Are Gillard’s days numbered?
By Pawan Luthra
There will be some very worried figures at the Labor Party headquarters with the constant low polling being achieved by both the party and the personal approval rating of its leader Julia Gillard. A recent poll showed the two-party preferred vote being 59 percent for the Coalition and 41 percent for Labor. This would be disastrous for the ALP as they would be annihilated at the election with these numbers. Putting this into context, should this polling result be repeated at a general election, Tony Abbott’s Coalition will be holding 112 seats, Labor 35 and Independents three. The worry factor is that the last three polls all seem to be hovering around the same mark and in fact, the Labor position is getting worse.
There is a school of thought that come the carbon tax, the Gillard government will have something to fight for. Convincing people that paying more tax is good for them in order to win their support, is a dangerous strategy. Of course, this tax will have its compensation package but then to convince the inner city believers that this compensation package justifies switching off “bad behaviour” will be another war which the Gillard government will have to fight. Nature does not like vacuum and since Julia Gillard announced the carbon tax with no details, Tony Abbot has worked hard to fill that gap with his own spin on the carbon tax. And he has been very successful at it with hardly any debate from the government. This lack of debate may be more deep rooted in the fact that it is widely rumoured that both Prime Minister Gillard and Treasurer Swan were part of the former PM Rudd’s kitchen cabinet which opposed imposition of the carbon tax. Now that they’ve had to move in this area due to their alliance with the Greens, they can mouth the words, yet do not have their heart in this fight.
Other than the carbon tax, Julia Gillard’s Malaysia solution for the asylum seekers is still to have any clarity around it; the watered down version of the mining tax is angering different members of the business community; there is much uncertainty about the export of live cattle to Indonesia, and the excursion in changes to the pokies in Australian clubs has not gone down well. All these seem to be the hallmarks of a CEO who has grand plans yet poor execution. The Indian students who suffered under the draconian changes to the education policies under Gillard’s term as education minister, will attest to the lack of consultation which the policy makers had with them. The changes to their visa requirements and to the education policies transformed the lives of tens of thousands of these students without trying to find a more practical solution which could have protected some of the students already in the system. Gillard’s handling of the student issue was appalling and was but a precursor of her ability to find practical solutions under pressure.
As evidenced by lack of clarity on the issues as above, she has not been able to find workable solutions. One suspects that those in the ALP headquarters are watching the situation closely. One suspects also that they have a timeline in mind, perhaps with the goal being to be in government after the 2014 elections, albeit with a different leader. This December would be an interesting time in Canberra. The details and public perceptions of the carbon tax would have been polled a few times by then: if the results do not improve, then pressure will be on Gillard to resign and allow another of her colleagues to take over (Bill Shorten is a likely candidate) and work towards improving the party position in the following 20 months before the elections.
Perhaps Mahindra Singh Dhoni, as the captain of the visiting Indian cricket team, will not be shaking hands with Julia Gillard before the start of the cricket match with the Prime Ministers’ eleven in January 2012.
