The Labor government, in office since 1983, had boasted that it would shoot holes in Fightback! from day one. But when it finally had the document in its hands the response was a stunned and eerie silence. The one man who might have led an attack, former treasurer Paul Keating, was by then cooling his heels on the backbench after unsuccessfully challenging Bob Hawke for the leadership. Keating had what it took to head off the challenge. From that moment, the whole tenor of the battle changed. Whereas the government under Hawke had sought to disentangle the economics and attack elements on a piecemeal basis, Keating saw the issue purely and simply as a political fight. He mocked Hewson’s economic expertise, calling him the “feral abacus,” and in one memorable barrage delivered a killer of a line: “If you don’t understand it, don’t vote for it; if you do understand it, you’d never vote for it.” In a sense, it was that repeated message which turned the tide: Hewson hammered away at policy, Keating at politics, and politics triumphed in Keating’s ultimate victory at the “unwinnable” election in 1993. The defeat effectively ended Hewson’s brief political career. There was always an element of calculated risk in going public with such fine detail, and Hewson’s refreshing boldness was hailed at the time. Political commentator and former Labor adviser, Richard Farmer, wrote that Fightback! represented “the most honest and thorough-going attempt to identify [key] problems and to call for the policy change that’s necessary to deal with those problems, of any document that’s ever been produced in this country…” Farmer praised Hewson for putting aside short-term political consequences and calling important issues on their merits. The election result in 1993 effectively buried Fightback! in its original and amended iterations. But its legacy continued to influence political life, most notably in the adoption of “small target” election campaigns by oppositions, especially Jeff Kennett in Victoria in 1992 and John Howard federally in 1996. Both leaders saw the dangers of placing too much detail on the table. Once in government, though, Howard resurrected the key element in the package, the goods and services tax, took it to the 1998 election, and ensured that it became part of the policy landscape. •
Posted on: Fri, 29 Nov 2013 05:45:30 +0000
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