Cheap bribes won’t save Morrison

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison Sydney on Saturday. Picture: AAP

When governments are trailing in the polls, there is always the temptation to do what never seems to work. Desperation causes politicians to forget history and throw money at the voters in a last-ditch attempt to ingratiate themselves.

The problem is once the mob has made up its minds to throw out the incumbents, no amount of largesse will sway them. If you thought this Coalition government was so economically responsible that it would never go down this path, you would have been very, very wrong.

There will now be a “budget” on Tuesday. Given an election will be announced within days after that budget’s delivery, you don’t need to be too bright to work out why it is being brought down.

In keeping with Adam and Eve’s penchant for eating Granny Smiths, Scott Morrison and Josh Frydenberg just couldn’t help themselves. Families will have $125 thrown at them to help pay electricity bills in a last-ditch electoral bribe that is pretty well guaranteed to fail. This kind of gesture is no substitute for a record of achievement and the Morrison government just doesn’t have one.

The voters are not mugs and hate being given the mushroom treatment. They can recognise a low-grade electoral bribe for what it is and will rarely reward it.

Too many people believe the only true achievement of this government was the dumping of Malcolm Turnbull.

The Prime Minister will have to be a lot more canny if he wants to refloat his fast-sinking ship. The move to bring on a budget no one wants, given we most definitely are in election campaign mode right now, looks as desperate as it most certainly is.

This kind of bribery means the government is following closely the path of the losers. Winners don’t have to go for the final-minute splash of cash; winners at least give the appearance of doing something during their tenure.

The word which was so popular during the Hawke-Keating-Howard years (i.e. reform) is barely heard today. Only those with perfect hearing could detect this word whispered in the corridors by politicians nowhere near big enough to carry it out.

While Gladys Berejiklian stayed well away from the Prime Minister during the NSW election campaign, you can bet the Prime Minister, when he is campaigning in his home state, will want the Premier by his side whenever possible. There are three or four federal seats in NSW under threat and this is but one of the problems the PM faces. In Queensland, Victoria and Western Australia there are up to 15 more seats that could change hands.

That is why the odds are stacked so high against Scott Morrison. He has so many seats with narrow margins to defend there will be no time for attack. It is hard to see the Coalition winning one seat but it is easy to see it losing 12 to 15. Bill Shorten is the closest thing to a certain winner as I have seen. He may well finish up with a bigger majority than Bob Hawke ever achieved.