With the government controlling the treasury purse strings, not to mention the parliamentary agenda, it is a simple matter to dominate the news cycle with a media drop. Announcing new programs and spending is always newsworthy, and carries more weight than opposition policies outside of the election campaign.

To combat this, an opposition shadow minister has to be relentless, quick off the mark and able to cut through the jargon with a memorable line. It is their lot in life to constantly run interference on their opposite number, while preparing for the election. Since they lost the 2007 election we have seen some major figures from the Howard government struggle on the other side. The shock of defeat after 11 1/2 years has been difficult to get over.

First to go are the plush ministerial offices and staff allocations. Next is the departmental advice on tap, not to mention the vast resources at a minister’s disposal. Then there is the shocking sense of prominence lost. Even a federal parliamentary secretary has their share of departmental officials, lobbyists and interest groups bowing and scraping, hanging on their every word.

By comparison, opposition is a cold place where members are forced to make the most of little and fight hard for a share of the national spotlight.

Kevin Rudd, in the lead-up to the 2007 election, managed to outmanoeuvre the Howard government, whose failure to rejuvenate made it easy for Labor to paint the Coalition as being old and out of touch.

But the upcoming 2010 election is an entirely different proposition for the opposition.

Bringing down the first-term Rudd government under ordinary circumstances would be tricky, but with Australia appearing to have avoided the global financial crisis, which will be central to the government’s campaign no matter how spurious, this makes the task extremely difficult.

While under some circumstances it may still be possible to win government this year, Tony Abbott also needs to plan for a two-term strategy to knock off Rudd. At minimum, he needs to hold the fort this election, make some gains if possible, and avoid losing seats, which would be disastrous both for the Coalition and for the ongoing viability of Abbott’s leadership.

To ensure a strong showing on election day Abbott needs to seriously think about how best to utilise the standout performers in the party he leads. To do so may represent the Coalition’s best shot at defeating Rudd.

After two years we have seen some new key players emerge from the tattered former government.

One of these emerging fighters is Christopher Pyne, who is showing signs of increased maturity. Shaking off a decade of being held back under Howard, and under-utilised by Brendan Nelson, Pyne emerged as one of Malcolm Turnbull’s key supporters, and was duly rewarded with the important post of shadow minister for education and manager of opposition business.

This caused some controversy at the time, with the Right of the Liberal Party feeling the moderate wing had been favoured by Turnbull. But despite this Pyne’s single most defining characteristic is that he never takes a backwards step. Indeed with the exception of Abbott and his increasingly helpful deputy, Julie Bishop, Pyne is one of the best performers in the present opposition.

Pyne has shaken off the critics in his own party with his relentless attacks in Question Time, a forensic knowledge of the standing orders after 17 years in Parliament and his general indefatigability and capacity for hard work.

Despite the recent leadership change it is telling that one of the first acts of Abbott as leader was to guarantee the continuation of Pyne in his position. While one element of this may have been to appease the factional divisions that emerged towards the end of Turnbull’s leadership, Abbott did not ignore the undeniable hits Pyne has had on his opposite number, Julia Gillard.

Considered to be the strongest performer in the Rudd government and lauded as a future prime minister, Gillard is great on her feet and a darling of the media. Gillard was considered to be quite untouchable despite the trouble that I’ve identified previously in this column, namely that she often struggles with delivering on the nuts and bolts of her mega-portfolio.

The Coalition has seized on this since Pyne became shadow minister for education and recently he has done considerable damage to the perception of education as an unquestioned plus for the government. With major programs over budget and under investigation by the auditor, this is a tremendous outcome, and the best any opposition could hope for when billions of dollars are being thrown around. The Coalition line that Gillard is someone who has too much on her plate and a part-time minister appears to increasingly grate on her, especially since Pyne is managing to take the gleam off Gillard’s armour.

In this election year the Coalition will need some big ideas of their own in an attempt to control the policy agenda and the media cycle during the forthcoming campaign.

Trying to gazump the government in education may still be difficult given the massive spending, so it will be Pyne’s job to continue to take the gloss of the government’s program. This is a task for which the parliamentary terrier from South Australia is extremely well suited.

The Weekend Australian, February 13-14, 2010

But the first decisions by Abbott with respect to his personnel are more multi-layered than that.

