Peter van Onselen, Paul Kelly, Tony Abbott and the pleasures of chimerical remarkable rockets ...

(Above: Walter Crane's illustration for Oscar Wilde's The Remarkable Rocket, found here in a piece "On the Loom of Sorrow": Eros and Logos in Oscar Wilde's Fairy Tales).

Among the more wonderful sights this weekend is Peter van Onselen having conniptions, or kittens, about Tony Abbott and the fourth estate, in Abbott's scheme is perfectly Liberal.

While some journalists have gone around in a muddle of confusion, because Abbott refuses to call his levy on big business a "great big new tax", at a time when Australia is so burdened with debt Queensland is about to default this weekend, van Onselen is outraged that they can't understand bribing the electorate with a bag of boiled lollies and dollops of cash in an outburst of middle class welfarism is in fact perfectly Liberal.

The visceral response directed at Tony Abbott by sections of the fourth estate since the release of his big business-funded paid parental leave scheme has been remarkable.

Abbott has been accused of selling out Liberal Party principles by wanting to slug big business with a levy. He has been accused of political opportunism. He has been ridiculed for changing his mind on the need for such a scheme. Abbott has also been charged with making policy on the run.

Oh the shame, the unfairness of it all. Sure it might be true, but van Onselen can't bring himself to call the levy a tax:

Even if you don't accept my view about small versus big business as the informal core of the Liberal Party, what is the difference between Julia Gillard taking on the unions, as she did with the teachers union over her My Schools website, and Abbott taking on big business over his funding levy?

For the sake of the lord, and accepting that we must render unto Caesar what is Caesar's, it's a tax. Say it, it isn't so hard. And forget this kind of righteous blather:

I don't recall a plethora of articles about Labor selling out its core principles by the journalists who are now attacking Abbott for supposedly having done so.

Only if you don't get out much, and don't read The Australian that often - Think. Again. - because it's full of stories about Labor selling short, selling long, and selling out.

Van Onselen harks back to the golden days of the nineteen fifties, wherein the picket fence under Ming the merciless reigned supreme, unless you had leftist tendencies:

Before Robert Menzies founded the Liberal Party in 1945, he made speech after speech about the party's commitment to "the forgotten people", railing against the vested interests of big business and the union movement. While big business might now feel forgotten by Gillard and her new Fair Work Act, the more forgotten quotient of the population in recent years (and that includes those shamefully forgotten by the Howard government) have been working women (and men) in need of adequate parental leave assistance. Abbott wants to redress the failure.

You know, those hard done by people earning north of 100k a year, up to 150k a year. By golly, they do it tough. What a stunning government failure.

Which nonetheless begs the question of how Abbott, as an astute historian of Liberal values, and worshipper at the shrine of Ming, managed to declare when he was employment minister in 2002, "Compulsory paid maternity leave? Over this government's dead body."

It's the wording that does it, so dramatic, like leaving a horse's head in the bed of a maternity leave advocate to make a point. But suddenly, confronted with a chance to embrace the women's vote, and make mischief with the Labor party's maternity leave policy, the Liberals are now social visionaries, and have returned to Ming the merciless as the source of all goodness:

The notion that Liberals aren't supposed to embrace big-picture ideas that promote social policy improvements ignores the words of Menzies when he pointed out that most Australians "see in their children their greatest contribution to the immortality of their race. The home is the foundation of sanity and sobriety; it is the indispensable condition of continuity; its health determines the health of society as a whole."

Well I hate to say it, but if you're in the business of scribbling, a feeble attempt to defend the policy on meaningful sober terms, entirely misses the point, as even that tedious scribbler Paul Kelly understands in Abbott plays a decisive card. It's actually a kind of theatre, of a Brechtian reflexive sort:

This is the week that Tony Abbott positioned himself with Greens leader Bob Brown, the trade unions and radical feminists by embracing a big new tax to finance an excessive parental leave scheme.

The Leader of the Opposition has stolen an icon of the Left. This is a brazen populism that has shocked everybody: the Rudd government is enraged at being outbid, the feminists are agog and incredulous that Abbott has joined their cause, and business is shrill with its denunciations of his economic irresponsibility. Brown caught the mood with his exclamation: "Go, Tony."

You see, it isn't so hard to call it a tax, and a burst of brazen populism. It's what politicians do:

It is a naked bribe with truckloads of money designed to shift female perceptions of Abbott.

Well it might be a naked bribe and sound social policy at the same time, especially if you're on 150k a year, but van Onselen does the cause no good with this specious pleading about the Liberal party wandering in the wilderness, alienated from big business and any decent source of funding:

Unlike the Labor Party, which has a formal affiliation with the union movement, the Liberal Party has no such ties on which it can rely. This is one of the reasons the conservatives sometimes struggle in opposition: they don't have a structured base for funding, recruiting personnel and policy assistance.

Big business certainly has never filled the void. If we are to assign an informal base to the Liberal Party, it would be small business -- the section of the economy Abbott has specifically excluded from having to pay for his parental leave levy.

