The news of the day provided Rudd with an out clause. April 22 was the day the public was told the Melbourne Storm’s National Rugby League franchise was in doubt. The club had allegedly fiddled the books and disobeyed salary cap restrictions to the tune of $1.7 million.
The full story would come out in good time. For now, the only thing known for sure was that the club was being fined, stripped of two premierships and not allowed to compete for points for the rest of season 2010. It was also known that three major sponsors wanted nothing further to do with the club. It’s future, financial or otherwise, was in grave doubt.
What a great day for the federal government to announce the official closure of the insulation program and the alleged lack of need for the remaining couple of hundred child care centres they had promised to build. The Daily Telegraph moved that story to page fifteen. It was clear what some broadsheets considered more important news for the people. Sport rules. Politics and public service delivery, or the lack thereof, comes a distant second.
Rudd must have been grinning from ear to ear. Tony Abbott may well have been ruing a lost opportunity. But in describing the Prime Minister, he referred to him as worse than Whitlam. Some media commentators thought that was a bit harsh...on Whitlam.
As the day progressed, Greg Combet, Rudd’s Mr. Fix-it, made an appearance. He’d been left with the job of explaining how the insulation program, which seemed like a good idea at the time, had ended up detrimentally effecting many a small business, and more besides. No matter what spin anyone tried to put on it, there could be little doubt or disagreement that the program had been a fatal disaster – failure personified.
As if that wasn’t enough for one day, along came Kate Ellis, Minister for Looking Good, and in her spare time other things such as sport and child care. It was her responsibility to announce that although the federal government had promised to build 260 new child care centres, only 38 would be completed.
One may ask, why? Simple. According to Ellis, though they had been promised, they simply were not needed. An easy way out of another policy failure – big ideas leading to disastrous service delivery. One could be forgiven for thinking it may well be time for the government to get out of the way. Being seeing to be doing something was more important to this government than the quality of what was being done. Promises made and promises broken had led to instability, uncertainty, and unpopularity.
The question on everyone’s lips now was: what next for the Melbourne Storm? But despite salary caps taking precedence over policy, over time, the onus would be back on the government to explain why it was unable to successfully provide quality service delivery of insulation and child care facilities. What chance was there health would see a better outcome?
One other concern had been raised also. This seemed to be a Prime Minister who was keen to be front and centre when positive news stories were being announced to the press, but conspicuously absent when the announcement was negative. The Prime Minister was so busy visiting hospitals, he went 'AWOL' on issues pertaining to the processing of asylum-seekers, the need to respond to criticism of cost blow-outs in the BER scheme, as well, of course, as the closure of the insulation program and the abandonment of child care centre construction.
Bob Carr used this technique to great effect when NSW Premier. Only problem for Rudd was it was starting to raise concerns that here was a man that could not be trusted. Were the Spin Doctors now running the country?
Amongst all this news, it was announced the Henry Tax Review, which the government had been keeping under lock and key since January, would finally be released in May, just prior to the May Budget. It was to be released on a Sunday – a day voters' attention turns to fun, frivolity, family...and the Melbourne Storm.
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