Intrigued by the artificial fanfare (which quickly petered out) surrounding the Liberal Party's 'mini-campaign', and the lack of interest in the Coalition's 'Our Plan', I actually went to the effort of reading it for two reasons.
- It was launched by the new positive Tony (who I don't know and don't believe exists)
- Few others would bother to read it and comment on it
“ We stand for government which backs Australia’s families with real policies not just platitudes.”
Tony Abbott May 1994
It is interesting that when laying out 'Our Plan' the authors chose the above quote from Tony Abbott, and included it in a document which is more platitude than real policy. It is also interesting that the quote is almost a decade old and come from around the time Abbott was operating his slush fund - Australians for Honest politics
![Picture](/uploads/8/4/1/7/8417532/6107968.jpg?295)
Firstly, some quick statistical analysis of the document.
While the formatted PDF runs 52 pages, the unformatted text runs only 22 A4 pages.
The word productive or productivity is repeated 103 times, and in the section titled 'Boosting Productivity and Securing greater prosperity', those words are repeated 41 times. If you don't have a plan for improving productivity, you just repeat the word productivity 41 times, and to add some credibility throw in Improve/improving - 49 times.
Other repetitions include: Grow/Growing/Growth - 79 times, Deliver/Delivering - 106 times, More - 165 times
And just like The little engine that could, they repeated the line 'We Will' 287 times
And of course the new positive Tony with his positive plans for our future only used Bad... 4 times (all in reference to the Government), No... only 9 times, and Negative only once. As the Liberal campaign progresses, there will be room for improvement, and as a start they might like to edit this manifesto to remove Reduce (25 times), and Less (17 times). That will surely take people's minds back to the Negative Tony who we're assured no longer exists.
![Picture](/uploads/8/4/1/7/8417532/6631959.jpg?229)
Well you format it using a large font and only two columns of text, on A5 pages with lots of white space so you can pad it out to 52 pages. And then you add lots of photos of Tony, and graphs with exaggerated graphics to create the impression you have relevant data to back up your argument.
For credibility you use a very official looking stamp on every second page which resembles a beer bottle top (maybe that's where they found it). Apparently you don't need treasury or a second rate accountancy firm with Liberal party links to cost policy, you just need a graphic designer with a beer fixation.
![Picture](/uploads/8/4/1/7/8417532/2574941.jpg?293)
And rather than outline how you will do that, you repeat buzz words and generalities over and over again - like prosperity/prosperous (36 times), plan (59 times), opportunity/opportunities (25 times), better (81 times), Strong/stronger (83 times), and Economy/Economic (154 times).
I've read 'Our Plan' (it was very tough going) and was left with the uneasy feeling that I was reading something that bore a strange similarity to a brochure designed to sell a housing development in swampland.
My conclusion: it might be best to allow this glossy piece of propaganda to slip back into the oblivion from which it briefly emerged. It is all about smokescreen and repetition.. which seems to fit neatly with Tony Abbott's style during his entire tenure as leader of the Opposition.
Key points:
Content, 0/10
Style, 3/10 (It is nicely formatted, and I do like the fully costed bottle top)
Memorability. 0/10... which is likely the point.
In Summary....
Our Plan = Small Target.