Comment

John Hewson
Better leadership is needed

Effective leadership is much more nuanced than just the strength and charisma of the individual appointed to lead. It has as much to do with their capacity to build and inspire a unified team to deal with the tasks and challenges at hand. This requires consistency in implementing a settled strategy, respect and support for others and for the roles they are expected to play.

If it works, the sum of the parts will achieve considerably more than the leader attempting to go it alone.

Politicians often find this concept difficult to accept and implement, with the result that the electorate soon loses confidence and trust in the integrity of the party and in its ability to deliver important outcomes in the national interest.

Unfortunately there are many examples from both the government and opposition that reinforce this point.

It was widely expected that the Albanese government would embrace significant reform in its second term, with the mandate of such a decisive win at the last election. However, already real questions are being raised about the behind-the-scenes policy processes. There appear to be significant differences in attitude and commitment between the prime minister and the treasurer, for instance, as to the appropriate reform agenda and its urgency.

A particularly disturbing instance recently was the handling of the Economic Reform Roundtable in August. From the get-go it seemed the prime minister was at odds with his treasurer, Jim Chalmers, over the event’s agenda, right through to the likely response and policy action to follow, based on recommendations from the participants. As a result, the government has apparently missed an opportunity to define its second term as a period of genuine reform. Albanese’s interventions also raised questions in the media as to whether he was actually undermining Chalmers, putting the treasurer’s ambition back in its box. Fortunately, he didn’t take the bait.

Such questions arose again this week, however, when the treasurer was announcing a rework to his 2023 proposals to reform the taxation of superannuation. The assembled media wanted to know whose idea it was to backtrack – inviting the conclusion that Albanese had rolled Chalmers.

The treasurer emphasised a mutual decision to drop the contentious component of taxing unrealised gains on accounts worth more than $3 million, and to index the thresholds. He said it was made on the basis of an expenditure review committee recommendation, following extensive feedback. But Albanese’s direction on the issue, in response to opposition from the Coalition and the conservative press, has been widely reported.

Albanese’s intervention casts significant doubt about whether we can reasonably expect much progress from this government on more broad-based tax reform, or indeed any real progress on productivity.

It also raises an eerie recollection of former Liberal prime minister Malcolm Turnbull’s initial claim, as leader of the opposition, that all tax reform options were on the table. They fell off that table and into the too-hard basket pretty quickly when he took over from Tony Abbott in 2015. No progress was made on actual reform, just a hit to his government’s credibility.

Unfortunately, teamwork has not been a feature of the current opposition. Scrambling to build even a modicum of policy credibility, Sussan Ley has presided over a constancy of squabbling, projecting an image of leadership instability. Leadership aspirants such as Jacinta Nampijinpa Price and Andrew Hastie have been speaking outside their portfolios, attempting to differentiate themselves from Ley and other contenders such as Angus Taylor and Tim Wilson. This has resulted in very ineffective opposition. This behaviour has raised the very clear question in the minds of the electorate: “Whatever happened to the old Liberal Party?”

Policy development and implementation is a major challenge for party leaders. Effective teamwork to build the party’s platform is essential and leaders are wise to seek the engagement of their whole party, front- and backbenchers, to ensure the commonality of thought and purpose that is fundamental to securing the necessary support from the cabinet and party room. They must be onboard to ensure the effective education of and marketing to the electorate.

Policy development in opposition is a time-consuming process that begins with the marshalling of evidence to identify and understand the issues that are being addressed. It is then important to ensure broad party engagement via policy committees of backbenchers, who can add some expertise to their electoral and community feedback.

This process may also involve the assistance of outside experts, to advise each shadow minister on how to prepare their cabinet and partyroom proposals, including modelling, if appropriate, to identify the probable costs and consequences of each approach.

Unfortunately, I see no evidence of this sort of operation with the current opposition. Rather, ideas are getting floated, mostly by leadership aspirants without hard numbers and costings. Too many are attempts at pointscoring, often against their colleagues – they are not really laying a glove on the government, just feeding a worrying sense of disorganisation and division. This has left the opposition running the negative, just criticising each and every initiative of the government, which they are learning is not really an election-winning strategy.

Of course, former prime minister Tony Abbott would disagree, having achieved what some would argue was effective and successful opposition by dragging down the Rudd–Gillard governments. However, the electorate has come to expect more from an opposition aspiring to govern, after Abbott turned out to be pretty much a policy-free zone. Simply put, the world has changed.

The opposition can’t simply hope to go to the next election without a full suite of detailed and costed policies. Surely if they’ve learnt anything from the past couple of election losses, they must know it’s impossible to win by just criticising from an extreme position. It is disturbing that they are already fobbing off questions about policies, offering the old line that there is plenty of time until 2028, and they will have detailed, costed policies by then. There is no evidence that the development process is under way. And where’s the incentive when the leadership is in play? Given the white-anting and lack of support Peter Dutton endured, even during the campaign, it still looks very much like it’s every man – and it is every man – for himself.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkWWIJy_YYo

It is important to draw a distinction between Trump-style “teamship” and healthy collaboration. Clearly the United States president has gone to the extreme, demanding sycophancy, which in no way strengthens the team. It drives out expertise, constructive disagreement and a contest of ideas that would improve governance. To Donald Trump, it’s all about blind loyalty to him, under threat of revenge.

That great American, Theodor Geisel, better known as Dr. Seuss, created perhaps prophetically an extraordinary character in Yertle the Turtle. Written just after World War II as a cautionary tale, the story illustrates the dangers of unchecked power. Yertle’s desire was to rule everything he sees. He climbs on the backs of the other turtles, calling for ever more to be stacked on top of each other, to build a higher and higher throne for himself. Of course it was never enough. As the turtles are squashed, the bottom turtle burps and he ends up face down in the mud.

Trump’s Yertle-like exploitation and abuse of power comes to mind. In 2025 he seeks to change the world to fit what he believes it ought to look like – all under the guise of “making America great again”. As the inflation, growth and unemployment consequences of his tariff and deportation policies seep into the consciousness of the American consumer, industry and, ultimately, the voter, the benefits of his presidency will be recognised as ephemeral. Such leadership is eventually overthrown by the oppressed.

There is a constant drone from the opposition to “get back to basics” as they grapple with their historic election drubbing. Yet surely, functioning as a team is one of the most essential basics, where the role of the leader is to assemble the best people they can and bring out the best in each individual, building a strong collective.

As idealistic as this sounds, the current leader faces a defining constraint, namely that few members of the party have established professional standing and policy experience. This talent shortage is most evident, and to some extent encourages others to break out, to speak outside their portfolios, and so on. The problem stretches back to preselections, which arise from the contorted, faction-ridden party processes of several states that are also in desperate need of reform. These issues need to be addressed as a matter of urgency or the party’s oblivion could become permanent.

All leaders must reckon with the strength of their team from the ground up, and there must be room for more than one at the top. The prime minister is, after all, primus inter pares.

This article was first published in the print edition of The Saturday Paper on October 18, 2025 as "King of the turtles ".

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