Qantas-Qatar debacle exposes government’s dysfunction

The fallout from the decision to reject extra Qatar Airways flights into Australia is a searing pointer to the much broader and deeper dysfunction of the Albanese Labor Government.

The Catherine King Qantas-Qatar debacle is a searing pointer to the much broader and deeper dysfunction of the Albanese Labor Government, and that is so increasingly reminiscent of its Whitlam predecessor.

There are three core elements of this already extremely damaging dysfunction – damaging obviously to the government politically, but already doing serious damage to Australia and to you.

The first is the absentee leader.

No prime minister has spent more time out of the country in his or her first 15 months than Mr Albanese. Indeed, it isn’t even close.

It even feels he has effectively relocated from The Lodge, and of course the Harbourside mansion, to our Downunder Airforce One; making only occasional visits back to our shores.

It’s not simply the case that: when the cat’s away, the mice – and boy, there sure are plenty of them in the Albanese cabinet – don’t simply play but run wild.

When he is occasionally back, he’s anyway investing all his time and political energy on a vanity – and now, clearly, about to fail - project like The Voice.

Transport Minister Catherine King. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Martin Ollman

To borrow from an earlier political era: how many chickens will The Voice put in any ovens?

No, it’s made worse, so much worse, by the second element – the way, by design or default, each cabinet minister has been given their head to run off on any frolic they care to.

We have a government – and a reality for 26m Australians, heading very rapidly to 30m - that is defined by an energy minister actively embarked on destroying our electricity system, and an IR minister punitively re-regulating industrial relations.

Does the globe-trotting PM care about the consequences of any of this? Does he even know about them?

Sure, they might individually be broadly in line with agreed government policy. Like net zero.

But where’s any sense of co-ordination? Of Overall cabinet and especially prime ministerial control?

That brings us to a third element – the MIA, missing-in-action, Treasurer.

Arguably the most crucial element in the political and policy successes of the Hawke and Howard governments were the two treasurers, Keating and Costello.

First, by keeping an iron grip on the purse-strings; but also in sticking their noses into every other cabinet minister’s business.

Do you really thunk, that Keating would have been content to have “not been consulted” on the Qatar decision? As he would have seen the range of broader issues it raised?

What have we really seen from this treasurer so far?

A budget surplus? Yes, by merely riding the massive surge in commodity exports and prices.

And of course his appointment of the RBA deputy to succeed the current governor; like every other treasurer bar two have done?

It was quite clear before the election that the success – both political and in policy terms – was going to revolve around incoming treasurer Chalmers.

That’s of course, success or failure. He had to deliver the hard edge and the control or nobody would.

And that was before we knew the PM was only going to be in Australia on weekends, so to speak.

It’s a disastrous cocktail. It’s only going to get worse.

Originally published as Qantas-Qatar debacle exposes government’s dysfunction