Understanding Tony Abbott
Are there two Tonys? Or are the incongruencies a question of tactics over strategy?
Are you finding it difficult to understand Tony Abbott, Australia’s alternative Prime Minister?
I have been. Certainly, if seen through the opaque mirror of the media, he appears to be a bundle of contradictions.
He is a conviction politician who seems to change his position on issues as often as he is photographed wearing a skimpy swimming costume. He is a conservative man who likes to take radical positions. He is an intelligent man who often appears to be aiming for the lowest intellectual denominator. He is a caring man who sometimes seems uncaring and callous. He is a spiritual man who supports policies that are generally materialistic and ethically hollow. And the list could go on.
Actually, I have met Mr Abbott and even shared a dinner conversation with him. I found him to be intelligent, polite, a good listener, a thoughtful person, a person with depth.
So, are there two Tony Abbotts? A public persona and a private man who share little except for the name? I think not. There is another reason why Tony Abbott is as he is and it is not duplicitousness.Here is my hypothesis.
I think Tony Abbott is a supreme tactician and a very poor strategist.
What is the difference, you ask.
As I see it, a strategist is someone who is driven by deeply held principles, has firm policy objectives in mind and is prepared to spend years – and sometimes to take great risks – to achieve those objectives. A strategist takes the long view and will accept a few setbacks on the way for the sake of achieving the vision, the light on the hill. Strategists are prepared to make enemies for the sake of achieving their vision.
Tacticians want everyone to be their friend and always strive to please, to soothe, to pander even to extreme points of view, because they want everyone to be their friend and they want to be everyone’s friend.
Gough Whitlam, was a strategist, as was Paul Keating and as were both Howard and Fraser. They took the long view and their language, as well as their actions, attests to that. Whitlam had his program, Fraser had discipline, Keating had vision and Howard made sure that people always knew where he stood – he had constancy.
Strategists sometimes come unstuck awfully quickly, because they are not always great tacticians. Sometimes circumstances take them by surprise and their adherence to a position based on deeply held values can render them rigid, inflexible, apt to be broken by changing winds.
Whitlam was broken by Fraser, as Fraser was caught with his pants down by Bob Hawke and Howard by Kevin 07. And Keating, well, Keating stuck to the vision to the end, blind to the fact that Howard and One Nation had outmanoeuvred him, stealing that large chunk of Labor voters who eventually became known as Howard’s battlers.
Then there are the tacticians – and they are much more numerous than the strategists. The tacticians prioritise the short term over the long term. They focus on responding to events, on meeting the expectations of interest groups, rather than on pursuing long term policy objectives. They are risk averse, not prepared to alienate any constituency and prone to changing positions as often as necessary to keep in step with the voters.
Kevin Rudd, despite initially taking on a strategic persona, turned out to be a tactician – and not a very good one at that. Going back in time, Billy McMahon was a tactician, a background plotter, and would have made a better eminence grise than a Prime Minister, as history demonstrated.
Kim Beazley was a strategist who tried to be a tactician and condemned himself to be the man in the middle, the man with no position, at the mercy of John Howard, who stuck to his guns and became the rock to which Australian politics was anchored for a decade.
Malcolm Turnbull is another tactician, as is Joe Hockey, and, as I said, so is Tony Abbott. They are all prepared to say or do anything to get into office – even assuming completely contradictory positions within the span of a few weeks. And they seem not to care that people notice that this is happening.
This is because they know that the electorate has a rather short memory and they also know that the quality of commentary in the Australian media is so poor that that most journalists do not seem to understand what leadership means.
If you go by media reporting, leadership has become followership. Journalists blame politicians for responding to focus groups, but they behave as one gigantic focus group, demanding that their utterances be treated seriously, however, shallow, ill-informed and ignorant of history, economics and human nature their commentary usually turns out to be. It is a sad world indeed, when shock jocks on the radio and paid political hack writers provide the backbone of political debate in this country.
And then there is Julia. I always thought she was a strategist, but she seems to have been led astray by the tacticians, who pollute the Labor Party as much as they have corrupted the Liberal Party. You know who I mean and you know who you are, should you be reading this. It remains to be seen whether she can return to her core or whether she will continue to be influenced to be something she is not. The early signs in 2011 are good, but we will see.
Of course, Julia Gillard would be more likely to be her true self if Tony Abbott were to use his undoubted intelligence, his spirituality, his communications skills and his passion to challenge the Prime Minister and her Government as they should be challenged, on the issues that matter, on the long term future of the country and its people. Then, both sides of politics could abandon the short-sighted focus on popularity the desire to be seen to be never wrong that is turning Parliament into one giant Sunrise Show; a facile, mildly amusing, deeply disappointing journey towards mediocrity.
For Australia to navigate the troublesome waters that await us, we need both the true Julia and the true Tony. Let’s hope we get them – soon.
Patrick Callioni is a former senior public servant, with the Queensland and Australian Governments, and is now the Senior Executive Advisor, Domestic and International Markets, with the Sustain Group www.sustaingroup.net. His books Compliance and Regulation in the Financial Services Industry & Waves of Change: Managing Global Trends in the Financial Services Industry are available at Amazon
sally.rose
February 25, 2011 at 2:46 am
Today’s announcement
Hi Patrick – I know that you wrote this piece a week before we published it on Open Forum and I’m wondering if you think today’s announcement that the government is planning to introduce a price on carbon has any influence on your opinion of Gilliard as a strategist or a tactician? Of course, I’ll also be interested to read what you make of Abbott’s response
John Kirk
February 25, 2011 at 9:32 pm
Strategy
Patrick,
I agree with you totally. Short term focus is the bane of our modern era, not only in politics but also in business. When people focus on rewards based on short term goals there is a lack of sustainable strategies that focus on the ulimately important issues. In government these issues are the running of the countries finances, infrastructure, and foreign polices (to oversimplify it, as there is obviously so much more) in business it is the long term profitability of the business rather than the bottom line or share price at the next quarterly report.
When government stops looking at the latest figures to come out be they unemployment, inflation, or the strength of the dollar and begins to look at what these reports might be in 5 years (yes that means looking at putting into place things that may go past the next election) or even dare I say 10 years, then we might have a more strategic and sustainable government getting the long term job done for Australia.
Regards
John Kirk
Ralph Evans
March 2, 2011 at 12:42 am
Understanding Tony Abbott
Dear Patrick,
Abbott seems simple to me. He is ultra-ambitious. He is not too strong on principle. And he knows he is an effective populist politician.
He is saying he will oppose the Government’s carbon tax, whatever form it takes, because he thinks he has a fair chance of generating a wave that will carry him to the top. He has raved about government debt when he has a master’s degree in economics and surely knows it is low by international or historic standards, because the dumb punters might back him and get him to the top. He has done it again with "stop the boats", when he knows the influx is not big in scale, that we have international obligations, but there is a rabble out there he can rouse.
This is not a comparative statement: the Government has faults, too. But I think this man is blindingly simple and very predictable.
olgachristine
March 2, 2011 at 2:03 am
understanding Tony Abbott
Thank you Patrick. This is one of the best understandings of contemporary Australian politics that I have read to date. There is much clarity in your approach.
Sadly the populist politician is the easy choice for many politicians. I do wonder if it is more prevalent among conservative politicians? George W Bush always comes to mind as the classic populist conservative politician of this generation. While Tony Abbott is clearly a lot smarter than Bush if we were to use something akin to IQ as a measure, and demonstrated by academic performance, Abbott seems to prefer to dumb down his role for general consumption regardless of what he might be capable of.