In a much-needed move, Malcolm Turnbull, who in recent days has behaved like a petulant narcissist, has been replaced by the much more formidable Abbott.

But otherwise the opposition’s key leadership group remains the same: Joe Hockey as shadow treasurer, Christopher Pyne as education spokesman and leader of the house, Julie Bishop as spokeswoman on foreign affairs and Nick Minchin and Eric Abetz as leader and deputy leader of the Liberal Party in the Senate.

The important addition to this group is Nationals senator Barnaby Joyce as finance spokesman. It remains to be seen whether Joyce can work as part of a team. Either he will do so and, in the process, move from a maverick to a mainstream player or else prove incapable of being anything other than a public-oriented attention-seeker.

This team of seven will need to work closely together and to be united. If this happens, they may have a close to even money chance of beating the Rudd Labor government. But, to do so, they will need to bury historical animosities and they don’t have much time in which to achieve this.

Members of the federal opposition have spent most of the past two years fighting among themselves. This has let a not very accomplished Labor government off the hook in many areas.

But in the two periods when the Coalition focused on Labor, between May and July last year and May and July this year, it pegged back Labor’s lead. These periods were between the announcement of poor federal budgets and the middle of the year.

In the first period, the Coalition promised to cut taxes on fuel. It caused surprise by winning the Gippsland by-election with a 6 per cent swing.

In the second, it made government debt and the expanding budget deficit potent issues.

However, in July last year it went back to warring between the Turnbull and Brendan Nelson forces and in July this year it was saddled with the terrible Godwin Grech fake emails affair, from which Turnbull never recovered.

Thanks to Abbott clearly opposing the Rudd emissions trading scheme, the Coalition is taking the fight to the ALP. Hence the next election looks set to be a contest. Abbott may well have found an issue that affects the hip-pocket nerve of the Australian voter. He certainly is going to make Kevin Rudd explain Labor’s ETS, and the more the public delves into it the less it may like it.

This will be especially so if Abbott can create, and sell, a climate change action policy that achieves reductions in greenhouse gas emissions without the extensive money churn and waste, and the significant increase in unemployment, that he argues will result from Labor’s policy.

Apart from Bishop, the other members of the opposition seven (Abbott, Hockey, Pyne, Minchin, Abetz and Joyce) are politically savvy and strong media performers. They are all politicians who love a scrap with Labor and whom you would want on your side in a fight.

Labor will not underestimate them even if some, especially in the Fairfax media, are underestimating Abbott.

Ironically, while Abbott will enjoy the enthusiastic support of Minchin and Abetz, he may need Hockey and Pyne more. They have credibility with the people Abbott may sometimes seem to alienate: the urban voters, many of whom switched their vote to Labor at the 2007 election.

But with interest rates rising, the budget in deficit and the government in debt, those voters may well be looking to move back to the Liberal Party at the next federal election.

Hockey has what is being called the Sunrise factor, a reference to his positive and avuncular persona, developed through regular appearances on the Seven Network’s morning television show. He translates this into a media style that is friendly and believable. However, rather like Labor’s Kim Beazley before him, he has to overcome a reputation of being somewhat lazy (hence the nickname Sloppy Joe).

Pyne has ruthlessly pursued Julia Gillard’s so-called education revolution, exposing mismanagement and waste that has dented her previously Teflon-coated reputation, and has aggressively taken the fight to a dominant government during parliamentary question time. Gillard initially tried to dismiss him as a poodle, but by the end of the year Pyne was operating more like an attackdog.

Even though she sometimes performed poorly under Nelson and Turnbull, with a more focused Abbott as her leader Bishop could well play an important role in Western Australia and more generally among women.

Coupled with a somewhat forbidding media style, Abetz knows how to deliver a cut-through line. Who could forget “Kevin 747″ as a play on Kevin07? Abetz will be required to take a message to small business on unfair dismissal laws and to business generally on what he perceives as growing union influence.

Minchin has emerged from this latest Liberal Party leadership change with enhanced power. He needs to ensure his leader has the unity that will be vital for limiting damaging distractions between now and election day.

As a former South Australian state director of the Liberal Party and machine man, Minchin needs to ensure Abbott has the necessary campaign funds and professional organisation behind him to effectively communicate the opposition’s message to the public, particularly to those who may change their vote.

