Being seen as a liar or a sneak is sudden death in modern politics because we appear to have moved into a new era in which – if the recent Victorian and Queensland elections are a reliable guide – there is no such thing as redemption.
The sense of crisis that has overtaken the Abbott government in the past week has been triggered by two events that have little material effect on national politics: Abbott’s awarding of an Australian knighthood to the Duke of Edinburgh, Prince Philip, and the Queensland election result.
The reason that they’ve resonated so profoundly in Canberra is that they reflect public revulsion at not being told all of the truth. Abbott reintroduced knighthoods only six months after the 2013 election. It was only a tiny surprise but an unnecessary one nonetheless. The shock of the first Hockey budget came soon after and the government has never recovered.
The Queensland result was the final response by voters to Campbell Newman’s 2012 pre-election promise that the jobs of state public servants and government workers were safe. Upon being elected, he promptly got rid of 14,000 of them and his poll ratings started to fall away from that moment. His commitment to sell off government assets – a popular policy for adherents to the political orthodoxy but highly unpopular among many voters – locked in that fall.
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