One-term Tony is so desperate he thinks telling the truth might be worth a try.
Shaken Abbott has uphill battle to win back voters' trust Date December 1, 2014 - 8:16PM
Mark Kenny
Chief political correspondent
It is a sad reflection on our politics and governments that it takes some pretty hostile circumstances to get leaders to come clean, admit fault, and, yes, even to tell the truth. Desperate times call for desperate measures.
Self evidently, that was the calculation Tony Abbott and his coterie weighed up before breaking the glass and pulling the tell-all press conference lever on the first morning of the last parliamentary week.
But after a week from hell headlined by the ABC funding fudge where the PM had been skewered on his own words, and bookended by the voters' cool dispatch of a first-term coalition government in Victoria – at least partly on federal grievances – the emergency was undeniable.
Abbott's presentation was typically direct and yet typically incomplete also. Eyeballing certain columnists, he said he'd read their scathing assessments over the weekend and would meet those critiques head on. He was less expansive on the self-inflicted ASC-canoe error by his beleaguered Defence Minister and his self-inflicted "barnacle debacle".
However, the real issue was not the commentary, anyway, but the subject of it: to wit, his government's manifold failures against his own clear criteria.
Notably, restoring trust. Abbott's justification for breaking promises? For saying one thing before the election and doing another after? Circumstances have changed.
Ordinarily this would be reasonable enough. The terms of trade have gone south and the budget is indeed being hit to leg with a cyclical downturn compounded by a structural revenue shortfall. Both sides of politics own that one to some extent.
But Abbott is the last person the Labor opposition will be inclined to grant such leeway.
Australia's most percussively negative opposition leader, dubbed "Dr No" for his relentless pursuit of the former government, Abbott has banked zero credits in the pluralism and goodwill account of national politics.
And it gets sharper still because the rampaging opposition leader specifically ruled out using changed budget circumstances to justify breaking promises.
Now he wants precisely that room.
When Julia Gillard's government faced serious revenue write-downs, Abbott offered no comfort, no understanding.
Now he characterises an opposition pursuing a similar approach as "wreckers".
Voters see through it.They also see through Abbott's catch-all justification for not keeping other promises – namely that his motherhood pledge had been to fix the budget.
http://www.theage.com.au/federal-politics/political-opinion/shaken-abbott-has-uphill-battle-to-win-back-voters-trust-20141201-11xxir.html
