Gillard and Abbott are settling their 'mega-narratives' but their key phrases do not ring true as shorthand for what it's all about.

Julia Gillard is apparently going forward with ''fairness''. It's a word, if it sticks, we will soon be as sick of as ''moving forward'', because it is the nickname for the ''meta-narrative'' - story or myth - Labor wants to sell to the public.

For her, it's not a new word, as such. Fairness, along with decency, was a noun of choice whenever she, as Kevin Rudd's loyal lieutenant, was flogging the virtues of Labor's industrial relations plans. She used it often for her education agenda, even when there were no obvious signs of equity considerations. Fairness is, apparently, a handy shorthand for Labor's welfare agenda, refugee policies, indigenous policies, or plans to tax the super-profits of the mining industry. One can even make fairness the motto of environmental policies, including carbon taxes, if one refers to future generations or to balancing our greed with the needs of the environment.

By contrast, Opposition Leader Tony Abbott's program appears to be the fundamental hopelessness of this Government, of government in general, and big government in particular, and of taxing and spending regimes. He's for getting government - and deficits, and government debts and boat people as a bonus - ''out of your face''. Gillard's mob, whose general incompetence can be summed up with the words ''pink batts'', seem to think the solution to every problem is ''a new tax, a new regulation or a new bureaucracy''.

Abbott is borrowing slogans from the United States Tea Party campaigns, much as Gillard's calm and soothing phrases about fairness are borrowed, via Mark Latham, from Tony Blair's New Labour unctuousness.

One can wonder about the fit of phrases imported from abroad, but they are an FAQ shorthand for classic ideological contests between left- and right-of-centre parties. But is the diagnosis - and the prognosis - adapted to Australian conditions and the world economy of the moment? As doubtful is if they are adapted to their instincts, personalities, and policy intentions.

Does Gillard ''do'' fair, as opposed to say it? Is Abbott really a small- government man with an instinct against intervention, taxes or moral authoritarianism? Or are these only convenient clothes put on after consultations with focus groups?

Gillard certainly talks a lot about fairness. She always has. Here's a few random phrases from her speeches, mostly recent ones.

Political choice: '' Here among so many people who believe in fairness, among so many people who are ready to fight for it ... This [NSW] election is about fairness for families. Fairness for NSW families, families who deserve a government that cares.''

IR: ''Labor's approach to fairness at work has been good for our country in the past ... Unions, employers and the Government working together. Negotiating in good faith, based on the best evidence, working together to find the best way to reward hard work. Accepting the decision of the independent umpire. This is our fair work system functioning as it should. As a guarantee of fairness for all.''

Women: ''Because we are Labor, we will deliver fairness for Australian women.''

Sport: ''Australia is great at hosting major international sporting events. We bring to it a sense of sportspersonship and fairness.''

International economics: ''We have broken through the psychology that you can do growth or you can do fairness, you can't do both. This G20 is effectively saying you can do both and that social protections play an important role in looking after individuals and families.''

Industry super and truth in advertising: ''You stood with us from the earliest days in our determination to secure a better retirement for all Australians. You stood with us to get rid of the conflicts of interest and the excessive fees.You stood with us to secure the iconic 'opt-in' policy to bring fairness to financial advice.''

But there's fairness and fairness. And equity too. In the slogan game, whether anything is actually fair hardly comes into it. It is of the very nature of politics that policy choices are made between competing public goods. If one fails to do something that is worthy, or thought to be ''fair'' or socially necessary, one can insist that this was only because one was being ''fair'' for another pressing but equally worthy need. My school, for example, was your hospital - for each of which there was a case, but only one of which could be afforded.

Many Labor people do not think that plans to starve Aboriginal parents into sending their kids to school are ''fair'' in the ordinary sense of the word. Maybe they are fair to the need to go to school (even if ill-designed to achieve even that).

Nor does fairness come first to mind when one thinks of Labor policies on boat people. Or, perhaps, with Gillard's views on marriage.

Untargeted assistance, even to supposedly worthy causes, such as school infrastructure programs or the handing out of computers are not ''fair'' by ordinary Labor standards, because better results can be achieved by targeting. Programs subsidising the middle class to buy trendy but environmentally useless ''green'' toys are not ''fair'' to anyone or anything.

Abbott, as a Howard cabinet minister, was once described by a colleague as ''not having a fiscally responsible bone in his body'' and accused of thinking that ''he could spend his way out of every problem''.

He was born again in a boilerplate speech to the Sydney Institute this week:

''The turmoil in Europe is largely a function of governments consistently living beyond their means in the expectation that someone else will pick up the bill.

''The iron law of economics and the constant lesson of history is that grief eventually comes to governments ... that spend more than they raise or borrow more than they can readily repay ... Labor has turned an inherited surplus into the four largest deficits in our history and we're now staring down the barrel of the fifth substantial deficit in a row.

''This is why so many people are convinced that Australia is a rich country at serious risk of becoming poorer. [Gillard] has made the fundamental mistake of thinking that a crisis largely caused by too much spending and too much borrowing could be addressed by yet more spending and yet more borrowing - with a preference for yet more taxing should the deficit need to be reined in.

''To every problem, the current Government's response has been a new tax, a new regulation or a new bureaucracy.''

He neatly called the tax on the super profits from miners a ''success tax''. This is somewhat similar to the way that Tea Party Republicans have dubbed increased tax rates for millionaires as ''class warfare'' and a ''tax on job creators''.

There's not really much ideological divide between Gillard and Abbott - as opposed to their parties. Both are instinctive and opportunistic politicians not far separated in their essential ideas.

Indeed a cunning Gillard might try emulating John Howard, with his audacious claim that the 2004 election would be about ''trust'' and ''credibility''. This at a time, post babies overboard and other government deceptions that neither Howard nor his government had much credit in the electorate. But ultimately voters proved to be more uneasy about Latham than Howard.

Gillard might suggest that the next election was about ''competence''. That would initially get a hollow laugh, since polls suggest that voters think this Government messes up every program it touches; voters rate the Coalition better on almost every policy area.

And there's an unease about Abbott - as there was about trust in Latham - that such a campaign could mine.

Put simply, many voters suspect that Abbott will say anything to get elected.

That he can't be trusted. And that his skills are rhetorical, rather than practical or based on arts of people management.

http://www.canberratimes.com.au/news/opinion/editorial/general/fair-or-spare-the-phoney-war/2367359.aspx?storypage=0