Christopher Pyne: COVID-19 response demands a united front without political gamesmanship
We should be proud that our government leaders have put aside petty, partisan differences, in order to save lives and livelihoods. Labor should not start throwing stones now, writes Christopher Pyne.
Opinion
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It’s a pity, but I suppose it was inevitable – this week saw politics come to the COVID-19 crisis.
The past month or so has been diabolic for Oppositions of any political persuasion. COVID-19 hasn’t just changed almost every aspect of our lives personally and work wise, it has “blotted out the sun” for anyone not in government.
While the national Cabinet is meeting three or four times a week, having planned to meet once a week, the media of every kind – print, television, radio and online – cannot divert their attention to any other subject. The coverage is wall-to-wall COVID-19. While this might be debilitating for us all, it has turned the share of coverage for the non-government parties to a media wasteland.
It didn’t surprise me then, that the leader of the Labor Party, Anthony Albanese, this week split from the Government on its handling of the crisis and staked out Labor’s own ground, separate from everyone else.
It is a high-risk strategy.
It is also disappointing.
Now is not the time to be making political mileage. There will be plenty of time for that. The next national election is more than two years away. I don’t sense an appetite among the people for political gamesmanship. Albanese was tracking better when people saw him being on the same page as Prime Minister Scott Morrison.
Labor’s position appears to be that COVID-19 is a health crisis, not an economic crisis. But anyone will tell you that it is both.
Equally, no one in any government is arguing that the economic response should be put above the health response. They are clearly articulating that protecting the population’s health is number one.
If it wasn’t, why would the Government be shutting down large parts of the economy? If health wasn’t number one, they wouldn’t bother.
Labor has to convince people of a story that is not true – that the Government is putting people’s health at risk to protect the economy.
If it was true, why would I have spent the past week sitting in my study, working from home and watching my waistline expand as I convince myself that another hot cross bun with lashings of butter is a fair reward for a morning’s work?
There are businesses going to the wall every few minutes. Hundreds of thousands of Australians are being put out of work. If the Government was elevating the economy over health, they wouldn’t be. Labor’s position nationally puts them at odds with their state and territory counterparts.
The national Cabinet, the first of its kind since 1901, includes the Labor premiers and chief ministers of Victoria, Queensland, Western Australia, the Northern Territory and the Australian Capital Territory.
Reports out of the meetings, articulated by Morrison are clear – there is no “blue team” and “red team”.
While there have been some differences in how the different governments have reacted to COVID-19, by and large, they are the same. COVID-19 has hit some parts of Australia earlier and harder than others.
Naturally, there will be different responses to varying circumstances.
We should be proud that our government leaders have put aside petty, partisan differences, in order to save lives and livelihoods and prove that Federation can work in a crisis.
I’m told by people who would know that the Prime Minister is seen to be leading from the front and displaying a calm but determined approach that is supported by the other heads of government – Labor and Liberal.
There was a suggestion that Albanese should be included in the national Cabinet.
On what basis? Labor doesn’t sit in the Cabinet of the Australian Government.
The national Cabinet is a meeting of the heads of each government in Australia. If Albanese was to be included, there would be a call, quite rightly, from the leaders of the Opposition from the states and territories to be included. Rather than nine individuals making decisions, there would be 18. Now isn’t the time for window dressing to make the group photograph look brighter, it’s the time for tough policy making.
Given Labor’s decision this week to start throwing stones, we should be grateful that Morrison didn’t succumb to the pressure from the “peanut gallery” to alter the nature of the national Cabinet.
Imagine trying to manage this crisis if the national Cabinet itself couldn’t agree on its handling.
Knowing Albanese well, I suspect he is being poorly advised.
His instinct for bipartisanship early in the COVID-19 crisis was the right one.
But I imagine some of his advisers and colleagues are concerned about being out of the limelight. They just have to “suck it up”.
For at least the next few months, all eyes are on those with their hands on the levers of power.
As the song by Hornsby and Skaggs goes, “That’s just the way it is”.