By Amanda Vanstone
Abbott's not being negative - he's just doing his job.
Living in a parliamentary democracy is something Australians sometimes treat as a burden. Who hasn't smiled or smirked at the graffiti ''Don't vote - it only encourages them''? And we all know people who think it an imposition to be required to participate in choosing our parliamentary representatives and collectively our government.
Many people feel absolutely disengaged from the political process. There is no single reason for this. Politicians, the media and the public can all shoulder some of the blame.
But do we want to live in an alternative form of government? Well, no. At least under our system we get to choose who governs us and when we think they are doing a lousy job or we are just sick of them, we can throw them out of office.
We all know that the Parliament is there to keep a check on the executive. But we also know that government backbenchers are the least likely to spill the beans about any government incompetence. The government of the day, whatever its persuasion, will not offer itself up as being hopeless and just hand power over to the opposition.
The punters understand that neither Julia Gillard nor anyone in the Rudd government would point out the problems with the disastrous home insulation policy that became known as the Pink Batt Scandal. And Gillard's hand was never likely to switch a spotlight on the billions of dollars wasted under her watch on the so-called Building the Education Revolution. (A spin slogan if ever I have heard one.)
These two scandals alone have wasted a mesmerising amount of somewhere between $5 billion and $7.5 billion. Would you buy shares in a company that wasted your money like that?
Nobody in their right mind imagines that government MPs would ever bring these fiascos out into the open. So the only hope the rest of us have of knowing about it when the government messes something up is if someone shines a light on government mistakes and incompetence.
That is the key role an opposition plays in our parliamentary democracy. When a government starts wasting your money, you really need the opposition to do its job. When someone calls that nitpicking, carping or being negative, they diminish the importance of the opposition's job. It is a vital part of our system.
So who does the Prime Minister think she is kidding when she complains about Tony Abbott being negative? Doesn't she realise his responsibility, to all of us, is to keep a check on the government? To highlight its mistakes and incompetence?
Gillard clearly doesn't like the constant scrutiny under which Abbott has her. But surely she doesn't expect to play Prime Minister unscrutinised. Surely she expects Parliament to do its job.
It is in nobody's interest to just let a government play, unchecked, with public funds. When governments get value for that money, we are all better off. When they waste it, we all lose.
Those who most need a government to run the economy well, to manage its spending well and to get value for money are those at the lowest end of the socio-economic spectrum.
When the economy is mismanaged, the really well-off miss out on an overseas trip or lose value on assets - shares, the beach house or whatever. The less well-off lose their job, maybe their house. And many never recover.
Keeping a check on the government is that important.
It's hard to understand why Gillard keeps complaining about Abbott focusing on her government's incompetence or, as she describes it, on his being negative. She may be hoping she will psyche him out of doing his job. If she thinks that she's in dreamland.
Some in the media have been sucked in by this attempt at negative stereotyping. They join in the ''he's so negative'' hype. They would be better off recognising the critical role the media play in letting the punters know what's going on - and focusing on the PM.
It is not a question of whether you are a fan of Abbott's or of Gillard's. It is a question of whether we want a strong opposition and whether Abbott is doing his job.
Next time the Prime Minister says Abbott is always being negative about the government, someone should put her on the spot and ask her why she is always being so negative about Abbott.
After all, this is the woman who attacks him regularly for being a ''three-word slogan'' man. The same woman who owned the ''Building the Education Revolution'' and droned on endlessly with her two-word ''moving forward'' slogan.
This is the woman who speaks of the hope ''that each of us in Parliament will be judged on the contribution we make, not the points we score'' - and yet feels comfortable saying Abbott wants to ''surf the floodwaters to Kirribilli'' because he disagreed, not about the need to rebuild Queensland, but about how to fund the rebuilding.
Gillard tells us that she wants Parliament to be a place of reason and that because she believes that, she is daily disappointed by the opposition. Maybe she doesn't read the Hansard record of what she says in Parliament.
She can comfortably refer to a Liberal MP as a mincing poodle and yet express some type of outrage that Abbott is seen standing at a rally in front of some people who happen to be waving a few placards that describe her as a female dog.
It seems the Prime Minister needs reminding of what she said as recently as last year: ''Heavens above, people understand hypocrisy and the stench of it is rising.''
Amanda Vanstone was a minister in the Howard government.