THREE PRIME MINISTERS (Fin Review Feb 11)

Australia now effectively has three Prime Ministers; the populist, the pragmatist and the politician. All three were hard at work last week, beavering away in front of the TV cameras as they sought to lead the nation in their three unique ways. One wants to be loved, one wants to be listened to, and one craves respect and legitimacy.

In some ways, we should be grateful. Who says you only need one leader? Plenty of European countries have run on troikas, including the USSR briefly after Stalin croaked and it didn’t do the Russians any harm (comparatively), so why should it bother us?

Our populist leader – the one recognized as Australia’s PM by everyone overseas - returned to his favorite haunt this week, a schoolyard on the Gold Coast hinterland where, surrounded by adoring Aryan-looking sun-bleached Aussie school kids in peaked hats and bright tee shirts, he was able to show off his brilliant PR and diplomatic skills. Sounding nicer and more reasonable than any human being should ever have to, Kevin slid the knife ever so gently out of his own back, and with the greatest of aplomb, popped it squarely back where it belongs - between the shoulder blades of Simon Crean. "Can I just say this..?" began Mr Ever-so-humble-and-exceedingly-reasonable, and we knew we were in for a doozy. He didn't disappoint. As the kiddies gazed up at him, with expressions normally reserved for a Bono, a Federer or a Justin Bieber, Kevin neatly countered Crean’s ambush attack and turned his graceless criticism that he was "a prima donna" and "not a team player" abruptly on it's head: "I am proud to be a member of this ministerial team, which is very strong, very dedicated, very hard-working and in which Simon himself plays a very positive role,'' said the foreign minister; humility, sincerity and Prime Ministerial magnanimity oozing out of every pore. The kiddies, the journalists and the Queensland hinterland swooned as one.

Meanwhile, in the nation's capitol, suitably attired in a smart suit and the same tie he wore to the Lobby punch up on Australia Day, our pragmatic leader – the one who has dictated the government’s agenda this year and says what most people outside the beltway think - set out to prove to a sceptical audience of hardened journos that he’s more than just a fluro vest and a pair of tight fitting togs. Having spent most of the year telling the government what not to do and how not to do it, it was time for a bit of overdue 'positivity.' Telling it like it is came easy to Abbott, but utterly confounded the press gallery, so conditioned as they are to a daily diet of deception and spin. Pragmatically - and honestly - Abbott pointed out that there wasn't a great deal any Prime Minister can readily commit to until the budget is back in strong surplus. In other words, in a world that is being brought to it's knees by mountains of government-generated debt, wouldn't it be a smart idea to sit tight and hold off on the overblown spending commitments, grandiose projects and novelty taxes that risk tipping our own perilously-poised economy over the edge? Explaining his aspirations, principles and priorities - practical measures he intends to see achieved on dental health, aboriginal welfare, disability care and so on - clearly left the nation's top journalists confounded and more than a little frustrated. They'd far rather have a 'core promise' to jot down in the cynical hope that they can string him up with it further down the track.

And finally, way down south, our nuts and bolts political leader – the one who gets to have all the fun doing backroom deals and backflips - went to work, mouthing carefully scripted words to sell us something nobody asked for and almost certainly nobody will ever see: her new economy. Taken straight out of the mouths of focus group groupies, the "new economy" is a soundbite phrase carefully selected by the same mob who gave us "we are us" and "moving forward." it sounds thrilling and enticing but on closer inspection is devoid of meaning. Attempting to steal credit from Howard and Costello for the rivers of gold that Labor found sloshing around in the vaults under Parliament house and promptly spent, at best the "new economy" is jargon for a robust mining boom being pilfered by a punitive couple of wealth redistribution measures; one a straight out envy tax, the other disingenuously presented as "saving the planet."

All three speeches received the appropriate media coverage and varying degrees of acclaim. We are blessed to have three such gifted Prime Ministers. At some point, however, we might actually have to choose between them.        

TIME FOR A U-TURN ON THE ROAD TO HELL

Good intentions may have been behind it, but a disastrous left-wing experiment from the seventies has blighted untold innocent lives.

