A Socceroo’s World Cup exit before breakfast and a new prime minister before morning tea. What a day. Of course, many pundits will be quick to draw parallels between these two events … so I might as well get in early and join them.

For mine, the two events are linked by a single concept: over-reliance on defence.

For the next four years, the Australian soccer community will be mired in discussion of ‘what might have been’. But there is little to talk about. In their last two games the Aussies played the sort of football we love them for: open, risky at times but ultimately successful. Unfortunately, in game one, they had inexplicably played in an unnaturally defensive fashion against Germany and ended up being thrashed. This resort to defence ultimately kept the Socceroos from moving into the second round.

For many more than four years, political historians in Australia will discuss the vertiginous fall from grace of Kevin Rudd. The first Australian Labor prime minister to be discarded during his first term, Rudd has gone from rooster to feather duster in less than a year. Again, over-reliance on defence can be blamed.

After the Labor Party’s victory at the 2007 federal election, Kevin Rudd quickly became one of Australia’s most popular prime ministers. The early signing of the Kyoto Protocol positioned him as a man of action and principle, positioning further strengthened by the apology to the Stolen Generations early in 2008. Then there was the response to the financial crisis: forthright and politically courageous it seemed to save Australia from the worst of the meltdown.

Then he turned to defence.

Since mid- to late-2009, Kevin Rudd has rarely done anything without an eye on the election. Rather than governing by action, he started to govern by ‘announceables’. Rather than make policy decisions by drawing on the evidence – something he promised to do – policy was more and more driven by the polls. Just as the Socceroos were spooked by Germany, Rudd was spooked by the ghosts of the Howard years. He retreated to tepid positions on climate change, asylum seekers and indigenous affairs. As his focus became defensive, his shots at goal came from further and further out, with less chance of scoring: the insulation scheme, health changes and the resources tax.

Defence can work as a strategy, but only on a foundation of strength.

Rudd seems to have believed he was stronger than he actually was. The truth is that his popularity was always based on his being ‘not John Howard’. We never really knew who he was, but many of us liked him because he delivered a fresh, cool breeze. And we kept liking him while he kept the air conditioner running. But when he turned it off we saw he was just another politician, and that left an opening for the coalition to start scoring.

In the end, Kevin Rudd’s position became untenable for the Labor Party. The party could see that running up to the election, Rudd would have had almost no avenue of attack left. Every promise would have been undermined by a failure to deliver in the first term. He would have been back on his own goal line while the opposition took the penalties.

Perhaps Julia Gillard saw some of this coming when she said recently that “there’s less chance of me becoming the full forward for the Dogs than there is any change in the Labor Party”. No, she won’t be full forward for an AFL team, but she is now the full forward for the Labor government. She would do well to maintain that attacking position.

(Image Edgley Cesar)

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Tagged as: australia, defence, gillard, prime minister, rudd, socceroos