While Labor wallows in a mess of its own making Tony Abbott is getting on with the job of running the country in a competent manner that we haven't seen for the 6 years Labor was in power, who failed at 99% of their policies & then turned around & blamed it all on Rudd & "dysfunction".
There has been no critique of their massive loss & policies failures, they are blindly going along looking at themselves "again" whilst the majority of Labor members look on incredulously & in disbelief at the blindness & ignorance of the leaders of just why they lost power.
This is all not good news for Labor all over again, they have learnt nothing, arrogantly ignore the fact that they failed the Australian people in just about every way & their crowing about the "big reforms" will have to be somehow paid for whilst the coalition struggle with a weakening economy & massive debt burden.
Below is an article every Labor supporter should read as it's playing out all over again today.
Left misreads Tony Abbott as they did John Howard
DURING the 1996 election campaign, prime minister Paul Keating told a radio interviewer that Asian leaders, including Indonesia's president Suharto, would not "deal" with his opponent, John Howard.
Mr Keating's speechwriter and biographer Don Watson would later recall there was "a significant element of truth in what at face value looked like lunacy". Mr Keating did not flesh out the idea, Dr Watson lamented in Recollections of a Bleeding Heart, his portrait of the Labor PM: "Asian leaders would not listen to Howard as they listened to Keating. They would not be persuaded as they had been persuaded. The momentum of engagement would be lost. There would be costs to the national interest. All that could be convincingly argued." Mr Howard immediately called it "crazy" talk and even Dr Watson would conclude the remark sounded "at once wrong, arrogant and desperate". Mr Howard went on to govern for almost 12 years, during a period of economic abundance, while deepening and strengthening relations with Indonesia, China, Japan, South Korea and India, against the backdrop of regional crises, terrorist attacks, civil unrest and wars.
Three governments later, Labor is making the same mistake about its opponents and its loss: underestimating the leader, repeating follies of the past and failing to learn the lessons from the election result. After a convincing victory on September 7, Tony Abbott is governing with steady purpose and defying the wayward predictions of critics. But as Chris Kenny writes in Inquirer today, Labor and its friendlies in the media are displaying the same anti-Howard whining of the previous era; by focusing resentment on the victor, the same clique, give or take, is now avoiding an examination of its own thinking, policies and behaviours. Blinded by disdain, as they were in the Howard era, the critics are hopelessly out of touch with mainstream sensibilities and the message voters emphatically delivered last month.
Mr Howard was once derided as "little Johnny", but not at the end of his premiership; in fact, Kevin Rudd, his successor, won in 2007 with a political persona that promised a younger, kinder and gentler simulacrum of the veteran Liberal leader. Yet when Mr Abbott, to the surprise of most, emerged as the challenger in December 2009, he was immediately dismissed as unelectable. The Australian Financial Review's Laura Tingle wrote of his ascension as "a disaster of epic proportions." In an essay last year, David Marr concluded: "Australia doesn't want Tony Abbott. We never have." During the election campaign, Mr Abbott was lambasted as out of his depth in economics and as a clumsy neophyte on foreign affairs. Many critics were willing him to fail on his first overseas missions, believing that the energetic man who destroyed an inept Labor government was reckless, lacking the grace and intellect to engage the region's leaders and argue persuasively for Australia's interests.
Yet the net effect of Labor's taunts and progressive critics' jibes has been a lowering of expectations about the new government -- a bar that has not been difficult to leap for a disciplined unit, as the Coalition has, so far, proven to be. Mr Abbott has adopted the example of his esteemed political mentor about presentation and plain language; he is firmly in the mainstream of Australian life, in the way he thinks and behaves. His mandate is to stop the boats, abolish the mining and carbon taxes, end waste, pay down debt and convene an adult administration. Mr Abbott promised to be calm, measured and steady, leading a government that "says what it means and does what it says." On this standard he will be judged.
Labor and its attendant scribes again face the challenge of 1996: accept the verdict of the popular ballot and listen to the electorate's judgment on policy, or fight on into oblivion with rejected ideas. The month-long leadership contest between Bill Shorten and Anthony Albanese, with a winner to be declared on Sunday, has not helped the party on this score.
Rather than grappling with the major issues, the combatants have been friendly to a fault, thereby sparing Labor's diehard supporters in the election aftermath from difficult, but necessary, debates. Arguments postponed, however, will not make Labor's reality check any easier, nor will a lack of clarity about their failed policy prescriptions.