If he works inside the tent, Joyce could be pivotal in winning back seats in rural and regional Australia. There are many to be won. If he stays on song, he has the capacity to resonate well with the Liberals’ and Nationals’ 750,000-strong small business base.

With the possibility of an election at any time from March to November, it is the job of the rest of the shadow ministry to constructively support this team.

Abbott intends to draw on the vote-pulling power among senior Australians of Bronwyn Bishop as the new opposition spokeswoman on seniors.

He will certainly use the knowledge of climate action, environment and heritage spokesman Greg Hunt and parliamentary secretary for climate action and the Murray-Darling Basin Simon Birmingham to craft a saleable climate change action policy.

Labor’s failure to deliver in reforming Australia’s underperforming and overloaded public hospitals will continue to be highlighted by opposition health spokesman Peter Dutton.

Abbott will hope new small business spokesman Bruce Billson will connect with the Coalition’s small-business base and that Scott Morrison as immigration spokesman will make clearer the distinction between Labor and the Coalition in the area of border protection and the handling of the burgeoning asylum-seeker arrivals in Australia. There will also be a role for the shadow attorney-general, George Brandis, who will handle the push by some Laborites for a charter of human rights. The Coalition will firmly oppose such a measure, hence delivering to Brandis an important part of the opposition’s strategy of rebuilding its base.

But there are others in the first Abbott line-up that are simply making up the numbers: Tony Smith in communications and Kevin Andrews in families, housing and human services, Warren Truss in transport and David Johnston in defence are all examples.

Now is not the time for the opposition to try to fight on many fronts. From what Abbott has done with his front bench, he seems to think so, too.

Waste, mismanagement, the economy, border protection, debt, deficit, union power: these are the issues that cause voters to support the Coalition parties and in the main Abbott has crafted a team to maximise his message and minimise errors in these areas.

When I reviewed Abbott’s book Battlelines in August, I compared his lively personal and political manifesto with Rudd’s recent essays, describing the latter as “duller than dishwater”.

In my concluding paragraph I argued that it was “still far from impossible that the member for Warringah will end up as leader of the parliamentary Liberal Party”.

Now that this has ensued, in an electoral contest with Rudd, the battlelines will be well and truly drawn.

For all of Labor’s bluster, the Prime Minister and his party know that with Abbott at the opposition helm, they well and truly have a fight on their hands.

There have already been a few shock moves. Labor’s failure to nominate a candidate for either electorate was just too smart for words. It smacked of the same poor judgment that inspired it to hand a preference deal and the last Senate seat in Victoria to Steve Fielding in 2007.

The newly formed Australian Sex Party has nominated a 26-year-old lesbian pole dancer and human rights lawyer, Zahra Stardust, for Bradfield. In Higgins it has nominated high-profile anti-censorship campaigner and Eros Association chief executive Fiona Patten, who a few years ago came close to winning a seat in the ACT Legislative Assembly.

At the same time, Fred Nile’s Christian Democrats are threatening to run a flock of religious campaigners under their box on the ballot paper. And the Greens surprised everyone by nominating former Australia Institute director and internet filtering champion, Clive Hamilton, in Higgins.

Patten has led her by-election campaign with a big swipe at the Liberals and Labor. She says an increasing number of citizens are fed up with big-party candidates entering politics with huge personal political aspirations but when the going gets tough or their ambition becomes thwarted, self-interest takes over and they resign for a better offer. The electorate is then left to fix the situation through a by-election, about half a million bucks each these days.

Brendan Nelson and Peter Costello are in this category. Between them the federal Liberal Party received $200,000 in public funding when they won their seats. Patten and the Australian Sex Party wants this returned to help finance the by-elections.

It’s not a bad idea. We’ve had about 140 federal by-elections since Federation in 1901. Until the 1960s most were caused by the death of the sitting member. However, after Harold Holt’s seat of Higgins was declared vacant in 1968 (because of his presumed drowning), a whole new trend set in. Since that time resignations have been outstripping deaths by almost seven to one and since 1980 more than 90 per cent of federal by-elections have been called because the sitting member had resigned, mostly to satisfy naked political ambition. Neither Costello nor Nelson were drowning, just waving to anyone who would offer a better job.