Actually they have the best form of funding of all - the promise that, on accessing power over taxpayer dollars, they will spend it like confetti to solve the vexing social issues confronting this fair land. Just like Labor. Just like Tweedledum might expect of Tweedledee. Now we now you're hookers, you dinkum Aussie voters, let's get down to arguing about the price ...

And by the end, it's a wondrous sight to see van Onselen quoting the ACTU in support of Abbott's policy. Which is to say that if you're doing 150k a year, you need big business to help pay for small business coverage of your full wage during maternity leave, while if you're doing 30k a year, you'll keep on getting your lavish wage. Sounds fair to me.

Well I hate to keep on quoting Kelly - he's sent me to sleep so often I blame him for my narcolepsy, or is it just hypersomnia? - but quote him I must:

The scale of Abbott's outbid is staggering. Rudd's scheme is set at the minimum wage, runs for 18 weeks and costs $260 million a year. By contrast, Abbott's levy raises $2.7 billion, a multiple of more than 10 times. This betrays a leader psychologically incapable of being a small target whose instinctual political aggression runs across the border of recklessness.

It is a populist leap and another test of Abbott's insight into public opinion. He will campaign ruthlessly to election day that he is doing more than Labor for working mothers. And there is more to come: Abbott also plans to unveil a taxpayer funded scheme to help stay-at-home mothers.

Kelly also makes the logical connection with B. A. Santamaria rather than Bob Menzies:

It is through Santamaria that Abbott has found his way to a leftist stance. This sounds fantastic but only to those ignorant of Santamaria's hostility to pro-market economics and his support for pro-left state intervention in the cause of "little" people, families and a growing population.

This move shows Abbott's emotional preference for Santamaria over Howard.

Actually Howard used to indulge in vote buying and middle class welfarism all the time too, but Kelly understands that when you send out conflicting messages and signals, at least a few people will notice:

Beyond this lie a series of judgments about Abbott. He needs this decision to reap electoral dividends, otherwise his authority is weakened. The gap between the opposition's tighter fiscal policy promise and its list of specific spending commitments will only provoke more scrutiny and criticism. And the tactic of diverting attention from Rudd's hospital plan to Abbott's parental scheme was a one-week wonder that betrays an obsession with retail politics at the cost of long-run political reputation.

A deeper question is: will women conclude that Abbott is sincere or will they see him as a political trickster? Will Abbott's reputation as an authentic who stands up for his beliefs actually be damaged?

Indeed. If only van Onselen had read Kelly's piece before writing his own, he might have come up with a more intelligent defence of Abbott's sudden U-turn and aggrandisement of leftist policies. Quoting the ACTU as the ultimate defence - Abbott couldn't have said it better himself - does nothing to explain the contradictions embedded in this chimera in search of office.

Van Onselen needs to do more than special pleading in his columns, or people reading him will start to Think. Again.

Meanwhile, Abbott continues to set the pace. A bit like Mark Latham, it's a constant wonder - will he self-destruct, immolate and burn, or will he survive and defeat the dullard Rudd? It's more interesting than a high wire act in a circus, or Evel Knievel at Snake River Canyon, and it brings to mind Oscar Wilde's story The Remarkable Rocket:

The Rocket was very damp, so he took a long time to burn. At last, however, the fire caught him.

“Now I am going off!” he cried, and he made himself very stiff and straight. “I know I shall go much higher than the stars, much higher than the moon, much higher than the sun. In fact, I shall go so high that—”

Fizz! Fizz! Fizz! and he went straight up into the air.

“Delightful!” he cried, “I shall go on like this for ever. What a success I am!”

But nobody saw him.

Then he began to feel a curious tingling sensation all over him.

“Now I am going to explode,” he cried. “I shall set the whole world on fire, and make such a noise that nobody will talk about anything else for a whole year.” And he certainly did explode. Bang! Bang! Bang! went the gunpowder. There was no doubt about it.

But nobody heard him, not even the two little boys, for they were sound asleep.

Then all that was left of him was the stick, and this fell down on the back of a Goose who was taking a walk by the side of the ditch.

“Good heavens!” cried the Goose. “It is going to rain sticks”; and she rushed into the water.

“I knew I should create a great sensation,” gasped the Rocket, and he went out.

Oh okay, Abbott might indeed be a durable remarkable rocket, the quote's really more about reminding you that you can read Oscar Wilde's The Happy Prince and Other Tales here at Project Gutenberg, and elsewhere for free on the full to overflowing intertubes. And since we're pro family and the blessings of children at loon pond, it's a reminder that all children should be made to read them, so they can understand and appreciate them when they're older.

I prefer the totally sloppy sentimental ones to the rocket, but hey, I have a soft spot for rockets and pyrotechnic displays in general ...

Keep on spluttering Mr. Abbott ...

(Below: in Greek mythology, the chimera was a monstrous fire-breathing creature, composed of the parts of multiple animals - the body of a lioness, with a snake's head tail, and the head of a goat popping out of the spine - which is to say, Labor party and Green policies grafted on to a snake's head, the body of a rampaging lion, and the political outlook of a goat. It also means hard to believe or difficult to understand, and there's more at the wiki here).