If hypocrisy denotes character Shorten is our man

Bill Shorten and Scott Morrison during the second leaders debate in Brisbane. Picture: Kym Smith

If hypocrisy is the stuff of leadership, Labor leader Bill Shorten will make a sterling prime minister. He spruiks Labor as an honest broker for the small end of town but uses emotionalism to win over the plebs. He laments the loss of public civility but lashes dissent from green-left orthodoxy. He bemoans the democratic deficit, the decline in trust between government and the governed.

But if it wins the election, Labor plans to introduce new grounds for state censorship of politically incorrect speech.

The two leaders’ debates have showcased the markedly different styles of Scott Morrison and the Opposition Leader. The Prime Minister is relaxed, confident and not easily flustered. Shorten often looks awkward and is caught off guard when questions are raised about the cost of Labor policies.

Yet Shorten has something Morrison lacks: a history of union organising. He uses a range of persuasive techniques that I assume he learned through years of community engagement. The techniques can be used for positive ends or to manipulate people.

When Shorten is losing a point, he leans on style, not substance. He uses anecdotes, personal stories and appeals to emotion to win back the audience. In the second leaders’ debate on Friday, Morrison spruiked the Coalition health agenda. After the Prime Minister had discussed the Coalition commitment to preventing youth suicide, Shorten commended him but played a game of one-upmanship. He raised political capital with an anecdote about suicide.

He bypassed rational debate in an appeal to emotion by asking audience members to raise their hands if they knew someone who had taken their own life. Hands went up; Shorten nodded and paused before addressing them in the tone of a schoolteacher. The audience was hooked. Shorten had them in his pocket without needing to offer a substantive policy alternative to the Coalition.

In contrast to Shorten, Morrison tends to rely on information when he is down a debating point. He draws on data, historical facts and modelling to persuade people that the Coalition’s case is right. On the face of it, Morrison is more rational, but Shorten is the smarter operator. The government is at risk of winning the policy battle but losing the political war.

Shorten’s talent for persuasion is not fully exercised by key election themes. During the leaders’ debate on Sky News last week, he lamented the loss of public civility and held elements of the media culpable. Yet Shorten has a demonstrated questionable behaviour towards people who dissent from his opinions.

A day before the debate, he cast aspersions on economist Brian Fisher, whose modelling revealed the potential cost of Labor’s emissions reduction plan. Fisher estimated that reducing emissions by 45 per cent by 2030 could result in a $53 billion hit to GDP. He explained that Labor had not provided enough detail of the scheme for a complete analysis. However, the working model was produced out of concern that “there wasn’t any rational, transparent debate about the cost of climate policies, whether it be Coalition or Labor”.

The Australian reported greens activist Simon Holmes a Court suggested on Twitter that the media “send a camera crew around to film” his offices and linked to Fisher’s home address. He also posted a photo of Fisher’s home. Shorten responded by launching an ad hominem attack. He appeared to smear the climate economist, comparing him to “doctors the big tobacco companies used to roll out in the 70s and 80s to say smoking was healthy for you”. Following the onslaught, Fisher’s home was attacked.

It is not the first time Shorten has created a culture of hostility to dissenters from the green-left line. During the gay-marriage debate, he associated dissenting opinion with actual harm, suggesting a No vote campaign could cause gay youth to suicide. Greens leader Richard Di Natale said: “We know that if a plebiscite is to go ahead that young people are at risk … we will most likely see young people take their lives if this plebiscite goes ahead and the hate that will come with that is unleashed.”

Political analysis of the election campaign has been focused largely on the themes set by the two major parties, especially the economy and climate policy. But Labor intends on changing the culture of Australian democracy. In a speech last year, Shorten said: “(What) we’ve seen from the Liberals and Nationals creates a bigger challenge for us on the Labor side … to restore the faith of Australians in Australian democracy itself.”

Despite global backlash against political correctness, the ALP has signalled its intent to broaden state censorship of dissenting thought. In 2017, legal affairs spokesman Mark Dreyfus foreshadowed Labor plans to establish “a standard about speech generally”.

The ALP national platform provides a sense of what kind of speech the party will permit and what it intends to censor. It will continue to support censorship of words that offend state-appointed minority groups under section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act. It intends to extend the regime of censorship to include LGBTIQ people. In its national platform, the ALP writes: “When prejudice against LGBTIQ people contributes to harassment by the written or spoken word (it) causes actual harm … Labor considers (it) abuse … and must be subject to effective sanctions … discrimination law provides such effective sanctions.”

When last in office, the ALP launched a stunning attack on core freedoms, including freedom of speech and freedom of the press. It opened borders to immigrants who reject our way of life. It has blocked Coalition attempts to introduce a citizenship test that would require aspiring citizens to pledge allegiance to the core liberties that sustain the free world.

Labor will win the coming election. Like any party, it has hardworking and decent MPs as well as less savoury members. But the Australia forged by a Shorten-led government will be a hollow man.