Politics

We had the opportunity to host Senator Helen Coonan and a few Liberal supporters at a small boardroom dinner. This is a forum to facilitate discussions about issues surrounding the Liberal party and ways to improve.

It was interesting sitting there listening to Helen point out the "cracks" that are starting to appear under the Rudd government. Notwithstanding, Helen conceded that there was a lot of things that the Liberals are not doing at the moment to position themselves ready to get back to parliament. Firstly, leadership turmoil does not help, the "utegate" fake email saga has also clouded some of the issues which they have started to focus on such as the ever growing deficit. Helen was dogmatic that there would not be another change of leader in such a short term but a question was posed to her to see when would be a good time to change leader i.e. would they wait until the poll indicates a popularity rating of 2%??

While the electorate are still happy with the Rudd government, they will close an eye to some of the election promises which have yet to be actioned but are now being created into policy reviews which are resulting in policy backlogs. It was also interesting to note that the Rudd government is seeing quite a high staff turnover due to the PM's micro management of the staff. Unless the issues reach a "tipping" point, the electorate will continue to be happy with current government and cloud some other more pressing topics such as health care.

A highly interactive and interesting night from all fronts and pertinent concerns were highlighted - topics which could be used by the opposition to bring them back to power. However, my take is that the Liberals have a lot of work ahead of them. They need to regain the electorate's confidence and support in their ability to lead the country. The injection of new and fresh blood to the party especially at the state level does not provide the necessary track record to prove their ability to effect change. Someone commented that some grey hairs would help. The crux of the matter is that there is a lack of strategic and strong leadership moves which will therefore hinder the Liberal parties' resumption to power.

However....

A reporter questioned the reaction anticipated from the introduction of the GST, Prime Minister Howard said in reply '... you must remember that the Australian voter has a short memory span... less than 14 days in most cases!'
Prime Minister, John Howard (1999)

Ahh... the beauty of politics....