After the LNP blood had been mopped up from the Queensland counting room floors on the weekend all of the talk is about the leadership of Tony Abbott and why the Federal Coalition government have proven to be such a monumental failure.

Trying hard to deflect public attention away from infighting that is plaguing his Party, Abbott addressing the Press Club told the public with words aimed primarily at his own caucus, that he did not want the country to go back to the chaos that was the former government.

The chaos he refers to is of course the former battle for leadership between Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard.

Apparently it’s far less chaotic now in Abbott’s private universe.

However here on Earth, with a public baying for Coalition blood, Coalition members in the States being voted out of parliament en masse and a leadership battle between Tony Abbott, Malcolm Turnbull, Julia Bishop and even Scott Morrison with Mal Brough allegedly threatening to kick the whole thing off, and Dennis Jensen eventually releasing the cat amongst the pigeons, the chaos is hard to miss.

The spin coming from the Coalition post the QLD wipeout is that they have heard the public’s cry and that the issue is that the people have not been told enough about why the Coalitions policies need to be put in place.

The theory being that if the Coalition spend a bit more time and a lot more taxpayer funds explaining how their policies will help the public then the country will be far more likely to embrace those policies.

In fairness this may actually be a good point.

I am sure that if Abbott had taken the time to explain his thinking beforehand the country would have been thrilled for Prince Philip’s Knighthood. Once we had been blessed with Captain Abbott’s knowledge we would have felt comfortable that there was not a single Australian worthy of the country’s greatest honour, or at least not as worthy as Prince Philip. We would have been able to enjoy our Australia Day weekend thrilled to be bestowing a Knighthood on the member of a foreign royal family.

However as we have been told a million times, that decision was a “Captain’s Call” and nothing to do with the rest of the Coalition.

Putting my sarcasm aside for a moment the message the Coalition are sending is a simple one when you remove the spin.

The Coalition message is this

The population are too stupid to understand the thinking of higher beings like those of us in government, and as a result greater effort will need to be taken to explain policy in kiddie-speak so the public are capable of understanding.

Or another simpler way of saying it would be

Our policies are awesome, it’s not our fault the public are too f**king stupid to see it.

It’s not us, it’s you.

So let’s look at some of the other policies from the Coalition to see if its all in the sales pitch.

Until the weekends Qld bloodbath there was a Coalition Parental Leave policy that had been I place for five years. While it is being sold as another “Captain’s Call” now,  it was previously promoted in Liberal Party literature and websites right up until after the election when it was suddenly discovered that throwing cash at rich women to have babies while cutting pensions wasn’t turning out to be as popular as they thought it might be.

That “signature” policy was dumped on Monday despite us being told all about its supposed merits for five years. I guess it was the policy not the pitch?

Not long after the Coalition entered government we started hearing about the need to make Medicare sustainable. This is something that was not just coming from Abbott, but also from Treasurer Joe Hockey, and then Health Minister Peter Dutton were letting the country know that free health care was not a possibility any more, ignoring the fact that we all pay for it via a levy. For Hockey it was part of his “Age of Entitlement” attack on the country’s most needy.

When the legislation emerged for the sick tax, or GP co-payment as the Coalition called it, people were puzzled about why it put the billions it was supposed to raise into some mystery medical research fund and not go towards making Medicare sustainable.

Over a year of carefully selling the story and then completely screwing up the actual delivery. The policy was to never pass through Senate.

Still, to their credit, the Coalition “listened, learned, and then acted”.

Given the populations and the Senates anger at the ridiculous sick tax and the fact that new legislation would never pass, the Coalition chose not to pay attention to the public. Instead choosing in a show of arrogance, to override the publicly elected Senate with a “Born to Rule” mentality that clearly endears them in the public eye. Rather than legislate they chose to regulate, lowering the amount of the rebate doctors receive from the government. The aim was to force the doctors into charging their own version of the sick tax or take a huge pay cut.

This plan was only abandoned and aborted at the last minute when the Senate vowed to override the decision when parliament returned, which would have made the government look rather foolish.

Another policy that the Coalition has been selling and talking up for what feels like an eternity is the Direct Action policy, and what a utter joke that has been shown to be.

Environment Minister Greg Hunt has discovered that this policy is a turd that is impossible to roll in glitter. Giving away taxpayer dollars to big polluters was never going to be a good idea, but to not even have conditions attached is just sheer madness.

The “Green Army” we have all waited for has not arrived as yet which makes me wonder if it was somehow connected to the proposed changes to social security that was to see the young unemployed not receive welfare for six months. Was the invisible Green Army to be another “work for the dole” scheme perhaps?

If it is in fact all about taking the time to sell the policy and convince the population of its wisdom, let’s look at one of those embroiled in the leadership battle.

Has Malcolm Turnbull convinced you, or anyone that you know that the National Broadband Network Labor was rolling out was a bad policy and that his NBN Lite will be anywhere near as good, let alone better?

Yet Malcolm Turnbull is considered the Coalition’s top salesperson and he has been promoting his version of the NBN since Kevin Rudd’s 2007 election campaign.

Clearly the problem with the Coalition is not the sales job, it’s the shit they are selling.

By the way, as an afterthought on the NBN, don’t be surprised if one of the first decisions made if Turnbull becomes leader is to adopt Labor’s NBN. It would provide the sugar hit they need in the polls.

Call it a hunch…

 

 

 

 

 

 

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