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Legislative Council - Fifty-First Parliament, Second Session (51-2)
2007-10-17 Daily Xml
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LIBERAL PARTY FEDERAL LEADERSHIP

The Hon. J.M. GAZZOLA (15:30): The Prime Minister has declared that leadership is at the heart of this election and that, love him or loathe him, an objective test of his government's 11 year tenure is to evaluate his government's character, right and capacity to lead again by what he terms 'right leadership'. There are, though, a number of meanings of leadership. A narrow meaning defines leadership as the ability to lead and the guidance of a leader. We know that throughout history there have been many leaders who have fulfilled these requirements but who have come up short.

A broader definition of leadership is required, as suggested by the panic generated within the Liberal Coalition by a confidential leaked report of Coalition consultants Crosby Texter, if the Prime Minister is claiming to be the embodiment of, and natural heir to, leadership. I will refer to this later. Prime ministerial leadership involves more than just ability, competence and authority. It also involves honesty, the recognition of fair play as fundamental to the rights of the battlers and those who do not have a voice—it is called equity—and a vision that embraces and does not divide a country. To surrender to political opportunism and cunning is not leadership: it is arrogance and pretence to leadership.

This opinion comes not only from outside the Liberal Coalition ranks; it is in the very heart of their party. Look at the Crosby Texter conclusions on the foundation of Coalition right leadership aspirations. There is, as pointed out in the media, significant disillusionment within the Liberals on the issues of broken promises and dishonesty. If opposition members delude themselves with the notion of misguided public perceptions, then who do they have to blame? Some 70 per cent of the Coalition did not support the Prime Minister to lead the party at the election. On any definition of leadership, this is a fail. But let us go outside internal polling and look at some of the policy litmus tests of leadership: the unanswered questions on the callous children overboard fiction; the Iraq wheat scandal, with Australian soldiers gallantly defending an unsanctioned war; the Prime Minister's recent Damascus conversion on climate change; the belated attempts to rescue the Murray-Darling Basin; his sudden realisation of the plight of indigenous people; and the so-called education debate; and his government's arrogant and disregarding use of Senate power.

The public are not green and they are not cabbages. The trend in the polls has been consistent; as they have seen through the sham they have stopped listening to the cant and the dishonesty. The warm glow that the Coalition expected on tax relief announcements is already dissipating. We see another splurge on buying votes through dubious spending on economic programs by the Coalition over a generation that has wasted a chance for genuine tax and economic reform. It has had 10 years to institute real reform on tax and tax dependent social security payments, and now it appears to act. Is this right leadership? This is the stuff of panic, while the public sweats on a possible fifth increase in interest rates.

Let us not forget the masterpiece of industrial relations reform: the jewel in the crown of leadership. The legislation is practically unwieldy, while the administration of the fairness test sees, according to a report in the Financial Review, a backlog of about 123,000 cases awaiting adjudication. When the HR Nicholls society starts complaining, calling the WorkChoices and the fairness test 'nonsense' and 'nonsense on stilts, 'the results of rushed and premature legislation', 'guillotined through the Senate' and 'a mess for employers and employees', are we really asked to believe the Coalition claims of right leadership? These facts, I contend, are the basis for public judgment on the performance of the Coalition on election day, not the fictions of a desperate Prime Minister clinging to power and the past.

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