Mal Farr: Scott Morrison’s U-turn myth busted this week

You might think the Prime Minister has a rubber elbow when it comes to a lot of things, this week we’ve found out that’s not strictly true.

ANALYSIS
It would be inaccurate to accuse Prime Minister Scott Morrison of multiple policy U-turns as that would mean the government was back where it started.

Instead, the government has spun the policy steering wheel but found itself stranded on compromises nowhere near the proposed destination while still distant from the original departure point.

And this has happen in a significant number of policy episodes since the August change in the prime ministership as the government began a policy shuffle to demarcate a Morrison administration.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced a Commonwealth Integrity Commission this week. Picture: AAP Image/Dan Himbrechts

This week it happened again when Prime Minister Morrison announced a Commonwealth Integrity Commission having previously dismissed the idea as a FYI he issue.

But the proposed body is a “lead” agency along with 13 existing monitoring organisations and will not conduct public hearings.

It is a compromise structure and its main political task at the moment appears to be to rescue the Prime Minister from the charge he is soft on corruption. He could not U-turn to the “fringe issue” classification and was stuck at a policy point which had many critics

Another episode is the cancellation of the proposal to move our embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. This was a “review” Mr Morrison announced during the Wentworth by-election but it was quickly dressed up as an intention.

Certainly Indonesia thought so and suddenly our trade deal with Jakarta was at risk from what was a clumsily delivered by-election ploy.

More than a hundred protesters gathered at the Australian embassy in Jakarta to protest Mr Morrison’s embassy move. Picture: Adek Berry.

There was no room for a complete U-turn to the pre-Wentworth status quo — which had already been reviewed and endorsed by cabinet on many occasions — but Mr Morrison had to park somewhere.

So the compromise will be that Australia will recognise West Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and leave our embassy where it is. What had started as a bold commitment was reduced to a gesture.

Then came the ruckus over attacks on religious freedom which were obvious only to a small number of people.

Philip Ruddock wasn’t among them.

He had been appointed to head a government inquiry into religious freedom which followed the overwhelming public endorsement of same-sex marriage and worries that bakers could not refuse on religious grounds to make wedding cakes for gay weddings.

It was a sop to the Liberal hard right who had been convincing rejected by voters on marriage equality but who maintained their entitlement to keep complaining.

The Ruddock report was delivered in May but has only recently been revealed in public.

Mr Ruddock has said there was “little hard evidence” of religious discrimination although there were “concerns”.

Philip Ruddock had been appointed to head a government inquiry into religious freedom. Picture: AAP Image/Mick Tsikas

But the government was by then committed to some action — fed by contrived alarm that religious schools might not be able to expel gay pupils, something which it seems has never happen and was unlikely to.

The U-turn option again was off limits. The Prime Minister resorted to a promise of a religious freedom commission to protect faiths from discrimination which the government’s own report said was difficult to identify with hard evidence.

In other instances, the government cannot U-turn back to the National Energy Guarantee but has yet to find a comprehensive stopping point between the NEG and pledging total loyalty to king coal.

Expect further policy steering wheel spins before he election next year.

— Malcolm Farr is news.com.au’s national political editor. Continue the conversation on Twitter @faarm51