Sometimes, when its prey is too large to be consumed at once, a crocodile will wedge its victim against an underwater ledge. It then returns whenever hunger strikes to snap off another limb. This slow dismemberment is similar to the way the polls are dealing with Julia Gillard. We are well into death-roll territory. The grip on the victim is so tight we know she will never escape. The water swirls; the stench of death is in the air. It's not polite to linger.
There are, however, two surprises. The first is that Kevin Rudd still apparently refuses to accept that, in a party where just one resignation would consign it to electoral oblivion, he's not wanted back. Others will ensure that someone - anyone - other than he becomes the next prime minister. And the Government still hasn't recognised it's already a corpse. With the exception of locking in the carbon tax, Labor's done nothing, absolutely nothing, to circumscribe Tony Abbott's freedom of manoeuvre when he arrives at the door to The Lodge. Consumed by current political battles, Labor's forfeited its chance to shape the future.
Just look at the way it's thrown away the chance to mould the Defence Force. Normally the waters of Sydney Harbour sparkle in January's shimmering sunlight. This week sheets of rain greeted arrivals at the navy's Seapower conference. It was symptomatic of a broader mood hanging over the service. There's a sense of drift. Too many questions linger over the future. The latest Defence white paper handed a - or perhaps that should be the - critical role in deterring an attacker to the new submarine. Possessing enough range to operate in the South China Sea and armed with enough missiles to threaten any potential aggressor, the submarine was to be the foundation of our strategy. The other, critical, assumption behind the reasoning was that it would be built here. It would keep the South Australian industrial sector alive and provide technical and business spin-offs.
Yet this week Minister Stephen Smith announced this lethargic Government will take another 18 months of study before it finally decides if the new boats should be made here or a cheaper version purchased overseas. It's the decision you make when you aren't prepared to make a decision.
The parameters have already been clearly established. The question is clear: make the new subs here and wear the extra cost, or buy a cheaper, less appropriate vessel from Europe. But no one's prepared to risk taking a decision. It's gutless and unforgivable. And in the meantime the Australian Submarine Corporation is being wound down into uselessness.
The great insight in Bob Woodward's book Obama's Wars is that a Democrat (read Labor) politician can't drastically slash away at military spending: a Republican (or Liberal) can. It's simple political calculus. The left is viewed as ''soft'' on national security and this limits options. If Labor, for example, ever announced it was slashing the number of main battle tanks by 50per cent, the Opposition would be apoplectic. Yet when a Coalition government did exactly this in 2004, buying an already superseded American variant of the Abrams MBT, there were no complaints. No noise at all.
Labor has ceded this issue to the conservatives. It's not even attempting to stake out policy.
When John Howard took power in 1996 he found - unsurprisingly - that the recession of the early 1990s coupled with a subsequent lack of fiscal discipline had left the cupboard bare. He claimed the paramount need was to restore the budget to balance. Treasurer Peter Costello insisted the cuts were to be shared around equally. In a climate like this, the armed forces didn't stand a chance. Under the guise of ''cutting waste'' and ''reinforcing the sharp-end'' the Ready Reserve battalions were abolished and Treasury hacked away at the support units.
It was only the emergency of East Timor that finally reversed this overwhelming desire to keep the military lean and mean. Prosperity and the continuing conflict since 2001 ended up providing a political bonus for the Coalition. The Defence Force finally found that money was available and the natural conservative inclination to spend on defence had returned. As far as the military was concerned, happy days were here again.
But those days are long gone. There will be some big surprises for the senior brass when the Coalition returns to power.
There are now a lot of other budget priorities (or ''aspirations'', as Tony Abbott likes to say). First among these is the requirement to keep the budget in balance. Second comes the need to fund tax cuts, either to corporations (by abolishing the mining tax) or to individuals (to match the promised new Labor tax scales). Other publicly identified priorities, like assisting disabled people, come next. Defence is a very long way down the order.
The military will be left feeding off leftover crumbs. No billionaire mining magnate is going to stand on the back of a truck leading protests for more spending; demanding tax increases just so that we can buy more Joint Strike Fighters. The services will just have to learn to take what they're given. The diet will be austere. And Labor's inadvertently providing the political cover by refusing to identify its own spending priorities. Stephen Smith is vacillating over significant hardware purchases. It's tempting to say this is not his fault - he's trying to get the decisions right. But his failure to release the report into the ADFA sex case (which is widely believed to completely exonerate Commodore Bruce Kafer) suggests that there might be some other factor at work here. There's just no generous way of explaining the procrastination residing in his office.
The worst-kept secret in the navy is that a report has already recommended we should just bite the bullet and build the new subs in Adelaide. But Smith's continuing to baulk.
There are two surprising elements about the Government's inaction. Politicians normally enter their profession because they want to shape the world. This mob is throwing away that opportunity. The other surprise is that it's not even politically smart. The Government isn't forcing the Opposition to come up with any policies. It's not even taking the opportunity to box them in by committing to plans for the future. The Liberals love it. They can't lose.
Nicholas Stuart is a Canberra writer.
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