Daniel Wills: Coronavirus has changed the political game

Team South Australia has its foot on COVID-19’s throat, and we can’t waste a good crisis. If cooperation is possible so is lasting reform writes State Political Editor Daniel Wills.

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South Australia has its foot firmly on the throat of this coronavirus epidemic and isn’t letting up. With nine days of zero cases reached, there’s an almost unanimous effort to keep pushing to eradication.

And at the same time as we have a relentless focus on the destruction of this microscopic enemy so life can start to return to normal, the brutality of our politics has significantly softened to meet common ends.

If this can be sustained, it could provide a golden moment where wider reform is possible and things that have been in the too-hard basket for a very long time finally have some chance of getting a fair shake.

The national Cabinet, where Prime Minister Scott Morrison has called together a strange but so far reasonably effective team of both Liberal and Labor state and territory leaders, is the most prominent example of how old tribal rivalries have shrunk to welcome insignificance.

They continue to have disagreements but work through them without the usual hyperbole and point­scoring. They also respectfully agree to disagree on things such as the opening of schools, when the local circumstance and opinion demands.

In SA, too, the usual heat of demolition derby politics has dissipated as some morning light breaks through.

In the early phase of the coronavirus outbreak, the Opposition appeared to be treating it as a political issue like any other – seeking points of difference, amplifying confusion and making life as uncomfortable as possible for Premier Steven Marshall.

On school openings and the testing regime, Labor went out of its way to shine the darkest light on messages coming from Mr Marshall and his experts. But that has now mostly gone.

Opposition Leader Peter Malinauskas’s key line now appears to be that he’s as “proud” as any other South Australian about our performance. He even went out of his way to publicly chip fellow travellers at the teachers’ union over a clumsy attack on chief medical officer Professor Nicola Spurrier’s advice on schools opening. The Opposition’s daily media now focuses much more on what extra positive steps it wants the Government to take, rather than how terrible its current actions are.

And this week in State Parliament, the Government took a surprising step in the same direction, meeting Labor in the middle with a deal on genetically modified crops.

This was one of the most fractious issues in the Parliament last year. The Government took an effective take-it-or-leave-it position, demanding full acceptance of its plan, or nothing. It lost the votes and failed to make any policy progress, but arguably still won the politics.

The Liberals could say, in an oversimplified way, that they were standing up for farmers but being blocked by Labor and crossbenchers.

Mr Marshall kept a point of difference in an ongoing fight that had him on the side of rural and farming constituencies that are his political base.

When Mr Malinauskas last year first raised a modified proposal that would let councils apply to keep the ban if their communities wanted it, a fired-up and combative Mr Marshall said: “I’ve heard some pretty stupid ideas in my time but this one would have to take the cake.”

On Tuesday, he let this apparently laughable idea become law. In doing so, he accepted inevitable minor personal embarrassment and handed Labor a win. He also got a result, allowing farmers grow GM crops if they want and boosting one of SA’s most important industries.

It’s impossible to say for sure but it’s hard to imagine that result coming outside of the current environment that has been forced on our politics by the coronavirus crisis. The cost of obstruction and obstinance is too high at a time when the public is demanding action from its leaders and wants them to squeeze out every drop of an economic and social antidote to lessen the pain of the lockdowns.

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That attitude is likely to outlast the virus crisis itself. Even when the disease is gone, it will leave a legacy of economic disruption and calls for reform. How long that mood can be made to last is anyone’s guess.

Both Mr Morrison and Mr Marshall are already sending signals that they aren’t intent on wasting a good crisis and are said to be working on plans for structural change.

It’s been almost 25 years since the end of Australia’s last genuine reform era, coming under the Hawke-Keating governments. It was born in a similar time of economic fear and disruption, and the same ingredients are emerging now.

There’s public appetite for change, partisan political flexibility and a largely responsible media that’s willing to respect and explain complex policy arguments. It’s questionable if today’s leadership is as capable as what came before – but the window of opportunity is open.