At the height of the Cold War, in the early seventies, a sinister plot was hatched at the highest levels of the Australian government. Codenamed ‘Witchcraft’, the idea was to submit a group of Australians, against their will, to a collectivist Marxist experiment designed to deprive them of their personal freedom, their will to achieve, their economic independence and their right to full participation in our capitalist economy.

The results were chilling. Within a short time, severe depression, alcoholism, chronic drug dependency, pedophilia and pornography were rife. Drip-fed by the State, the victims developed very few skills, ambitions or hopes of their own. In scenes of deprivation normally only found in isolated corners of the Soviet Union, malnourished children, removed from access to proper health care or education, lived in squalor and disease while their ‘parents’ – often co-habiting in large polygamous groups – succumbed to hedonistic nihilism.

Yet rather than exposing the horror and putting a stop to this grotesque attempt at human engineering and cultural manipulation, all subsequent Australian governments have endorsed and continued this nightmarish socialist experiment on innocent lives. To this day, those subjected to the worst excesses of this systemic abuse lead desperate lives devoid of meaning or the opportunity for personal fulfillment, existing day by day solely on the promise of the next ‘fix’ of alcohol, drugs, pornography or all three.

OK, I made up the bit about it being codenamed ‘Witchcraft.” But the rest is pretty accurate.

The red-faced justification for the disastrous policies of Aboriginal “welfare” initiated by well-meaning public servant and Keynesian economist H. C. ‘Nugget’ Coombs is that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. ‘Nugget’, who among his numerous other achievements established the Australian National University and government support for “the Yarts” and the Australian film industry, didn’t set out – presumably - to destroy individual self-esteem and ambition; they were just two of the (predictable) side-effects that his ideas led to. Bizarrely, Coombs even went so far as to praise Aboriginal teenage boys who “roam freely in small anarchistic gangs, acquiring mundane knowledge and skills by observation and imitation with little formal discipline or instruction'. The birth of gang culture in urban Australia, brought to you by the ex-Governor of the Reserve Bank.

Forming his ideas during the Depression and refining them at the London School of Economics under the guidance of Harold Laski, one of the most influential Marxists of the 20th century, ‘Nugget’ was responsible for ending – and demonizing – the previous policy of “assimilation.” Problematic but hugely successful when compared to anything that has gone since, “assimilation” was the (now) politically incorrect idea that Aborigines could be encouraged to get a good education that hopefully led to some kind of a job, that would in turn lead to full participation in mainstream society and eventually the opportunity to purchase property. That this efficacious approach to improving the lot of all other Australians was deemed either not good enough (or possibly too good) for raising the living standards of indigenous Australians was, of course, typical of the inverted racist thinking that typifies so many leftist policies.

So instead, under Whitlam and Coombs, “assimilation” was scrapped and Aborigines – fresh from winning recognition, respect and their rightful place in Australian life at the 1967 referendum – soon found themselves being treated as a cross between quaint museum pieces and Huxleyan drones; denied the opportunity to determine their own lives whilst being left to the mercy of enterprise-sapping government hand-outs, politically-indoctrinated bureaucrats, corrupt tribal leaders and the demon grog. The road to hell, indeed.

Billions of dollars have been wasted paving it, but the pot-holes remain unfilled. From the current government the best we’ve had is an ideologically-inspired, hand-wringing “sorry” and, er, that’s about it.

Which brings us to Noel Pearson, Warren Mundine, Tony Abbott and a cinema commercial for the mining industry.

Mundine was National President of the Australian Labor Party and is a proud member of the Bundjalung people. “My personal opinion is that Nugget Coombs was wrong, and the statistics and the way Aboriginal people live today prove that,” he told Paul Comrie-Thomson on Radio National’s Counterpoint. (Former Keating minister Gary Johns was less diplomatic – labeling Coombs as “off the planet.”)

Pearson, indigenous founder of the Cape York Institute for Policy and Leadership, is even more damning: “A rule of thumb in relation to most of the programs and policies that pose as progressive thinking in indigenous affairs, is that if we did the opposite we would have a chance of making progress.” He goes on: “Our descent into passive welfare dependency has taken a decisive toll on our people, and the social problems which it has precipitated in our families and communities have had a cancerous effect on our relationships and values.”

