In a world of short-term, opportunistic, populist politics, politicians easily ignore the so-called "vision thing". Responding to issues day by day, they easily put aside longer-term strategic considerations - indeed, often compounding the magnitude and severity of the policy challenge.
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| Tony Abbott believes he won his election on carbon pricing, rather than simply because the voters had had enough of Rudd/Gillard/Rudd. |
Not working to a strategic end game, essentially just patching up rather than solving, results in the policy task becoming so big that any change soon becomes a large and politically difficult one.
Climate change is a glaring example of this; politicians have played short-term politics to the point at which they have made it politically very difficult to move substantially forward when, in terms of the science, the world may already be past a tipping point.
What's more, it is now personal, Abbott v Turnbull, and the stakes are very high; the next election outcome is at risk, as households and industries get eaten by rapidly rising power prices and face the mounting probability of blackouts.
Read John Hewson’s story in the Melbourne Age - “Malcolm Turnbull must take on Tony Abbott over renewables.”
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