(Further to Robin’s observations)
Ever since Tony Abbott challenged Malcolm Turnbull for the leadership of Australia’s Liberal Party at the end of last year the BBC’s Sydney correspondent Nick Bryant has, at almost every opportunity possible, dismissed the chances of the man he never fails to remind us is nicknamed the “Mad Monk”. From his smirking obsession with Abbott’s “budgie smugglers” to his quaint conviction that climate scepticism could lead to the dissolution of the Liberals, Bryant has reflected the sneering views of the Ozzie left.
When Abbott stood for Liberal leader Bryant said he lacked the “plausibility factor”. When Abbott defeated Turnbull, and immediately announced that he would oppose Emission Trading Scheme (ETS) legislation, the BBC journalist responded:
In what is already being billed as “the climate-change election”, most observers predict a lop-sided majority for Labor, if not a landslide… By electing Mr Abbott, many commentators think that the Liberals have entered a sort of twilight zone – that they risk becoming a fringe party… By installing Mr Abbott, have the turkeys just voted for Christmas?
Bryant anticipated a snap election to coincide with the end of bushfire season which, he said, would allow the global warming message to be driven home with greater impact. When it became clear that his beloved Kevin Rudd didn’t have the nads to go to the country Bryant posted an update saying it was wiser to wait:
It’s a smart political strategy, for it will highlight and possibly deepen the fissures within Liberal ranks between those who think the party has no other choice but to support an ETS – John Howard proposed an ETS, after all – and the climate change sceptics and deniers. Labor is hoping that a weak Liberal party will be even be even more fragile by the time that parliament resumes. And, remember, that trigger can be pulled at any time the government wants.
Labor backed off a snap election not, as Bryant’s spin would have it, because they hoped to capitalise on Liberal Party “fissures” but because opposition to ETS had given sudden momentum to the Liberals under its new climate sceptic leader.
Undaunted, and still with his finger firmly on the political pulse, Bryant began 2010 with a list of predictions, top of which was this:
1 – The election: If history is our guide, Kevin Rudd will win this year’s federal election. After all, not since the great depression has an incumbent government been turfed out after just one term in office. Ever since he became leader of the Labor Party in December 2006, Kevin Rudd has enjoyed an unbroken run of high approval ratings, and it will surely take some unforeseen, game-changing event or scandal to put his government in jeopardy.
A month later Nick, along with the rest of the Rudd-supporting media, was in shock:
For this week the biggest, and most surprising, political headline came from a fresh opinion poll which showed the opposition coalition had pulled ahead of Labor for the first time in three years…The prevailing wisdom has always been that Kevin Rudd would win what is already being dubbed the climate change election – and win it handsomely. But in the month or so since Copenhagen, the prime minister has been largely silent on the question of climate change, and the opposition has filled the vacuum.
No worries though:
While there appears to have been a shift in the politics, there is by no means a sea change.
By June, following a succession of political missteps from Rudd and his party, often relating to green policies (fatalities from a mismanaged insulation project, dithering over further ETS legislation, a high profile battle with Australia’s successful mining sector over a proposed super-tax) polling showed that the Mad Monk had become more popular than the PM. Shortly afterwards the Labor Party toppled its leader.
In December 2009 Bryant had suggested (somewhat optimistically?) that the new Liberal leadership’s opposition to climate legislation could lead to the party’s fracture and demise; eight months later it was Labor that polled lower in a federal election than any governing party since the war.
Perhaps Bryant should get out a bit more and meet a wider cross-section of the great Australian public. Alternatively, he could try a change of career: Nick Bryant and the Prevailing Wisdom is quite a good name for a Prog Rock covers band.