Journalists love polls - especially if they signify some dramatic reversal of fortune. Even so, I wouldn’t read too much into Kevin Rudd’s public opinion slump – at least not yet. When you’re tracking with figures that make you the country’s most popular Prime Minister in 40 years, there’s only one place you can go.
There are lots of reasons for Rudd to have been as welcome as free beer at a bricklayers’ barbecue for the first half of his term-of-office. Hand-outs to his core constituency (i.e. “working families”) during the heady days of the Global Financial Crisis were one. For all his claims to be a fiscal conservative, another was that he was N.J.H. (Not John Howard) – at least until he started back-flipping on major policy.
The roofing batt scandal and, to a lesser extent, serious flaws in the his school building stimulus project were big black marks, but no more than the fall of a string of Howard Ministers for Code of Conduct breaches in the early days of that government. Rudd’s reversal of his commitment to an Emissions Trading Scheme was the real biggie in the eyes of ironed-on and “soft” Labor voters. This was a spectacular surrender in anyone’s eyes and occurred just as Tony Abbott was staking out comfortable ground for his own supporters.
(The electorate nevertheless remains wary of Abbott with his record of volatility and precious little separation between his policy and religious convictions. Swinging voters haven’t yet lined up behind him and I.R. policy is still the great sleeper.)
There comes a time in the life of every political leader where the electorate applies a different level of scrutiny. Rudd arguably hastened that upon himself with his plunge back into the deceptively tricky waters of breakfast TV.
Sunrise is where Kevin07 first made his populist mark. He was a relatively little-known foreign affairs spokesman and bi-lingual policy wonk when he began. His weekly spot had him sidling up against folksy David Koch and swapping repartee with amiable Government front bencher Joe Hockey.
It put a human face on the otherwise clinically bureaucratic aspiring Opposition leader. Once he made the transition to Labor’s top job, he was still in comfortable territory – Opposition leaders are rarely made accountable for policy they often make up on the run.
Rudd’s return to breakfast tellie this year hasn’t been plain sailing. This time he’s being asked to field live questions from voters, all of whom have some sort of implement to grind. Most of his appearances have notable for Rudd taking long-winded whinges “on notice”, making for incredibly turgid TV. Why the PM persists – or why Sunrise’s producers insist on dishing him out again and again, driving viewers to their competition – is harder than Chinese arithmetic to work out.
The point here is that Rudd is a poor media communicator except when things are running his way. He’s prone to hyperbole, over-uses rhetorical questions and gets his back up when things don’t flow his way. Rudd’s recent prickliness on the 7:30 Report when goaded by host Kerry O’Brien – it should be said not in an uncharacteristic way – showed all of the above.
Politics is a marathon, not a sprint and Rudd’s a long way from handing over the keys to the Lodge to Tony Abbott, but if the unlikely did occur and he became a first-termer then he’ll only have his own policy flip-flops and inability to sell policy to blame.
Along with Kochie and Mel.
Rudd needed a kick in the pants for being so damn dissapointing - his only saving grace is that Abbot is unelectable
Posted by: stieve | May 18, 2010 at 12:50 PM