Would you like your spin shaken or stirred, or both, and would that be in a clockwise or anticlockwise direction?

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-05-24/cassidy---libs/4709200

"Andrew Bolt, who criticised Abbott this week in the Herald Sun for "campaigning as Labor-lite, without the stuff ups"."


"Former Labor leader, Mark Latham, brought an interesting perspective to this debate in the Australian Financial Review on Thursday when he wrote that the Whitlam and Hawke governments had delivered essential services, like superannuation and Medicare "through the collective resources of the state".
 
He argued the Rudd and Gillard governments had continued that tradition with DisabilityCare, paid parental leave, public housing reform and the NBN.

Faced with that, he contended that Abbott in his budget reply speech had "rubber-stamped most of Labor's measures and added his own burst of profligacy".

Latham argued the Coalition's strategy amounted to waving the white flag and conceding the battle for ideological supremacy to Labor."


"former federal minister Neil Brown...wrote in part: "…you have to hand it to Tony Abbott for so deftly finessing the Coalition industrial relations policy that it is now well on its way to being a non-issue at the coming election".

Consider the implications of that. Abbott is being praised by an old conservative warrior for actually coming up with something that is "a non-issue at the coming election".

Imagine if that caught on. What a policy-free-zone the major political parties would be, with an overly-cautious do-nothing bunch of politicians taking up valuable space in Canberra."


What was shaping up as the battle of all battles of the spin doctors in September is finally starting to revert to some modicum of rationality. Until the last two weeks or so it has all still been about spinning the electorate in a clockwise direction by casting the government as incompetent and about to fall, and this being inevitable. Suddenly people are beginning to think about the facts.

It began with Abbott's budget reply representing a small revelation of LNP intentions. Then there were rumblings in the business community about new taxes, that is, raising the GST and the paid-parental leave impost. Now criticisms from unlikely sources such as Andrew Bolt, who is absolutely offensively biased and should not be allowed to publish anything because he is no more or less the mouthpiece of Rupert Murdoch.

If we take the quote here as gospel then the only conceivable reason to elect an LNP government would be the competence card which is almost pure clockwise spin, and should be easily dispelled.

Latham says what you would expect, but he is naive to talk about 'white flags'. Coalition governments do not wave white flags. They pretend to as a tactical move and then inevitably sneak their preferred policies in through the back door.

This is our first election since the GFC, the effects of which are still being felt. The GFC polarised electorates in the Western Democracies. France elected a socialist president while Mme Le Penn gained a 20% stake. Progressive forces retained control of the White House. Now it is Australia's turn.

Essentially what has happened is that the GFC starkly revealed the neoliberal ideology as a failed ideology. the forces of the right have refused to accept this and have gone into denial mode, taking a large step further to the right, and now occupy the lunatic fringe, insisting on a reversion to business as usual, and deploying the usual tactics of smoke and mirrors with copious amounts of clockwise spin. 

If you doubt that his has happened here look at the actual record of the government and compare it to Abbott's baseless rantings.  

In this country government falls to the party that occupies the centre. It remains to be seen whether the ALP can step into the void. If not we are doomed to be governed by the lunatic fringe.