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When you have nothing, behave like an Opposition

March 21, 2012

Article Categories: Andrew's Blog, Key Issues

Governments typically try and ignore the Opposition; pretend they don’t exist, unless they really have to.

Yet what we are seeing from the Gillard government is just an obsession with the Coalition and what it says and does. It’s truly bizarre.

As economist Judith Sloan pondered: is it really a good idea always to be mentioning the competition – day in, day out? If I am trying to market Palmolive soap, should I be spending all my time slagging off Lux?

If you have a look at the press releases issued so far this year on Penny Wong’s ministerial web site all you see are wall to wall attacks on Tony Abbott, Joe Hockey and me. Of the 26 press releases 19 of them or 73 per cent were slagging off at the Opposition.

It was just as bad throughout last year. This doesn’t include the shonky little brochure Wong dropped out containing some work of fiction that she tried to pass off as a financial analysis of some of our policies.

She wouldn’t have been allowed to add this tripe to her ministerial web site because it was printed and authorised by George Wright, the National Secretary of the Labor Party.

If you study the red front cover they had the audacity to try and pass it off as an official government document complete with the stars of the Southern Cross.

In the style of government budget papers the cover even trumpets: ‘Information for Honourable Members’. The truth is it was produced by dishonourable Labor Party hacks!

Labor has obviously adopted the desperate strategy of behaving like an Opposition, because they have nothing positive to run on. The truth is they know their time in office has been an unmitigated disaster so they have nothing of currency to sell to the electorate.

They have no positive story to tell, no sense of where they are taking the country and their track record is one of botched programs, record debt and deficit, unprecedented levels of waste, lies, deceit and internal chaos.

Julia Gillard’s “there will be no carbon tax under a government I lead” has come to define Labor as has their assassination of Kevin Rudd.

In the case of Penny Wong, she appears obsessed with trying to score trivial political points and she has made the ‘relentless negativity’ that Labor accuses Tony Abbott of an art form.

It has become standard Labor practice – attack the man when you can’t defend the issue.

At a time when there is a crisis of confidence and people are looking for some direction and leadership we have a dysfunctional government locked in Opposition mode.

Comments

# Anonymous

Wednesday, March 21, 2012 11:45 AM

http://www.monthlyquadrantreview.com/?p=622

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