At last, a genuine political back-flip.
We have Opposition Leader Brendan Nelson to thank for it. You see, most political writers and broadcasters misuse the phrase “back-flip”. They really mean a reversal, an about face or a change of mind. But those expressions are not dramatic enough, so someone used the word “back-flip”. It has now become a cliché, and an incorrect one at that.
Picture, for a moment, a gymnast doing a back-flip. What happens? The gymnast’s feet go up over his head and back down to the mat. At the end the gymnast is facing precisely the same direction as he began, albeit having briefly faced the opposite direction while in mid-air.
Brendan Nelson has just completed the back-flip.
First he supported an apology to Indigenous Australians. In 1999 he told a youth conference in Canberra, “I think that as our country evolves and the process of reconciliation evolves … future generations will wonder why we found it so difficult to apologise.”
Consistent with that he walked across the Sydney Harbour Bridge in the Reconciliation Walk in May 2000. He was a backbencher.
After that, he came to adopt then Prime Minister John Howard’s view that there would be no “sorry” or apology.
On 30 November 2007, after being elected Opposition Leader with the help of Liberal MPs who were opposed to Malcolm Turnbull’s stand on the apology, he said, “We have no responsibility to apologise or take ownership for what was done by earlier generations.”
After that, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd announced an apology would be presented on the first day of the new Parliament.
Many of Nelson’s colleagues wanted an apology. Others did not. It would look pretty grim for Nelson if he had a mass of floor crossings on the first vote in the new Parliament under his leadership.
On 7 February, he said, “The joint party room of the Liberal and National Parties has resolved today we will provide in-principle support to the apology . . .to forcibly remove generations of Aboriginal children. . . . We believe it is morally and practically important.”
Back flip complete.
About faces or position reversals are commonplace in politics: Howard’s never-ever GST and Paul Keating’s L-A-W law tax cuts come to mind. But real back-flips are in a class of their own.
What did Brendan Nelson believe it and when did he start or stop believing it?
The important thing here is not that a politicians changes his or her mind, but why.
You get the feeling that Nelson changed his mind over “sorry” not out of a change in belief, but because of a change in his political circumstances. When it became clear that Howard was in for the long haul and that Howard’s “broad church” ard spoke of was in fact a narrow Masonic Lodge, there was no ministerial future in hovering anywhere to the left of the aisle.
With Howard gone and many in the Liberal Party wanting change, the leader had no choice but to follow them.
Consistency has often been applauded in political life. In leadership it is seen as a sign of strength. Only a strong leader can maintain a position in the face of majority internal opposition. (And in this context it does not matter where the strength comes from – allies, imposing fear and number crunching or intelligence, persuasion and moral purpose.) Consistency is also equated with the keeping of promises.
Often, though, consistency, strength and keeping promises are over-rated in running a country. They are more applicable to early childhood parenting. Often the breaking of a promise to a child is to avoid parental inconvenience rather than acting in the best interests of the child. Not so with the breaking of political promises.
The obverse characteristics of consistency and strength are an ability to change one’s mind (or flexibility) and consultation. These are often associated with breaking promises. In early childhood such characteristics are likely to cause confusion. In national affairs, on the other hand, they might be virtues.
Leadership is knowing when to be flexible and consultative and when to be consistent and strong.
Obviously Nelson has quite a bit to learn on these fronts.
On the other side of politics, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd seems determined to be consistent and strong on the question of tax cuts. And it is probably not in the national interest; it is more in the interests of his re-election. He does not want to be haunted with a “never-ever” GST, a “non-core” promise or a repealed L-A-W tax cut.
A more flexible Prime Minister would do something smart. Yes, have the tax cuts but force employers to put the money into employees’ superannuation (taxed concessionally). Any employee who wanted to draw the money out (and pay the extra tax) should be allowed to. The vast majority would not. No-one would be denied the tax cut. The promise would be kept and inflation fought.
The conflict between consistency and flexibility after coming to power is similar to the conflict between simplicity and clarity on one hand and caution and the acknowledgement of complexity on the other.
Simple, clear promises, like Bob Hawke’s “After 1990, no Australian child shall live in poverty” may win votes on the day but invite later ridicule. Compare that to Hillary Clinton’s “we shall reclaim the future for our children”. It invites present ridicule for being vacuous, but will at least will cause no embarrassment later for being unfulfilled.
One would like to hope that the electorate is maturing and that Rudd could deal with these wrong-headed tax cuts without too much fuss, and perhaps the never-ever GST is a precedent, because Howard was right to reverse his promise in the national interest.
And one would like to hope that Nelson learns that flexibility is fine when applied in the national interest, but the flexibility of the real back-flip smacks a little bit much of his own short-term interest which will catch him out in the end.
But they are probably naive hopes.