Tony Abbott has promised that if elected he “will spend at least a week every year in a remote indigenous community because if these places are good enough for Australians to live in they should be good enough for a Prime Minister and senior officials to stay in."

Spot on, but let’s hope he does more than just visit. An Abbott government should rebuild Aboriginal policy from the ground up, override the Coombs/Greens anti-mining agenda and grab the golden chance that the resources boom offers to dramatically improve the lives, education, job opportunities and prosperity of the next generation of indigenous Australians. Rather than just scrapping the mining tax, ramp up incentives to provide community training and employment. Noel Pearson, Warren Mundine and other role models should be used to inspire pride in Aboriginal achievement through a campaign that promotes – yes, let’s not beat about the bush – contemporary assimilation. “A hand up, not a hand-out.”

Cinema goers are currently being treated to a lengthy commercial by the mining industry that tells the moving story of a young man who trained to be a chemical engineer, detailing his background, his education, and his Mum’s justifiably proud aspirations for his career.

The surprise is that he’s an Aborigine.

"WHERE'S TONY?" (Spectator leader Feb 3)

“Where’s Tony?” asked Julia Gillard, in what has been touted as her rising above politics and showing concern for her colleague in a fraught situation. But a cynic may well assume that Gillard was, in fact, merely following her script and ensuring that Abbott was in place to be photographed being booed and hissed at by Aboriginal protesters she knew to be agitated about his supposed call for them to “move on.” We shall never know. With the AFR deeming “no criminal act” had occurred, the matter will remain uninvestigated by the authorities. But by any reading of the situation, an incitement to commit what became a violent act was knowingly instigated from within the Prime Minister’s office. Andrew Wilkie, emasculated by one ‘rat’ and now smelling another, has gone so far as to threaten to support a no-confidence motion in retaliation to this “appalling” act.

Not once in the Hawke, Keating and Howard decades was the office of Prime Minister so debased in such a shabby attempt to smear an opponent. The use of the national day, in conjunction with an highly emotive issue such as indigenous welfare, for the purposes of a negative photo opportunity sums up everything that is grotesque about Labor’s obsessive addiction to spin and PR.

Put aside for the moment who said what to whom and when. The obsessive anti-Abbott culture that could spawn such an event is clearly rampant within the government and their ABC and union acolytes (witness Kim Sattler’s comments, hastily removed from facebook, or ABC Radio’s role in lighting the fuse) and it is this insidious culture – Hollowmen meets The Thick Of It – that is to blame.

Aboriginal activists have long labeled January 26 as Australia’s Day of Shame. For once, for all the wrong reasons, they are right.

LIGHT AT THE END OF THE TUNNEL (Spectator leader Feb 3)

Tony Abbott will be the next authentic leader of Australia, no matter what happens between Gillard and Rudd, nor whatever shenanigans the not-quite-so-faceless men of Labor attempt to trick us with over the next twelve months. By authentic, we mean many things. In all likelihood, Abbott’s government will be able to claim an authentic mandate to implement its policies, in stark contrast to the existing faux-legitimacy of a cobbled-together coalition built on broken promises and dodgy backroom deals.

The Abbott government will also be authentic in its policy prescriptions. The constant flip-flopping and obfuscation that has come to epitomize the ‘Gillarudd’ government will mercifully be consigned to the past. Forgotten in all the endless political games, the abandonment of ill-considered projects (let’s not bore ourselves by running through them all again), the trashing of commitments, the swapping of leadership roles and the giddying spinning of the truth is a simple matter of fact: this is not how responsible governments should behave.

Tony Abbott himself will be authentic. Over two decades in public life he has stayed consistent to his convictions and core principles, and been frank about his Catholic beliefs. There has been no need to spray-paint a “real” Tony onto a battered up old one. No need to present himself in terms that don’t ring true, or reek of hypocrisy and opportunism. To an extent, the rough edges have been smoothed out, and the language toned down, but none of this is different to how a Bob Hawke or a John Howard were spruced up by the image-makers. At heart, we all know what drives him and what he will fight for. Perhaps that is why his enemies fear him so much.

