At the risk of being unpopular, I think Tony Abbott might be a genius. Not a Nobel Prize winning scientist type genius, more like a chess champion that lulls you into a sense that he has no strong game plan only to win at the end type genius.
I first thought it when he held a press conference for the then ‘candidate for Lindsay’, Fiona Scott (for details see http://ab.co/1DmRpxV) which, although controversial to say the least, undoubtedly got her across the line by 4.11%. Recently, I think he’s at it again.
The Liberals ran the 2013 election on the basis that there was “an economic crisis”. At the time there probably wasn’t but in the last 18 months, we’ve seen hundreds of hours of TV footage of Labour Ministers, Independents and left wing media stating over and over again “there is no economic crisis!”. Given that the next election will be run on the dire state of the budget, I’m sure that footage will be rolled out across all media by a Liberal party campaign of “Labour doesn’t care”. Perhaps voters will put the comments in context but more likely they won’t. Bishop to C4
Next, the Liberals released a first up budget full of cuts to spending, cuts to the elderly, cuts to education, cuts to state sponsored media even a tax on the sick. Two very predictable outcomes occurred. Firstly, Labour blocked much of it in the Senate. Secondly, the people started to panic. People understand that the budget must be balanced, and the first budget brought home the terror of a solution based solely on cuts to spending. Knight to Rook 4
So now there is a change in the air. The people are talking, just whispers at first but slowly the whispers are becoming a dialogue and the topic is tax reform. And in a race run on tax reform, the Liberal Party would become an unbackable favourite. The ALP’s Henry Tax Review was a disaster with the hugely unpopular and flawed Mining Tax being the major outcome. In fact, the ALP went to 2013 election without a single tax policy at all. Queen to H5, check
So, there it is. Abbott’s manoeuvre has delivered a 2015/16 election during which he will serve the voter a main course of economic and tax reform with a side order of you can’t trust the ALP. And I personally think I will find it a very convincing argument. Checkmate
Contributed by
Michael Cooper
Director, Optima Audit
April 2015
