Holes open in Labor's advantage

Illustration: Dyson At a fundamental level, the government is strong, but a series of debacles has changed the dynamics. FOR the first time since the election, Kevin Rudd and his government are looking seriously ragged. Environment Minister Peter Garrett is on the ropes over the ceiling insulation program, which has involved four deaths and become highly emotional as relatives hit the airwaves and the ACTU declared unions had consistently raised concerns about safety; and former Labor operative Mike Kaiser has turned up in a $450,000 ''job for the boy'' with the new government broadband company, after he was suggested by Communications Minister Stephen Conroy. As well, the emissions trading scheme is not only headed for defeat again in the Senate but this week's Age/Nielsen poll shows it is losing public support. Advertisement: Story continues below And Rudd finds himself under criticism especially, but not only, for his communications failures. The PM got a rigorous workout from an audience of young people on Monday's ABC Q and A. Yesterday The Australian Financial Review, interviewing leading talkback hosts, reported listeners ''see his language as contrived, his personality as plastic''; the hosts are detecting ''a sharp mood swing in the electorate''. By the time the House of Representatives rose yesterday after the first fortnight of the new parliamentary year, it's a fair bet the PM's short fuse was alight. Several factors have converged to multiply the government's problems. Its rapid, massive response to the global financial crisis kept Australia out of recession, but has meant overloaded, shoddy administration. Garrett's environment department was simply not capable, in the time available, of properly planning and supervising the insulation program. The minister himself has not provided enough oversight. The spotlight this week is on environment programs, but the faults are repeated in other areas. No one has died in the huge school building spend, but it has been too rigid and wasteful. The appointment of Kaiser, a Rosetta Stone Spanish Latin former Queensland state MP named in an electoral fraud inquiry who has had several senior Labor staff positions, is only the tip of the iceberg. That $43 billion broadband scheme has not had a proper cost-benefit analysis; last week the Auditor-General criticised the process for the aborted initial broadband plan. It's mostly not the government's fault that the ETS has bogged. An intransigent Senate, an opposition that switched positions, the failure of the Copenhagen conference and the impasse over the American legislation all helped drag the government into quicksand. But Rudd's failure to ''sell'' the scheme publicly is being increasingly highlighted. Rudd's political style, whether his prolixity or his obsession for control, was always destined to be viewed more harshly when the politics became tougher. Some of the present troubles come from a clash between Rudd's desire to do too much and the electoral timetable. The most dramatic example is the timing of the Henry tax review, a gift to Tony Abbott's scare campaign about a second-term Rudd government. Abbott has started more strongly than the government expected. He has plenty of downsides, from the trivial to the serious. His virginity comments consumed the media for days. This week, a visit to a dry cleaner to highlight higher power costs under the ETS brought tut-tutting over his obvious unfamiliarity with an iron, and his use of the term ''housewife'' (though he quickly added ''house husband''). The ''housewife'' reference had minister Greg Combet out chiding Abbott (''carrying on about housewives doing the ironing at home … only demonstrates that he really is stuck in the past''). The government is trying to reinforce the impression of the Opposition Leader as old-fashioned, out of touch and right-wing.

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