Compare Rudd in opposition to Abbott in the same role. Rudd busied himself with his silly stack of notes and weird silences on the floor of parliament, falsely painting himself as Howard-lite. He was the great moralist who believed in climate change, yet blinked at the first hurdle. He was eager to “stop the boats” but capitulated entirely on border control. He was the “economic conservative” who went on to denounce capitalism. Gimmick after gimmick, falsehood after falsehood. Abbott, on the other hand, has just got on with the job: aggressively opposing policies and highlighting their flaws. As an opposition leader, he is the real deal.

Australians are crying out for an authentic leader; one who will stand by their commitments and provide a stable, prosperous and competent political and economic environment for the rest of the decade, devoid of the dangerous hysteria and doomsday cultism of the Greens and the relentless ‘whatever-it-takes’ connivances of Labor. At his National Press Club speech, Abbott finally showed he holds such a vision. He can inspire.

In this issue, we have asked prominent commentators to share with us their thoughts on how Tony Abbott can “nail it” over the next twelve months - as he steps into his almost certain role as the next authentic leader of our nation.

ON THE NOSE IN DOWNTOWN CANBERRA (Fin Review Jan 12)

New arrivals to parliament need to be better taught how to fit in, particularly as regards such issues as personal hygiene and joining the queue, according to Liberal backbencher Teresa Gambaro.

"Some members of the government have a distinct whiff about them, which, to say the least, is not all that pleasant. Take the member for Dobell, for instance. He hasn't been around long enough to learn any common courtesy. He should have left his dirty laundry in the smoky backrooms and bordellos of the HSU rather than dragging it in here to stink the place out."

Ms Gambaro's remarks have caused a storm of outrage within the corridors beneath Capital Hill. Recently promoted Speaker-of-the-House Peter Slipper was one who immediately took umbrage at her insinuation that he had queue-hopped. "I waited very patiently for months on end until such time as Harry Jenkins was finally knifed in the back and bundled onto the back benches. Then of course I was able to hop straight in, roll up my sleeves and get to work," he said, speaking from his new yacht in the Whitsundays. "As for fitting in with my co-workers, I feel perfectly at home sitting down for a long lunch with my new Labor Party colleagues."

Minister for Climate Change and All Sorts of Other Stuff Greg Combet was equally contemptuous of her remarks. “It’s well known that I have been politely waiting in a queue for several years now, without once complaining or ever raising my voice, behind both Kevin and Julia. But I have no doubt that my turn is coming up very soon now.”

However, Ms Gambaro has found some support for her criticisms of personal hygiene from unlikely quarters. Former PM Kevin Rudd was quick to point out that although the Heiner affair had threatened to hang around him like a bad smell for a couple of years he was able to get rid of it by taking a few simple precautionary steps, such as denying any wrong-doing whatsoever and shredding anything that could be construed as an incriminating document. Picking some wax out of his ear and eating it, Rudd went on to say that he saw “nothing wrong at all” with his personal habits.

Elder statesman John Faulkner was quick to offer some timely advice. "Yes, indeed, there is a rather toxic odour wafting around the joint that we have to all face up to. It's not any one individual. Rather, it emanates from the rotting carcass that is today's Labor Party. We need to rebuild it from the ground up. That's the only way to get rid of the stench." Standing behind him with their noses pegged, both Bob Carr and Steve Bracks reminded reporters that the nasty pong had nothing to do with either of them.

Tony Abbott, himself no stranger to the post-workout anti-perspirant, was quick to defend his citizenship spokeswoman’s comments. "Um, ah, different people have different lifestyles, and, ah, um, come from very different cultures. In fact, ah, one of my co-workers, Malcolm, struggles to fit in at all but, um, for some reason we still tolerate having him around." Sitting all alone by himself in the canteen, Malcolm fretfully admitted that deep down he longed to return to his natural birthplace, the left side of the political divide, from whence he’d fled many years earlier. “I’ve had a sniff around but they won’t let me back in,” he lamented.

Speaking from their adjacent New England electorates, former loners and outsiders Rob Oakeshott and Tony Windsor were unapologetic. "We both found it very easy to fit in, once Julia made it clear we could have as many billions of dollars as we wanted. Nothing smelly about that whatsoever."

