Peta Credlin: Royal commission is needed to clarify federal government powers in pandemics
The federal government has sunk a staggering $289 billion on COVID-19 measures, but the states have held all the power in dealing with the pandemic. However, as Victoria has demonstrated, state government incompetence can be just as deadly as any pathogen itself, writes Peta Credlin.
Opinion
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- Andrews needs to step up to save Australia from virus spread
- Victoria will drag every state into COVID-19 crisis
So what was the alternative?
That was the question thrown back at a journalist by Finance Minister Mathias Cormann this week, when he and the Treasurer released the nation’s economic statement and the columns of red ink that now stretch out for decades.
Faced with a health crisis, the government’s decision to close down businesses meant, in simple fairness terms, that government policy had to support all the businesses and all the jobs that had deliberately been put into a coma.
As Thursday’s numbers showed, the nation’s balance sheet makes for grim reading. Thanks to a collapse in tax revenue, plus wage subsidies to 3.5 million workers and the doubled dole to 1.6 million jobseekers (together that’s about 40 per cent of the workforce), instead of the two modest surpluses expected last year and this, there’s annual deficits of nearly $100 billion and $200 billion.
And, thanks to pandemic spending, gross debt that was supposed by now to have peaked below $600 billion is surging towards $1 trillion.
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Spare a thought here for Cormann because, more than anyone, I suspect he found these numbers a real wrench.
After all, this is a Coalition government first elected back in 2013 to bring debt and deficits under control, and while prime ministers have come and gone in that time, for seven years now he’s been the sole minister in charge of the books and it’s his iron determination to rein in spending that’s given the Prime Minister the wherewithal to support Australians in this pandemic.
It’s easy if you have a secure job and savings set aside to quibble with how much the government has spent to date but, for many Australians, the past few months have seen dark times.
If you’re in Victoria — Melbourne in particular — the worst of this pandemic is only hitting now.
What worries me about the Commonwealth numbers last week is the assumption that Victoria will only be locked down for six weeks, and given the state delivered around 40 per cent of our nation’s economic growth last year, that matters.
But with the lockdown now into its third week, and infections (and deaths) at record levels, no one believes Victoria will be back to normal any time soon.
Worse still, Victorians are losing faith that the Andrews government can even turn this around.
In terms of taxpayer support, moves last week to restructure income payments from September acknowledge the reality that businesses trying to get back on their feet are finding it hard to get their workers back to work.
Under the original JobKeeper scheme, the “one size fits all” model meant that two-thirds of young casuals received more to stay at home during the pandemic than they did before it began.
Thankfully that’s now been fixed, with payments differentiating between full-time and part-time/casual workers, and starting to taper down.
Good to see too that those on the dole must start to look for work again (which was suspended at the height of the pandemic), however modestly, underscoring the important principle that taxpayer support can’t ever be “money for nothing”.
It’s worth noting an additional two things out of these numbers.
The first is the transparency.
We are seeing far more detail from Canberra about the budget books than we are seeing from any of the states, and given the skyrocketing government debt in Queensland and Victoria, that’s a real worry.
The second is the disparity between what the commonwealth is spending on this pandemic and what levers it actually controls.
It will stagger you to know that the Morrison government has spent $289 billion on COVID-19 measures while the states have spent around $20 billion combined.
Yet, as we can see with border closures and the issue of schools reopening, as well as the monumental failures in Victoria, it’s state governments that actually call the shots.
The Prime Minister is a canny politician and he clearly worked out early on that he would end up wearing the bulk of the costs of this pandemic so set up the National Cabinet to gain the appearance of at least having some control.
But that’s nothing more than a facade for him, and cover for premiers who use it when they want to and defy recommendations when they don’t.
The constitutional reality is that if the crisis is international, it’s the federal government in charge. But if, like this pandemic, and the recent bushfires too, the crisis is domestic, beyond handing over dollars, the Prime Minister is all but impotent.
To amplify this point, I counted almost 20 public occasions where Scott Morrison offered defence force support to Victoria to get this current outbreak under control, but each time it was rejected.
It’s only now, with daily infections up around 400 and pressure on the hospital system, that Daniel Andrews has relented — but how much damage has been done in that time?
And what risk is there now to other states, and our economic recovery?
When this is all over, I want to see a royal commission into pandemic management because, as Victoria has demonstrated, state government incompetence can be just as deadly as any pathogen itself and there must be greater clarity of powers for the commonwealth.
THUMBS DOWN:
Refusing to wear a mask if needed isn’t freedom of speech, it’s arrogance and it’s importing a false fight from the US. You don’t just wear it for yourself, you wear for everyone who is vulnerable — and looking out for each other is the Australian way.
THUMBS UP:
To the cattle exporters who knew that the Gillard Government ban was wrong and fought for justice.
It’s taken them a decade but last Thursday, they finally got it when the Morrison Government ruled out an appeal.
HOW MUCH DO THE LIVES OF BLACK WOMEN MATTER TO ACTIVISTS?
Sometimes, listening to the activists, it’s hard to avoid the suspicion that, while black lives certainly matter, not all matter equally.
A black death in custody, for instance, matters even if it’s from natural causes.
But what about black deaths from domestic violence, given that Indigenous women are 30 times more likely to be hospitalised for family violence than other Australian women?
There’s been a lot of talk this week about a new Closing the Gap target to reduce the rate of Aboriginal imprisonment — which is about eight times the rate for the general population, but — unless Aboriginal people are going to get lesser sentences for the same crimes — you can only reduce Aboriginal imprisonment rates if you reduce Aboriginal crime rates.
The only way you could have a target to reduce incarceration rates without a corresponding target to reduce domestic violence rates would be if offenders mattered more than victims.
Yet a report on Friday said that the new targets to reduce domestic violence would be dropped.
I accept that the appalling figures for Indigenous disadvantage may contain an echo of past racism.
But, mostly, they’re a function of the fact that too few Indigenous kids go to school and too few Indigenous adults have a job. Domestic violence is nightmarish in all welfare-dependent communities, not just Indigenous ones, but when we know it is so high in Indigenous communities but we have targets for the criminals and not the victims, then aren’t we saying black lives matter but not so much if you’re a black woman?