<\/a>Yes, Abbott won. True, Labor also lost quite wilfully and brilliantly. But Abbott also won, and he did it by using a political tactic that\u2019s new in Australia.<\/p>\n

During the election, Rudd gave it a name, the \u201c3 line slogan\u201d. But that doesn’t capture its psychological force. A military analogy does. In former centuries, armies besieged cities protected by massive systems of thick walls and bastions. How did they break in? With a humble cannon ball. Compared to a well-made city bastion, a single cannon ball is a bit a joke. But fire one per minute at a weak point in a wall, day after day, week after week, and it inevitably collapses. Abbott used language like this. His history as a boxer would have helped him get the point. Looking for a weak point in Labor\u2019s defences, he lighted upon the apparent incompetence in the \u201cPink Batts\u201d program, where four contractors died while installing home insulation in one of Labor\u2019s signature stimulus programs.
\nHe thereafter inserted the words \u201cincompetent\u201d, \u201cfailure\u201d, or \u201cmess\u201d into every single description of his opponents, with no exceptions. There he was every night on the news. Bang. Bang. Bang. Each shot not making much difference, and, taken alone, quite ridiculous and irritating. But, banging away, day after day, week after week, month after month, he demolished the government\u2019s credibility. It became impossible for the public to separate the ideas \u201cLabor\u201d and \u201cincompetent\u201d. It became the ceaseless riff of his politics. \u201cBUDGET FAILURE. DEBT FAILURE. SCHOOL FAILURE. ROOF BATTS FAILURE. BORDER FAILURE.\u201d said a Liberal party brochure stuffed in my letter box.
\nOf course, it rubbed off on him too. At one stage, I believe, he was the most unpopular opposition leader in Australian history. Many questioned his chances. But it didn\u2019t matter because it also rubbed off where it was counted, on Labor. When he unexpectedly went silent, just 2-3 weeks before the election, his ratings did an amazing thing. No longer dragged down by his own negativity, he levitated decisively in the polls. That magic won\u2019t be lost on conservatives and we can expect a lot more of this method.
\nHow can progressive politicians respond to this tactic? The military analogy gives a clue. In former times, besieged armies knew they couldn\u2019t just sit behind their walls waiting for the artillery to do its work. They had to come out fighting and destroy the enemy\u2019s siege works. That\u2019s why sieges, paradoxically, so often became a series of bloody pitched battles.
\nThat might be the secret for defeating future campaigns based on the tactic of relentless 3-line cannon balls. Come out fighting and destroy your enemy\u2019s positions. This is precisely what Labor refused to do. Instead it lay down supinely and let Abbott win the public argument every time. It let Abbott frame the home insulation scheme as a \u201cdisaster\u201d. It let him frame the carbon tax as \u201ca great big tax on everything\u201d. It let him frame school stimulus spending as a \u201cschool hall rip-off\u201d. Gillard worked on the basis that her government\u2019s successes would speak for themselves. In terms of raw achievement, her government\u2019s legislative success was remarkable. But that\u2019s not how politics works. Abbott\u2019s victory demonstrates how vital it is to come out fighting and actively defeat an opponent\u2019s framing of the debate.
\nFor example: what if Labor had framed the carbon tax as the \u201cclean industry levy\u201d; or the school stimulus package as \u201cgreat schools for great kids\u201d; or the home insulation scheme as \u201cAustralia\u2019s most successful home renovation program\u201d? And then repeated that framing relentlessly until it owned those ideas in the public mind.
\nIt\u2019s been 9 years since George Lakoff, a linguistics professor at the University of California, Berkeley, wrote Don\u2019t Think of an Elephant: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate<\/i>. He wanted to educate progressives about how conservatives systematically framed their language around people\u2019s hopes, fears and prejudices: \u201cWar on Terror\u201d, \u201ctax relief\u201d, \u201cpro-life\u201d and so on. Tony Abbot learnt this lesson well and applied it with single-minded force and consistency in this election. As much as Labor\u2019s internal divisions, it won him government.
\nThe least we should expect from politicians is that they be good at politics. Our progressive politicians, and Labor in particular, need to get acquainted with the concept of framing and understand that it\u2019s what politics has always been about. In future, they need to get the policies right and then come out fighting for the framing that wins the public debate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yes, Abbott won. True, Labor also lost quite wilfully and brilliantly. But Abbott also won, and he did it by using a political tactic that\u2019s new in Australia. During the election, Rudd gave it a name, the \u201c3 line slogan\u201d. But that doesn’t capture its psychological force. A military analogy does. In former centuries, armies […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[11,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-622","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-marketing-and-communications","category-strategy-2","has-post-thumbnail","fallback-thumbnail"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pac6ss-a2","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.enablingchange.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/622","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.enablingchange.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.enablingchange.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.enablingchange.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.enablingchange.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=622"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.enablingchange.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/622\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.enablingchange.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=622"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.enablingchange.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=622"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.enablingchange.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=622"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}