Many Labor supporters will feel betrayed and let down by their party for not running any candidates and for making them cast an informal vote, a protest vote or a vote for a party whose philosophy is decidedly un-Labor. There also will be many Liberals who feel that Nelson and Costello should not have abandoned their seat just because their leadership ambitions had been dashed.

In these by-elections, the Greens have been touted as the logical beneficiary of the ALP vote. But there are many greenish Labor supporters who sense a black spot within Bob Brown’s flock these days. The Greens have been undergoing some radical changes during the past few years as they try to turn themselves into a mainstream party. These changes have resulted in the nomination of Hamilton as their candidate for Higgins.

Hamilton may have sound climate-change policies in his briefcase, but at heart he is a social conservative. There are many who doubt anyone’s credentials on anything if they are so blind as to support Labor’s deeply unpopular efforts to censor the internet.

Hamilton represents the nanny state and an emerging new middle-class subspecies that specialises in telling other people how they should act on moral issues. Take the recently preselected Greens candidate for Victorian state seat Richmond, Kathleen Maltzahn. She is a founding director of a feminist group called Project Respect, which claims to help women in the sex industry and those who have been trafficked. In fact, this group wants to take the regulated prostitution industry and make it illegal again, as it was in the 1950s. Maltzahn’s social philosophy is similar to US uber-feminists Andrea Dworkin and Catharine MacKinnon. She would consider the Sex Party’s pole-dancing human rights lawyer as someone needing protection from herself.

Hamilton and Maltzahn’s social agendas would have been welcomed by former Tasmanian senator and conservative Catholic activist Brian Harradine. And they sure as hell will be extolled by Nile’s and Family First’s candidates for Higgins and Bradfield.

So why is Brown, an openly gay man who has been fighting social conservatism on that front for decades, allowing sex-negative feminists and pro-censorship campaigners into his fold?

It’s a question that press gallery journalists should be asking.

In recent months, Brown’s leadership seems to have been undermined by conservative social forces masquerading as progressive elements.

On this matter, it’s worth noting that the Liberal candidate for Bradfield, Paul Fletcher, was Richard Alston’s senior adviser in 1999 when Alston as communications and information technology minister was attempting to censor the internet. Whether Fletcher believed in what Alston was doing is another matter but the thing is, yet another candidate from a non-Labor party who is running in these by-elections has form when it comes to internet filtering and social engineering.

That’s not something that can be levelled at the Sex Party candidates or at the phantoms of free speech, the Liberal Democratic Party, also running in both by-elections. Patten contested a seat in the ACT Legislative Assembly in 1992 in a loose arrangement of candidates calling themselves the Hare Clark Independents. If, as a response to Labor’s smugness in refusing to stand any candidates, the voters of Bradfield and Higgins decide to cast a protest vote against the Liberals’ self-interest and the Greens’ social conservatism, the Sex Party may well be a surprise beneficiary.

The Weekend Australian, November 7-8, 2009

This is why, on one hand, the 10-year-old state Labor Government is becoming nervous, while on the other Malcolm Turnbull – aware of the role Queensland must play if he is to become prime minister – is effusive in his praise for the LNP. Indeed, for the Opposition Leader, the arguments for a federal merger are “very powerful” and “very compelling”.

Turnbull’s unambiguous support for the LNP follows a month of twists and turns in Queensland’s political landscape. Premier Anna Bligh and the ALP are reeling from the defection of backbencher Ronan Lee, who narrowly holds an inner-city Brisbane seat. Lee has turned his back on Labor to become Queensland’s first MP for the Greens.

Only six months ago, Bligh was the picture of confidence when Newspoll, published by this newspaper, showed a seemingly undefeatable Labor Party enjoying a dizzy 60 per cent of two-party support. Queensland Labor was high-fiving at the seemingly successful leadership transition from Peter Beattie to Bligh. But Bligh’s buoyancy and authority have come to a thumping stop.

The September Newspoll showed Queensland Opposition Leader Lawrence Springborg and his LNP neck and neck with a Labor Party whose support since then appears to be in free fall.
It must be extremely worrying for Bligh to realise that, in the Sunshine State, Labor’s primary vote stands at 38 per cent, the lowest Newspoll result for Labor in polling history.

