THE political commentariat was scathing. Julia Gillard’s‘‘citizens’ assembly’’ to reach a consensus on climate change was ‘‘a joke’’ said The Australian’s veteran analyst Paul Kelly. ‘‘Truly wretched’’ said Crikey’s political reporter Bernard Keane.



Sunday Age election commentator Waleed Aly today concludes that ‘‘Gillard is now incapable of taking a political position’’ on just about anything.



Four weeks after becoming Prime Minister, Ms Gillard — the nation’s first female prime minister and supposedly feisty left-winger — has bitterly disappointed political commentators of all hues as well as interest groups from the left and right who had expected she would be a reformer or at least offer policy credibility.



‘‘We give the [climate change] policy one star out of five,’’ says John Connor, of the Climate Institute. ‘‘We were definitely disappointed by the announcement and the gap between it and a credible policy.’’



Former leader Mark Latham was equally damning. The population ‘‘debate’’ was no debate at all. ‘‘It’s a fraud,’’ he wrote. ‘‘It’s an attempt to con people in western Sydney that she’s going to do something about congestion.’’



The consensus is that Gillard has so far run a remarkably cautious campaign, peppered by surprising policy missteps and packaged in focus-group platitudes.



Monash University politics expert Nick Economou argues that it doesn’t matter. The polls look good for Labor, and Gillard is uninterested in the political sophisticates. Her rhetoric has been honed to appeal to voters in marginal seats worried about issues such as population growth and border security.



‘‘These things have been carefully constructed to target issues that pollsters have identified as concerns,’’ Economou says.



Yet what of the substance? Here’s a stocktake, at the beginning of week two.



Mining tax



GILLARD’S first act was to end Labor’s toxic row with large miners, declare a truce in the advertising war and enter negotiations. The result was a deal that appeased three big players — BHP, Rio and Xstrata — with a lower-rate tax, a more realistic definition of ‘‘super profits’’ and a narrower range of commodities subject to the new regime.



It initially appeared as if the concessions had come at a relatively small cost to taxpayers, with revenue from the tax tipped to fall by just $1.5billion as a result of the compromise.

The release of new budget figures revealed that big miners had, in fact, won $7.5billion in concessions. The impact on the bottom line would have been more dramatic had Treasury not conveniently inflated its predictions for commodity prices.



The issue is now threatening to flare up again. Small and mid-tier mining companies, which felt they had been overlooked, are now warning they are ready to unleash a new advertising campaign.



Asylum seekers



DAYS after announcing her mining tax deal, Gillard tackled concern in key marginal electorates about growing numbers of asylum seekers arriving by boat.



Her solution was to announce plans for a regional processing centre, with a strong suggestion it would be located in East Timor.



The plan hit a serious snag when it was revealed that Gillard had barely floated the idea with Dili before announcing it in a speech. Discussions had involved little more than a short phone conversation with East Timorese President Jose Ramos-Horta.



With the idea rejected in a strongly worded statement issued by the Timorese parliament, Gillard was forced to admit that she had not discussed the plan with East Timor’s Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao. She then attempted to deny she had a specific location in mind, before one again seeming to confirm that she was focusing on East Timor.



It was disastrous, creating the impression that Gillard had failed to do her homework in her haste to deal with a political problem, while highlighting her lack of foreign policy experience.



Population

IF THERE has been any vision for the future articulated by Gillard, it is the argument that the nation should not ‘‘hurtle’’ towards a population of up to 40million people.



Yet Gillard, who acknowledges ‘‘this very difficult problem’’, stresses ‘‘this is not an immigration debate’’, highlighting her own family’s migration experience to make the point.



The difficulty is that any measure to curtail Australia’s population would necessarily involve a lower migrant intake, unless she is proposing something akin to China’s one child policy.



According to some, it is a tacit attempt to link concerns about border protection and boat arrivals to worries about overburdened infrastructure, the environment, housing, health and education.



It remains unclear whether Gillard is arguing for low population growth or just better urban planning.

There have been no specifics so far and no real policy shift from the Rudd period, apart from adding the word ‘‘sustainable’’ to the job description of Population Minister Tony Burke.



Climate change



FRIDAY’S attempt at releasing a climate policy was mocked by all sides of the debate and the plan for a ‘‘citizens’ assembly’’ (using randomly selected people from the electoral roll) has attracted the strongest criticism — a farce, an avoidance of leadership, cowardice in the face of a compelling case for action.



But whether it will anger voters in marginal electorates is another thing.



Economou says such voters are worried about climate change but not if the solution involves higher power bills and increased living costs.



‘‘This is a debate that is polarised between the cosmopolitan intellectuals who are absolutely convinced of the need for climate change policies and have have been demanding a complex response ... and a big group of voters who are concerned about climate change but are worried they will one day financially have to pay for climate change policy.’’



