ON FRIDAY Tony Abbott was asked on Melbourne radio about Peter Spencer, the farmer who was up the pole. Spencer was up the pole, not eating, because of government restrictions on felling trees at his property at Shannons Flat, near Cooma.
Abbott has yet to detail his climate change policy, but has indicated that it will involve land management - more trees. Would Abbott's policy not lead to more Peter Spencers?
''Certainly that is the issue that he was up the pole about, but I don't think you do have to lock up the land in that way,'' Abbott replied.
''The problem with what happened to Peter Spencer was that he was subject to penalties and to prohibitions. I think the best way to proceed here is with incentives and encouragement … there's a world of difference between farmers choosing to do something with otherwise unproductive land and having otherwise productive land locked away with green tape.''
What's Abbott saying here? For a start, Abbott's language immediately jumps to the side of Peter Spencer as the victim. There is no discussion about the rights or wrongs of his case, or whether governments need to assert themselves onto private land to manage for the broader good.
No, Spencer is ''subject'' to ''penalties'' and ''prohibitions''. These things ''happened'' to him. Therefore, the listener must ask, who is making it happen? Who is setting penalties and prohibitions and locking up land? And the answer, of course, is the government, and that is where the fault must lie. Spencer is fine.
During the rise of Pauline Hanson in 1996, Abbott considered the question of whether the public could be mistaken in its beliefs. His answer was: not really. ''When 40,000 people call a radio talkback host such as Alan Jones on Sydney's 2UE to support Pauline Hanson, Australia has a problem,'' Abbott wrote in The Australian. ''The fault, however, lies not with our citizens but with a generation of leaders who have failed to create popular support for the policies they believe in.''
Australian people were not especially intolerant, they just ''resented constantly being told there's something wrong with them and their country''.
Abbott, therefore, spokesman for John Howard and now Leader of the Opposition, tells us that if you are a certain type of person, he will not be informing you that you are in the wrong. You could be up a pole, starving yourself, on an argument of dubious merit. You could be convinced that rising carbon dioxide emissions are good for the environment. But if you broadly identify as ''Middle Australia'', you'll mostly hear what you want to hear.
A corollary in much of what Abbott says is that if you are that certain type of person, you will not be imposed upon. You will not be hit with taxes or restrictions on living the life that you want. No, if the government does intrude into your life, it will be to entice you with incentives and encouragement.
This argument sets the Coalition up to harangue any suggestions for tax reform that come out of the Henry review in the coming months. It also begs the question of how it will pay for its incentives and encouragements.
And the third, and related, idea is that if this pitch to middle Australia throws up internal contradictions, then let's not spend time worrying about them.
Taking Abbott's sympathy for Spencer to its logical conclusion, for instance, would presumably be that something is awry with current land-clearing laws. If you changed those laws, then more farmers like Spencer would be able to clear more land. But don't you want to plant more trees to soak up carbon dioxide? Isn't that going to be part of your climate change policy? Never mind.
Likewise Abbott, who derided the school halls component of the Government's stimulus as ''very low-grade spending'', is happy to announce his first spending commitment last week as $750 million a year for more weeding and pest control.
In 1996, Abbott argued that a ''vast gulf'' had opened up between ''government ministers, university professors, senior journalists and top bureaucrats'' on one side and millions of ordinary Australians on the other on the topic of multiculturalism. In this election year, we will no doubt hear more from ministers, professors, journalists and bureaucrats picking holes in Abbott's arguments. But they're not the people he is trying to talk to.
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