Contrary to the impression he too often gives, Kevin Rudd is not simply another tawdry politician focused solely on the 24 hour news cycle. He’s also genuinely keen to bring about long term change. It’s becoming increasingly clear, however, that he will struggle to achieve his policy goals if he keeps being derailed by his addiction to trying to dominate the news cycle.
NSW Labor’s right wing faction has produced a long succession of state ministers and staff who boast about their cleverness at media management. Instead of supplying genuine news stories about worthwhile initiatives, however, they end up spending most of their time reacting to bad news created by their spectacular incompetence at governing.
Some of these counter-productive practices have infected sections of the Rudd Government in Canberra, including Rudd himself. Other products of the NSW ruling machine, such as Belinda Neal, have also turned up in federal Parliament. It would not have been surprising if Rudd had been the one to need “anger management” counselling before he interrupted a packed schedule in Tokyo on Wednesday to ring Neal about seeking professional help for alleged behavioural problems.
Last week provided a particularly unhappy example of how Rudd is too ready to grab a cheap headline at the cost of endangering his credibility on big issues such as global warming. After spending a couple of weeks bogged down in arguing with the Opposition leader, Brendan Nelson, over who could best make a minor cut to petrol prices, Rudd couldn’t help himself on the eve of his trip to Japan and Indonesia. He told a television interviewer he would use to the trip to get world leaders to “apply the blowtorch” to the Organisation of Petroleum Export Countries.
With Japan due to host a meeting of the “G 8 ” group of the world’s most powerful countries in July, Rudd promised to push the Japanese PM, Yasuo Fukuda, to get the visiting leaders to give OPEC a touch of the blowtorch. Tough talk about blowtorching opponents may be standard fare in Australian politics, but it not usually the best way to get oil producers to pump more oil. Moreover, OPEC only accounts for about 40 percent of world oil output and most of its members, apart from Saudi Arabia, are already producing at full stretch.
More pertinently, the G8 believes it would be more helpful if consuming nations cut their strong demand for oil, especially where usage is encouraged by low excises on petrol and continued support for “gas guzzling” cars and trucks. OPEC also noted that prices were being driven up by speculation in the futures markets. Moreover, the spike in prices which occurred just before Rudd announced his desire to take the blowtorch to OPEC had nothing to do with any immediate problems stemming from overheated demand, supply shortages or speculative behaviour. It was simply a nervous response in commodity markets to threats from an Israeli Cabinet minister to bomb Iran, the world’s fourth largest oil exporter.
The wide overseas coverage of Rudd’s blowtorch comment risked harming his international reputation and was mostly dismissed within Australia as an unconvincing attempt to be seen to “do something about petrol prices”. The bigger issue is why Rudd wants to give the impression he is trying to cut petrol prices, which would encourage more consumption, when his credibility on global warming requires petrol usage to fall.
Rudd has described global warming as the greatest moral, environmental and economic challenge confronting the nation. He wants everyone to believe that reducing greenhouse gas emissions is central to his policy agenda. So why has he spent a large slice of the past month looking like his most important policy imperative is to increase the consumption of petrol — a major source of greenhouse gas? One possible explanation is that part of his political psyche requires him to remain in permanent election campaign mode where he relentlessly aims to “win” every 24 hour news cycle.
But another part of his political persona focuses on making a policy difference. Some of ministers are trying to do so. The Health Minister, Nicola Roxon, last week announced changes to allow nurses and other medical professionals to do jobs currently monopolised by over-worked doctors. This was more than PR flim-flam. Despite opposition from many doctors, it is a substantive change which should result in better health services.
While Rudd sometimes seems more engrossed in the decision making process than actual policy content, he has laid down benchmarks against which he will be judged over time. There are bench marks to measure progress in the intervention in aboriginal settlements in the Northern Territory. Dozens of benchmarks have been established to gauge the success of the States and the Commonwealth in meeting numerous goals set out by the Council of Australian Governments.
Meanwhile, Rudd’s proposal to get the G8 to apply the blowtorch to OPEC met with little enthusiasm in Japan. All he said in a statement following his meeting with Fukuda on Thursday was that general issue of oil prices would be on the G8 agenda — something we already knew. There was no mention of his blowtorch initiative which delivered such cheap headlines only a week ago.
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