James Campbell: What is at stake at the coming federal election?
In less than three months Australians will vote for another three years of Coalition government or a new PM in Anthony Albanese. James Campbell considers what is at stake.
Opinion
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In less than three months Australians will know if they are settling in for another three years of Coalition government or setting off on a wild ride under Anthony Albanese.
For the past week I have been wondering what historians will make of the achievements of Coalition governments of the Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison era, and what is at stake at this election.
The big-ticket changes to Australia from the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd governments are easy to list: the NBN and the NDIS, paid parental leave, a bunch of school halls and the current industrial relations system.
There were also big increases in federal spending on schools, although how much difference this has actually made is debatable.
The other two major changes of the last Labor government — the mining and carbon taxes — went the same way as John Howard’s WorkChoices IR system, repealed by his successor.
Howard’s other big changes — the GST, gun control and a refocusing of our migration program away from family reunions and towards skilled migrants — are with us still.
What about this current mob? Aside from repealing the two abovementioned taxes, this government deserves a giant tick for stopping the boats and largely emptying the detention centres, which were full when it came to power.
The biggest change in civil society is undoubtedly the legislation of same-sex marriage, something no one could have predicted when Tony Abbott was elected back in 2013.
What else? Well there were free-trade deals with South Korea, Japan and err … China, and more recently the UK.
There’s also been a heap of big infrastructure from Inland Rail to Snowy 2.0.
It was also on this government’s watch that Australia woke up to China’s attempts to interfere in our political system and passed laws to do something about it.
We have also massively increased the amount we spend on defence under this government. The coming of AUKUS and the revival of the Quad dialogue with India, Japan and US are also legacies that should last.
Other endeavours have met with mixed success, largely because they involve areas where previous federal governments have had the wisdom to keep out.
You’d never know, for example, from the way the recent floods have been covered in certain media outlets that disaster management is primarily a state responsibility.
But having grasped that nettle after the bushfires a couple of years back, Scott Morrison has no one to blame but himself if the public are now holding him responsible for every shortcoming in the response to the flood disaster.
The same goes for electricity generation, which for some reason Malcolm Turnbull felt he just had to get the feds involved in.
Other achievements of the past nine years have been washed away by subsequent events — no one could have foreseen that years of budget repair would be annihilated overnight by the massive spending requirements of a global pandemic.
The glaring omission from any list of achievements from the past nine years is in the area of industrial relations, where almost nothing has happened. The reason I added the “almost” to the previous sentence is because although Julia Gillard’s IR laws remain as her legacy almost 10 years after she left office, the people who interpret them today are different to the people who were interpreting them in 2013.
Since then the Coalition has been systematically replacing the members of the Fair Work Commission who were there when it took office with people who are more inclined to share its world view in this space.
Not only that, these days when decisions are appealed from Fair Work to the Federal Court, they are much more likely to be heard by a judge appointed by the current government.
What the Coalition has not been able to do for the past nine years is pick its own president of the Fair Work Commission. The current president, Iain Ross, who has been there since 2012, is a former assistant secretary of the ACTU. His time in office is scheduled to end in 2024, which means his successor will be chosen by the side that wins this year’s election.
It goes without saying that if Scott Morrison gets the chocolates, that person’s CV won’t include a spell at the ACTU.
Another gig which is certain to be filled by whoever wins this year is Chief Justice of the Federal Court, whose current occupant, Richard Allsop, also appointed by Labor, will step down some time in 2023.
Throw in another High Court appointment in the next parliament, and it becomes clear there is a lot at stake at this election, even before we get to the policies of the two sides.
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