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September 7th, 2013 
Peter Nolan
Updated
Voters have awarded Tony Abbott victory in the election, but for the man who wants to be known as the “infrastructure Prime Minister”, the hard work on the road to his vision of a stronger Australia is only just beginning.
From stopping asylum seekers coming to Australia by boat to repealing the carbon and mining taxes, Mr Abbott must now walk the talk on a swag of defining promises, including his costly paid parental leave scheme that is not favoured by business and some in his own party room.
While he rounded on Labor over budget debt and deficit in opposition, the state of the economy will now sit squarely on his government’s shoulders.
At the same time, he must shift gears from being one of Australia’s most effective opposition leaders to standing at the helm of the nation – while also managing potential conflict with the National Party and leading a team that contains a raft of fresh-faced backbenchers.
Mr Abbott is a Rhodes scholar who briefly trained as a Catholic priest. Before entering politics in 1994, he worked as a journalist and Liberal adviser and also served as the executive director of Australians for Constitutional Monarchy.
A disciplined athlete with a polarising political style, he served as a senior minister in John Howard’s government and became Liberal leader in late 2009, ousting Malcolm Turnbull by just one vote.
Mr Abbott is likely to draw on lessons from the Howard era as he enters the top job, though he will face a different set of challenges.
He has promised a “no surprises” government that seeks a happy marriage between liberal and conservative traditions.
He has pledged to strengthen the economy, cut red tape, lower taxes, reduce the size of government and give the states more autonomy where possible.
His government will also be shaped by his “signature” paid parental leave policy, a push to restore the private health insurance rebate and a vow to increase defence spending.
Abbott’s vision for his Government
“Today, hundreds of thousands of people would have voted for the Liberal and National parties for the first time in their lives,” he said while claiming election victory before a cheering crowd in Sydney.
“I give you all this assurance: we will not let you down.
“I am both proud and humbled as I shoulder the duties of government. The time for campaigning has passed, the time for governing has arrived, I pledge myself to the service of our country.”
Mr Abbott has said that on day one, he will instruct the public service to prepare the carbon tax repeal legislation and give the direction needed to start his border protection plan.
Within 100 days, he has promised legislation to abolish the carbon tax and to abolish the mining tax would be before Parliament.’
He has said that by the end of his first term, the budget will be “on track to a believable surplus” – a marked shift from previous commitments to have the budget back in the black within a first term.
Mr Abbott, who has championed strategies to improve the lives of Indigenous Australians since his days on the backbench, has promised to push to for Indigenous constitutional recognition from next year.
He also wants an Indigenous affairs minister added to his frontbench, and has vowed to continue to spend a week each year in remote communities.
Key challenges: The economy, carbon and asylum seekers
Mr Abbott admits Australians will be tough on him if he fails to deliver on his pledges.
His biggest challenge is likely to be the economy – he and Treasurer Joe Hockey will inherit a budget deficit of about $30 billion.
Mr Abbott believes cutting red and green tape, having a firm fiscal strategy and supporting private enterprise will help reverse what he calls a budget “emergency”.
He has also promised “modest” industrial relations reforms. His critics fear that is a thinly veiled attempt to breathe new life into the much-maligned ghost of WorkChoices, though Mr Abbott has promised that WorkChoices is “dead, buried and cremated”.
After years spent attacking Labor’s economic management, ensuring the budget consistently moves towards a surplus under his Government will be a key factor in determining Mr Abbott’s credibility.
So too will be his oft-repeated pledge to “stop the boats”. His plan involves putting a senior military officer in charge of securing Australia’s borders, continued offshore processing, turning boats back when safe to do so and buying boats off people smugglers in Indonesia.
The challenges in this area are many and implementing the policy will directly affect relations with some of Australia’s most crucial neighbours, particularly Indonesia.
Signs of success will need to be swift, to avoid political damage.
Another of Mr Abbott’s core election promises is to repeal the carbon tax – indeed, he characterised the election as a “referendum” on the issue.