Sweating profusely, Chris Bowen was quick to seize on the comments as a personal affront. "The only reason I sweat so much is nothing whatsoever to do with deodorant or a lack thereof," he said, his red face glistening under the harsh light of the TV cameras. "It’s because I feel acutely embarrassed about what a disastrous job we've done." Standing stiffly behind him, Senator Conroy, a British immigrant, admitted that he still had problems adapting to some of the more outlandish Australian cultural norms. “Back in the old country we never bothered with such ridiculous rituals as a cost benefit analysis or a sound business model.”

But Green’s leader Bob Brown was unfazed by the controversy. "Everything around here smells pretty sweet to me. I get my own way on pretty much whatever I want and I only got 11% of the vote."

Julia Gillard was unavailable for comment, although rumours have it that some time in March she'll be taking a bath.      

TIME TO FLICK THE SWITCH

Imagine if consumers had loved Apple but disapproved of Steve Jobs. Liked Aussie Home Loans but disliked John Symonds. Flocked to Dick Smith Electronics, whilst shunning Dick Smith. Such is the conundrum facing Tony Abbott and the Liberals as they enter the new year.

Numerous commentators, and indeed some of his own team, aware of this dilemma, have been urging Tony Abbott to dramatically switch tactics, fretting that his “negative approach” could cost him the 2013 election. In doing so, they fail to appreciate the difference between selling values and selling a product. Or to put it another way, between “brand” and “retail.”

In the world of advertising, it is possible to be both positive and negative. To espouse higher order values whilst simultaneously savaging your opponents.

For better or worse, Tony Abbott now personifies the Liberal brand, in the same way that Steve Jobs became the embodiment of Apple, and Dick Smith, John Symonds and others became the embodiment of their own brands. Jobs lived and breathed his brand identity, right down to wearing black skivvies and jeans as a visual representation of the Apple narrative of stylish simplicity. Revered by many as visionary and enlightened, he still managed to stick the boot into Microsoft at every opportunity. Symonds – for whom I made several brand ads at the height of Aussie’s popularity – was equally indistinguishable from the brand he created; always speaking in that unique ‘bogan’ nasal twang, lending his every utterance an authenticity that the western suburbs adored.

Throughout the 90’s Symonds attacked the banks as mercilessly as Abbott does the government. That was his retail message, emphasized by the lower interest rates of his products. But the brand message was far more positive;

 “At Aussie, we’ll save you,” was his inspirational catchphrase. So popular was it that John found himself inundated by people genuinely believing he could rescue them from other problems in their lives – such as wonky marriages or leaky pipes. Equally, Apple’s market success was driven by Job’s inspiring promise to “think differently” and offer you “intuitive creativity” as much as by the relentless attacks on his opponents, as emphasized in the famous “I’m a Mac/I’m a PC” campaign.

Tony Abbott has proven himself great at trashing the rival brand. But that will never be enough. What, in a simple few words, is the higher order benefit that the Liberal Party actually stands for?

Now is not the time to switch strategies. It is time to build the brand.

Tony Abbott’s ubiquitous visual imagery - the hard-hat, safety vest, athleticism and so on - give a flavour of the brand that he now personifies, depicting the ethos of the no-nonsense, business-minded, anti-Green Aussie worker. Someone newly arrived to this country (by boat perhaps?) would read these semiotic clues and already identify the Abbott/Liberal brand as aggressive, hard-working, and extremely effective at eliminating pesky problems. A bit like ‘Raid’, actually. Powerful, yes. But is it a brand to fall in love with?

Not if the most recent Liberal Party ad is anything to go by. A missed opportunity, this messy retail ad fails to do the brand any favours whatsoever.

For those who haven’t seen it, this unimaginative piece of work features clips from “four years of Labor disasters” set to a bizarre and unexplained drum solo.

Basically a “Worst of” selection of classic Labor Party bloopers and blunders, the ad features Wayne Swan breaking a glass of water during a radio interview, Kevin Rudd looking flustered as he faces the faceless men, and Gillard rehashing that tired old refrain that we know so well about the likelihood of a carbon tax under the government she leads. Into the mix gets tossed a tedious loop of the “moving forward” sample.

Strategically, this was the wrong ad from the Liberals at the wrong time. It may be a hit with the die-hard fans, the ones with the Tony tattoo on their left buttock or the cupboard full of ‘JULIAR’ tee-shirts, but because it offers nothing new – no new tune to whistle along to, no new memorable phrase to sing – it does what all compilation packages do: it suggests your glory days are behind you.

