The popular view was that Howard did not want Paul Keating to do what he did with John Hewson’s very detailed Fightback policy … use it as sustenance for a successful negative campaign. The theory was that denied a specific target, Keating would have nothing to shoot down. However, Keating has now used the absence of a target as the target itself.
Initially, Howard’s strategy appeared to be sensible and working until the past month or so. Then Keating’s attacks that the Opposition lacks policies started to bite, more in polls on preferred Prime Minister than on overall party preference.
This slight change in public opinion about leaders (but not parties) has resulted in much commentary that the Keating demolition magic is beginning to work on Howard as it has worked on John Hewson and Alexander Downer. Much of that commentary suggested that Howard has blundered and fallen into a Keating trap. But there has been no trap. It is just that Keating is a masterful opportunist. It would not matter what Howard did, Keating would seize upon some aspect of it and make bricks out of straw. In this case he has made an issue out of no issues. You have to admire the resourcefulness.
But still, any erosion of Coalition support through absence of policies or the end of the Howard honeymoon has been slight. Certainly, it has been slower that the Keating erosion of Hewson and Downer.
So it is a mistake to say that just because the polls are turning a little that Howard will go the way of Hewson and Downer. It is more pertinent to ask why has Howard persisted with his no-details strategy when clearly the Keating attack on it was working, albeit in a limited way.
Howard has now reached the silly season. There is at least a month now of total break from attention to politics, and when the silly season ends, the pressure will be as much on Keating to name the election date, as on Howard to bring forward details of policies.
Howard’s demand for a date first and policies later is very significant. Once the date is announced, the Government goes into caretaker mode. It means no new appointments and no new policies. More importantly, it means the Public Service becomes neutral and cannot be enlisted into party political warfare on Labor’s side to shoot down Opposition policies with real or imagined defects.
Labor has used the Public Service to help fight elections to great effect in the past. Any government is entitled to test any policy it wants during its term of office, even only a few months out from an election … provided the writs have not been issued for the election. Thus any Opposition that puts its policy detail on the table too early can expect it to be costed and analysed in detail by public servants anxiously serving a government that wants to explore all policy options.
Public Service help can be a critical advantage in winning elections. This is aside from the official media-liaison office and other official information activities which subliminally sing government praises under the guise of neutral information. For Oppositions, policy development and costing is a long hard slug with few resources.
Labor used the Public Service to help demolish Fightback and to help pick the holes in the Coalition’s health policy in 1984. Incidentally, it deserved to have the holes exposed, but elections should be about broad directions, not arguments over the last detail. Once elections become more about detail than direction, Governments get an innate advantage because they can enlist the Public Service at least until the writs are served.
In this context, more sense can be made of Howard’s holding off. Once the real election begins, and policies come out, people will forget the past couple of months of sparring over the policy-free zone. But expect the formal, post-writ part of the campaign (in which the Government cannot by convention get Public Service support) to be as short as possible … especially in an election where opinion polls show there is at least a moderate prospect of a change of government.