Tony Abbott:
The People’s PM?
by Robyn Hollander
In 2010 Kevin Rudd began his first resignation speech as Prime Minister with these words,
‘I was elected by the people of this country …’.
It was a refrain he reiterated until his triumphant return to the leadership in June 2013. He was the peoples’ democratically elected leader who, by rights, could only be removed by the people.
In this narrative, the dramatic events which resulted in his replacement by Julia Gillard were the product of illegitimate machinations of ‘faceless men’. These unknown machine apparatchiks, operating from the bowels of the party organisation, had orchestrated a late night coup which resulted in the removal of a democratically elected Prime Minister.
This was not strictly true, of course.
Those who moved against him were not anonymous; they were MPs, members of the Labor Caucus, the self same caucus that voted him to the position in the first place. It was something it had every right to do.
Such niceties mattered not a whit especially when it came to justifying Rudd’s ongoing campaign against his successor. He had been the people’s choice and the people had been blindsided by Gillard’s knife in the back. The bitter leadership contest, which characterised Gillard’s tenure, had become a battle between ‘the Australian people and the Labor Party’. And in some ways, although not technically accurate, Rudd had been chosen by the voters.
Never truly accepted within the party, he had systematically built his popularity, not just with the people of Griffith (who had elected him six times) but with the community at large through his regular appearances on morning television, his relentless pursuit of the coalition government, and his ‘people power’ campaign strategies. For much of his time in public life, he was the people’s choice according to the opinion polls, both as preferred PM and also as preferred leader of his party.
In his first major address of 2015, Tony Abbott mounted the same pitch in defence of his failing leadership. While he acknowledged that party rooms chose leaders,
‘once they’ve gone to an election, things have changed. It’s the people that hire and, frankly, it’s the people that should fire.’
The people had elected a coalition government and de facto, they had elected him. The election had transformed him into our choice and it would be up to us to remove him at the next election if we so wished.
The problem for Abbott is not just that his appeal is structurally flawed — the voters had not had a say in his elevation to the leadership, it had been in the gift of his parliamentary colleagues just as Rudd’s had been. It is also deeply problematic because he is not and has never been very popular with the electorate.
Opinion polls are the only real measure we have of the leaders’ standing with voters, and they consistently show Mr Abbott’s unpopularity when compared with his party colleagues. Roy Morgan research regularly polls voters on their leadership preferences and the results are revealing.
In September 2008 when Malcolm Turnbull was elected party leader, Abbott scored a modest 7% as preferred party leader behind Julie Bishop on 8% (and Turnbull on 20%).
A year later, in October 2009, he had outstripped Turnbull, by a single percentage point but was still less popular than Joe Hockey on 30%. After winning the party leadership by a single vote two months later, the public had still not warmed to him — Hockey was still more popular with voters at large — although Abbott was, for the first time, the most popular with coalition voters. It took a little longer for him to become the most preferred leader of his party with voters more generally and he attained this status in the first half of 2010 when he marginally beat Hockey for the crown. His love affair with the public didn’t last, although he remained popular amongst liberal voters until Kevin Rudd replaced Julia Gillard in 2013.
Even as Prime Minister, Abbott has failed to sustain the position of preferred leader of his own party. Throughout 2014, offered a choice of leader (as opposed to party) those polled consistently chose someone else, with Turnbull most commonly topping the list. The most recent poll, taken before the Sir Prince Phillip misstep and the Queensland state election, put Abbott third on 14%, behind Bishop on 26% and Turnbull on 36%.
Abbott is attempting to shore up his failing leadership with appeals to electoral legitimacy, but unlike Rudd, he has never enjoyed sustained personal popularity. Indeed The Australian recently declared ‘… Mr Abbott’s unpopularity is an ingrained political fact’ and further opined ‘Voters preferred him in the 2013 federal election not because they adored him but because he represented an escape from the chaos and squalid politics of the Rudd-Gillard period’.
This makes his efforts to parlay support for his party into support for his leadership unhelpful and he might do better to look to other strategies to improve his long-term prospects.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ROBYN HOLLANDER
Dr Robyn Hollander is Associate Professor in the School of Government and International Relations at Griffith University.
She has long standing interests in federalism and regulation which stem back to her doctoral studies. While that research focused on housing policy in Australia, and in particular the work of the then Queensland Housing Commission, two relationships were unavoidable; that between the commonwealth and the states and between governments and markets. These relationships have continued to inform her research agenda which has spanned several policy areas including the environment, competition, and higher education.
Her current work centres around issues of moral policy. She has published in a range of well regarded journals including Publius, The Australian Journal of Political Science, The Australian Journal of Public Administration and The Australian Journal of Politics and History.