For Abbott, this is precisely the worst message he could be putting out. At a time when Labor are successfully painting him as nothing but negative, this was the moment – as voters look forward to the holidays, relieved that a ghastly year is finally over – to tell a positive story of Liberal values.

In advertising, it’s “new news” that cuts through. Tapping into what consumers are just starting to think, and then articulating that idea in a compelling and original way, is the key to a successful ad campaign.

Highlighting the many obvious deficiencies and mistakes of the Rudd/Gillard team is stale news. Voters, like consumers, are easily bored; and pink batts and live animal export shenanigans no longer pack the punch they did at the time. To constantly remind voters of those stuff-ups is of course important from a political perspective, but from an effective advertising point of view it is irrelevant.

“Staying on message” doesn’t just mean pumping out the same tired riff again and again and again, like Deep Purple or Status Quo.

What the ad lacks is a single clear compelling insight. Instead, it jams together a whole hotchpotch of half-ideas. We get the “disaster” theme, some “rip-offs”, a “prices going through the roof” gag, a sinister hint at the Green’s role in government, the unanswered question “why did you lie to us?” and a rather flat “who’s gonna pay?” climax. Meanwhile, the drums pound away, as irritating and pointless as Mick Fleetwood’s eleven minute solos in the middle of a Mac concert.

The Kevin O’Lemon ad campaign, on the other hand, used a single-minded, very effective creative device that poked fun at the disappointment Rudd had become to many disillusioned voters. It was the right campaign, at the right time, with a lightness of touch and humourous tone of voice that not only made it a huge viral hit but articulated precisely what the public was beginning to feel about the former PM and his team. The new ad merely regurgitates without wit or insight what the public have already bought into.

Perhaps in the dying days of a knife-edge election campaign this sort of frenetic, tacky ad could be justified. But with the Opposition comfortably placed in the opinion polls, the carbon tax off the agenda, and Gillard – or at least Labor - likely to survive another two years, “remember the bad times” is a pointless advertising strategy. This was Abbott’s chance to offer an inspiring “reason-to-believe” in his brand, rather than just trashing the competition’s yet again. As every good marketer knows, negative advertising can be extremely effective in the short-term, but brand advertising is the ultimate long-term persuader.

Take the world of supermarkets, where two giant brands go head to head every day. Coles don’t merely rely on the big red hand telling us prices are down, they also repeatedly promise us “Quality food” and remind us they are the “shop where the Masterchefs shop.” The hard-hitting retail message is balanced by the higher-order brand message. Similarly, Abbott’s endless chanting of “Down, down, Labor is down!” – or words to that effect - needs a positive and inspirational brand message to complement it.

Tony Abbott has already seen off one Prime Minister, wounded another, and reduced a landslide-winning Labor government to a shaky coalition. From a marketing perspective, his near-annihilation of the competition in such a short time is nothing less than extraordinary. Coles or Woolies would give their big red hand or bright green glove for such a successful campaign.

Consumers need to see Abbott’s Raid-style attack strategy launched from the solid foundations of an aspirational brand identity. He needs to support “our prices will never be beaten” with “we’re the fresh food people.” This does not mean he has to prematurely reveal his own policies. It means he has to find fresh ways to articulate his brand’s values. Andrew Robb has nominated “living within our means, backing our nation's strengths, reversing the nanny state and restoring a culture of personal responsibility” as the pillars of Liberal “philosophy.” To which I would suggest adding entrepreneurialism, opportunity and a passionate belief in the power of the individual. These are all key brand values that need to be sold in an inspiring way, whilst still allowing the successful attacks on Labor policies to continue. The challenge now for Tony Abbott is to find a way to flog these abstract and often intangible brand values with as much zeal as he does his aggressive "retail" messages.

John Howard defined the modern Liberal brand, becoming the representative of the determined, lone battler struggling to look after his family and small business in the face of the elitist aspirations and irrelevant obsessions of the Keating Labor era. Howard articulated a great brand story. Tony Abbott must now do the same.

 http://www.nationaltimes.com.au/opinion/politics/time-to-throw-the-switch-20111230-1pffu.html