In comparison, the LNP leads Labor at 42per cent. It’s a nauseating scenario for Labor strategists who have consistently championed the Just Vote 1 strategy in Queensland’s optional preferential voting system. If Labor continues to trail the LNP on the primary vote, the party will be forced to undo a decade of work it has put in to successfully convincing numbers of Queensland voters not to pass on a preference.

It will also mean that Labor in Queensland will have to look to the Greens for preferences: the Greens, who are demanding a stop to the construction of the controversial Traveston dam and who are demanding the state government promote the solar energy industry.

Ironically, Springborg has already adopted the above policy positions as his own, making it even harder for Bligh and Labor to do a U-turn without looking panicked, unstable and playing into Springborg’s hands. With the LNP surging in confidence and gaining in the polls, its little wonder that, after months of dillydallying,

The federal Liberal apparatchiks and powerbrokers suddenly moved at lightning speed and ratified the LNP as the official Queensland division of the Liberal Party, with federal parliamentary leader Turnbull one of its strongest advocates. The cells of discontent over themerger, mainly disgruntled factional chiefs fearful of disempowerment, are noticeably quiet.

Any suggestion that Springborg, as a former Nationals leader, was not the best person to lead the LNP has also evaporated.
Thus a recent Newspoll demonstrated that, even in the heart of Brisbane’s leafy suburbs, the previously anti-merger Liberal Mal Brough trailed Springborg as preferred leader by a significant margin.

The turnaround in Springborg’s fortunes has not been by luck or coincidence. Earlier this year Springborg agreed to be re-recruited as Opposition Leader on a guarantee that he would get rock-solid support from both the Nationals and Liberals to merge into one united party offering one set of policies with one candidate in each seat.

It’s a decision, a commitment and an achievement that hasn’t only turned the political tide, but has caused Queensland Labor to try to change its strategy.

To considerable fanfare, Bligh has tried to re-create her Government with a multimillion-dollar advertising campaign, courtesy of the taxpayer, to promote a new vision dubbed Q2.
Labor’s party faithful suddenly materialised at stands in shopping centres clad in Q2 T-shirts, proudly handing out flyers, part of a strategy that was supposed to re-launch Labor in Queensland.
But Q2 fell flat after it was revealed the plan looked similar to a document trumped by doomed former NSW Labor premier Morris Iemma.

Bligh, who now finds herself on the back foot, is sounding more like an Opposition leader than a Premier. She recently attacked Springborg as spineless and lazy, charges that have proved hard to stick. And she referred Springborg to the Speaker of Queensland’s one-house parliament for using a parliamentary crest on a newsletter.

All this smacks of desperation. Voters in Queensland are unlikely to put up with personal politics and trivial pursuits when the state is experiencing a crisis in health care and infrastructure.
If Labor is to be re-elected in Queensland, Bligh will need to produce a much stronger arsenal than dobbing in and name-calling.

Who knows, if he had become leader in June 2006, it could have been him and not Kevin Rudd sitting in the Prime Minister’s seat in the House of Representatives today. But then prime minister John Howard would have none of that and as we say, the rest is history.

Tomorrow, Costello is launching his memoirs.

If the leaks and extracts are indicative of the book as a whole,  while he makes a number of useful fiscal and economic suggestions, Costello’s co-authored memoirs doesn’t resolve much at all.

Why, for example, didn’t he have the bottle to challenge Howard for the federal Liberal leadership, and why wasn’t he willing to be conscripted to replace Howard and now Brendan Nelson?

To put it mildly, Costello’s latest equivocations will not enhance his public and political reputation. Indeed, rather than buying the book, many punters might think that the $55 may be more usefully spent on a donation to the Salvation Army.

It seems highly likely Costello will not challenge Nelson, which means that he won’t be written into the history books for leading Australia.

But as long as he remains in federal parliament, there is still a chance Costello could be conscripted to the leadership. Think of Kim Beazley, who despite his many, many protestations to the contrary, was co-opted to the leadership  in his case, yet again.

When Costello was in his 20s, many thought it was his destiny to be Liberal leader. Most now forget that, rather like his brother Tim, in his final years at school and then as a University student, he enthralled the young Christians with his passionate dissertations on the meaning of scripture. Now it seems Costello’s manifest destiny to lead was not written in the books after all.

It is time, therefore, for the Opposition in Canberra to look beyond Costello and think about who is going to lead them to the next election.

