Appar­ently polit­i­cal lead­er­ship is all about unity. Unity is much eas­ier when there’s a com­mon cause involved — par­tic­u­larly a cause of value, or one that peo­ple can unite to believe in.

Tony Abbott doesn’t really get it. In a man­i­festo on his polit­i­cal lead­er­ship he sug­gests being in oppo­si­tion suc­cess­fully is about being in opposition.

Mr Abbott said he would work to bring the party together because it’s eas­ier to man­age a party when they oppose rather than nego­ti­ate with the government.

“The best way to unite a polit­i­cal party is to really go after your oppo­nents, which is what I intend to do,” he told the Nine Net­work today.”

I dis­agree. I think the elec­torate does too.

Suc­cess­ful “oppo­si­tion” doesn’t depend on dis­agree­ing with every­thing the Gov­ern­ment puts forward.

K-Rudd started get­ting trac­tion with the elec­torate when he posi­tioned him­self as the “alter­na­tive Prime Min­is­ter” and his party as the “alter­na­tive gov­ern­ment”… I got so sick of hear­ing those words before the last Fed­eral elec­tion was announced — but mostly because I didn’t like K-Rudd and I could see a cor­re­la­tion between those words and his boost in the polls.

Real lead­er­ship means offer­ing poli­cies and informed, deci­sive alter­na­tives. Not just say­ing “they’re wrong” as loud as you can.

Peter Costello has a col­umn in today’s SMH detail­ing his prob­lems with Turnbull’s approach to leadership.

He acknowl­edged some strengths of his method­ol­ogy. But diag­nosed the prob­lem with Turnbull’s lead­er­ship as an inabil­ity to cul­ti­vate much needed unity.

“To pro­mote unity, Turn­bull needed to give all the shades of party opin­ion a say in pro­ceed­ings, and to pro­mote col­leagues on merit regard­less of whether they voted for or against him.”

“A polit­i­cal leader can­not take his base for granted. He must give voice and con­fi­dence to the party mem­ber­ship. Aus­tralian pol­i­tics is detrib­al­is­ing. Rusted-on sup­port­ers are fewer than ever. To keep those sup­port­ers, a party must nour­ish and respect them.”

Costello seems to think Turn­bull was unable to cul­ti­vate unity because he was a grasp­ing power mon­ger climb­ing above his sta­tion. He’s par­tic­u­larly scathing on Turnbull’s pub­lic state­ments about Lib­eral Party colleagues.

I have never seen a Lib­eral leader attack senior col­leagues in the way Turn­bull did on the week­end. Turnbull’s attacks have been sharper and inflicted more dam­age on his col­leagues than Kevin Rudd ever did.

If I was run­ning the Labor Party’s cam­paign in the seem­ingly inevitable dou­ble dis­so­lu­tion elec­tion I would be rub­bing my hands at the prospect of ads just fea­tur­ing quotes from Lib­eral Party mem­bers about other Lib­eral Party members.

Author: Nathan Campbell

Nathan runs St Eutychus. He is currently a student at the Queensland Theological College. In a previous professional life he worked in public relations for an economic development and tourism marketing organisation. He is married to Robyn. He likes coffee and the internet.

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