative to the latter. Cameron lost an election he should have won; Abbott looks like winning an election he should have lost in a landslide. And he did it without apologizing for being a conservative.
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