Mr Abbott has long opposed pricing carbon through any kind of emissions trading scheme – in fact, it was Mr Turnbull’s support for an ETS that underpinned 2009’s Liberal leadership spill.
Until mid-2014, the Senate will remain under the control of Labor and the Greens, which have both indicated they would block a move to scrap the carbon tax.
Mr Abbott has left open the option of a double dissolution election if his plan faces opposition in the Senate – though that would be a high-risk strategy that could leave the Coalition worse off.
He favours a Direct Action Plan that involves paying companies to increase their energy efficiency and funding for schemes to replenish soil carbons and plant 20 million trees.
Mr Abbott has conceded his policy may not succeed in meeting Australia’s target of a 5 per cent reduction in carbon emissions by 2020, and has said he would not spend more than what has been budgeted – $3.2 billion over four years according to a 2010 document – in order to do so.
Walking away from the target would be bound to generate intense debate within Parliament and the community.
Mr Abbott has also pledged to remove the 30 per cent mining tax introduced by Labor, which he says only serves to drive investment overseas.
The long-term fate of another signature Labor policy – the school funding reforms commonly known as Gonski – remains unclear under the Coalition Government.
Mr Abbott has guaranteed the reforms for at least four years, but plans to change the legislation underpinning the reforms to axe the powers of the federal education minister.
The Coalition will also seek to make public schools more independent, which according to its Real Solutions booklet, would provide “simpler budgeting and resources allocation and more autonomy in decision making”.
Mr Abbott has said nothing would be off-limits to a post-election Commission of Audit, prompting Labor to warn that the Coalition has plans for deep cuts and changes after the dust settles on the election.
Challenges of the world stage and internal party politics
Mr Abbott will also face hurdles away from the policy front. He was elevated to the top job just days after Australia took over the leadership of the United Nations Security Council, and ahead of next year’s G20 meeting in Brisbane.
The international response to the Syrian civil war will be the issue on which Mr Abbott cuts his foreign affairs teeth.
In the final week of the election campaign he described the crisis as involving “baddies versus baddies” – a description Kevin Rudd pounced on as proof Mr Abbott does not have the foreign policy nous to be PM.
Mr Abbott will need to prove that criticism wrong, and show he can deal effectively with world leaders and grow Australia’s relations with key nations such as Indonesia, China and the US.
Much closer to home, he will also have to manage potential conflict with the National Party on issues including free trade, foreign investment, agricultural policy such as wheat deregulation, and infrastructure – many of Mr Abbott’s roads plans, for instance, are city-centric.
In addition, Mr Abbott will need to handle a host of backbenchers who are learning the ropes while in office and vulnerable to making mistakes because of their inexperience.
He will also need to cut down his 32-member strong ministry and the number of parliamentary secretaries. Under current law a maximum of 30 ministers and 15 parliamentary secretaries are allowed, though those laws could be changed.
Mr Abbott’s critics claim his religious beliefs render him politically regressive on social issues like abortion, same-sex marriage and stem-cell research. They blast his past description of climate change as “crap” and his perceived views on women, as former prime minister Julia Gillard did in her blistering misogyny speech.
They also criticise his 2010 remark in an interview with 7.30 that only “carefully prepared scripted remarks” can be “taken absolutely as the gospel truth”.
However, his supporters describe him as a loyal man of integrity and solid ethics who sticks to his convictions, listens to people and places high value on society, family and community.
At any rate, the Australian people have voted to give Mr Abbott the opportunity to bring his vision of a fairer, freer, more prosperous nation to fruition.
How long his honeymoon lasts depends on a number of factors, though he has a solid parliamentary majority and a platform built on restrained expectations working in his favour.
Topics:
federal-elections,
elections,
government-and-politics,
federal-parliament,
electoral-system,
parliament,
federal-government,
australia
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Source Article from http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-09-07/road-ahead-for-abbott-government/4942822
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