The primary consideration in this must be: who can most effectively help the Liberal Party and their very minor federal partner, the Nationals, win the next election?

The Rudd Government isn’t doing that well: interest rates and inflation are high by Australian standards, the 2008 federal budget did little to address key economic issues, they are raising taxes in many areas (something we haven’t been used to in the last 11 or so years), grocery and fuel prices are high, incomes are stagnant, house prices are plummeting and foreign policy is directionless. There is a growing awareness that the Prime Minister promised much in Opposition but is delivering far below expectations.

Yet the federal Opposition has made little headway. This is largely because instead of honing in on the vacillation and weaknesses of the Rudd Government, attention  has focused on the problems of the Liberal Party federal leadership.
If the federal Coalition is to be seen as a viable alternative, this can’t be allowed to continue.

Previously I have been a supporter of Nelson. But after the Liberals poor performance in the recent Mayo by-election, it saddens me to have to say he seems to have gone beyond his use-by date.

For whatever reasons, Nelson’s poll figures are dismal, his impact nowhere to be seen, and under his leadership, the Opposition is going backwards.

Senior Liberals need to learn from history and not make the same mistake they made with Howard in 2006: someone needs to tell him that it is time to go, not with malice but with a realisation that the election can be won by the Opposition in 2010, but not with Nelson at the helm.

So, who should or could he his replacement: Deputy Opposition Leader Julie Bishop, families and community services spokesman Tony Abbott, health spokesman Joe Hockey, justice spokesman Christopher Pyne, or environment spokesman Greg Hunt?

All good and worthy frontline commanders for their party certainly, and, for one or two of them, the leadership may well be theirs one day, but let’s face it, there is now only one person that the Opposition can seriously turn to Malcolm Turnbull, Treasury spokesman and Member for Wentworth.

Like him or dislike him, Turnbull is the goods: tough, successful, ambitious, able to attract support from the business community, well connected, articulate, intelligent and media savvy.
But crucially, Turnbull has something no one else in the Opposition has (not even Costello): Labor voters like him and want him to be Opposition leader. Last time I looked, the Liberals lost the last election; therefore it is Labor voters they need to attract in 2010.

Succeeding with their own base won’t be enough for the conservatives to regain the federal Government benches; they must attract votes from the other column.
In this respect, Turnbull is a proven vote winner. He even managed a swing to him in his seat of Wentworth at the last federal general election, a day that most Liberals want to forget because of the strength of the swing against them.

Since then, The Australian’s Newspoll and other polls have shown that while Costello is the favoured choice for Liberal leader among those who identify themselves as Liberal voters (with Turnbull coming second in this group), Turnbull outpolls Costello as preferred leader among those who identify as Labor voters. Nelson comes third in both categories.

Many would argue that forcing Costello to stay against his will would have been the worst thing the Liberal Party could have done. Turnbull has the desperation to win; Costello clearly didn’t and apparently does not.
If the party were to unite behind Turnbull, they could emerge from the past 12 months in a strong position and win the next federal election in 2010.

Unlike Costello and Nelson, Turnbull has a proven track record as far as courage is concerned. As Gerard Henderson reveals in the current issue of The Sydney Institute Quarterly, Turnbull was _ apart from Costello himself _ the first Liberal to eyeball Howard and tell him unambiguously that it was in Howard’s best interests and that of the federal coalition for him to go. This occurred in June 2007.

The next few weeks will be a test for the Liberal Party. The media, business community, and the Australian public will be watching to see just how committed they are to being in government or remaining in Opposition. The longer they delay the inevitable fall of Nelson and his replacement by his only logical successor, the more they will demonstrate their willingness to remain outside the winner’s circle.

The federal Liberal Party should learn from the experience of the Queensland Nationals and Liberals. It was difficult for them to overcome decades of bitterness and unite to offer the voters of Queensland one conservative force. But under the leadership of Lawrence Springborg they have, and already potential voters are responding.

At long last, the non-Labor forces in Queensland saw the need to act decisively, and they did. In the same way, the Liberal Party in Canberra must act, and act swiftly.

The Australian people want to see some positive signs of life and momentum in the Liberal Party. One thing’s for sure, Turnbull will get the Opposition the positive attention they presently lack and make them competitive again.