THE latest Newspoll suggests voters are sending Kevin Rudd a clear signal - we liked you more when you were John Howard-lite in 2007. Back then, the Labor leader did a good job of convincing Australians he too was an economic conservative, but that Mr Howard had stopped listening to the electorate. Today it is the Prime Minister who has developed a tin ear and is missing the cues.
Let us be clear. The government remains in a very strong position with two-party-preferred vote of 52-48 and can be expected to decisively win the next election. But the past five Newspolls, dating back to January 15-17, show Mr Rudd is not cutting through with voters. A populist Opposition Leader has taken the shine off the Prime Minister's ratings, giving heart to the Coalition for the next poll.
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Mr Rudd has no one to blame but himself. He has been missing in action for months when it comes to reading the mood in the electorate. The political intuition that served the "boy from Nambour" so well in 2007 appears to have deserted him. Australians gave Mr Rudd high marks for acting quickly on the global financial crisis last year, but the fallout from the insulation and school building programs funded by the stimulus risk undermining that support. The Prime Minister failed to recognise the warning signs and focused instead on issues, such as the G20 and the multilateral architecture for the Asian region, which do not resonate with voters focused on jobs, health and schools. While he was pouring billions into stimulating the economy, Australians indulged Mr Rudd's penchant for writing essays on social-democracy. It's a different matter now they see the price to be paid through debt and deficit levels.
Voters recognise a level of spin on all sides, but they appear more engaged by Tony Abbott offering clear-cut views on everything from homosexuality to Indonesia than by a Prime Minister who turns out to be less of a Queensland bloke or Gen Y Twitterer and more of a bureaucrat.
Mr Abbott's pitch, beyond his base, is to a cohort of voters whom Labor secured in 2007, many of them the so-called "Howard battlers", who in turn emerged from the Hansonites of the late 1990s. This group of Australians can relate well to a straight-talking Opposition Leader prepared to shoot from the hip and take the consequences if things go wrong. Mr Abbott has a keen sense of the anti-big government, anti-elite thinking that runs through Australian society. It was John Howard who at the 1996 election argued that he would govern "for all of us", subtly exploiting the suspicion of Paul Keating's interest in Indonesia, Aborigines and French clocks.
Mr Abbott is already dogwhistling on political correctness. His weekend claim that "welcome to country"ceremonies were often just "tokenism" was less about the ritual and more about reminding Australians that his interest in indigenous affairs does not make him a soft touch on black Australia or white guilt.
It is an appeal, however subliminal, to the million or so Australians who voted for Pauline Hanson's One Nation party at the 1998 federal election, many of whom were won back by Mr Howard at the next two polls. By 2007, Mr Rudd's appeal to "working families", bolstered by a $30 million ACTU campaign against Work Choices, convinced many of those "Howard battlers" that Labor offered more security for their jobs or the jobs of their children or grandchildren.
Faced with a social conservative in Mr Abbott, the Prime Minister must resist the temptation to move further to the Left and get back in touch with who he really is - a right-wing politician who hooked up with the Labor Left in Victoria in order to gain the leadership. He needs to build bridges back to the the Australian Workers Union in Queensland and sections of the Right that backed Kim Beazley. In short, Mr Rudd should remember Australians elected him in 2007 to be a right-wing Labor Prime Minister. This is the only hope he has of surviving the challenge to his leadership that could come his way after the election, unless he wins in a landslide.
His dalliances with intervention and protectionism must be put aside as the damaging compromises they are. Mr Rudd must know that flirting with the Left is one thing, but his salvation does not lie there. The Left will gravitate instead to his powerful rival, Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard, already openly touted as the next leader.
At the policy level, Labor faces challenges over insulation; the loss of public faith in the emissions trading scheme; and the increasing tensions that will emerge over asylum-seekers. Mr Rudd is correct to address the big-ticket item of hospital reform but it is unlikely to be a make or break issue for either side at the election.
Instead, the problems over insulation are annoying the self-employed tradies and unskilled workers whose livelihoods are threatened as a result of the collapse of the government's program. Insulation also plays into the volatile atmosphere around climate change, where Labor has virtually lost its advantage. Newspoll last month showed the Coalition rates 30 to Labor's 35 in terms of who would best manage the issue.
This week, Mr Abbott switched from opposing to dealing with the government on welfare, student allowances and parental leave, suggesting he has picked the public mood on these issues. The Prime Minister needs to do the same.
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