It’s the PM’s show: he doesn’t take out the garbage

Mathias Cormann was seen by the PM’s office to have ‘done well to express the anger and frustration of people with the protesters’. Picture: AAP

Mathias Cormann used to be somebody. He was even touted as a contender, if only he would shift from the Senate to the lower house. As Finance Minister he eclipsed treasurer Joe Hockey and he continued to ride high when Scott Morrison became treasurer. Cormann was one of the most important­ and effective figures in the administrations of Tony Abbott­ and Malcolm Turnbull.

Not so much now.

Cormann’s betrayal of Turnbull, pledging undying loyalty one day then stabbing him the next after convincing Michaelia Cash and Mitch Fifield to join him in front of the cameras in what governmen­t insiders now refer to as the hostage video, battered his reputation. He has struggled ever since to recover from his orchestrated defection, which was designed­ to bolster the leadership bid of his friend Peter Dutton.

Morrison, who Cormann never rated, now so dominates the ­government and the media that it is difficult for anyone to get a gig, unless of course it’s their turn to take out the garbage. Say like Treasury announcing on a Friday that JobKeeper would now cost only $70bn and not $130bn, with Josh Frydenberg following up by claiming the error was partly because­ 1000 employers filled out forms claiming they had 1500 ­employees instead of one.

Okay, so the Treasurer does get to do more than that, but after promising to release in this sitting the updated budget numbers, he has decided to delay the really bad economic news, as well as the fate of JobKeeper, until late next month — well after the Eden-Monaro by-election.

Prime ministerial bestie Stuart Robert scored the occasional outing, also on a Friday afternoon, to dump another load of garbage, this one set to cost taxpayers about $1bn, which in the overall scheme of things today is a trifle. Morrison, one of the architects of the Robodebt debacle, did not appear for a few days. By the time he re­appeared, it had faded, until Labor tried to revive it in parliament.

Education Minister Dan Tehan got to announce solo on the Queen’s Birthday holiday that free childcare would end on July 12 (after the by-election). It was always­ going to end, but Tehan also revealed that JobKeeper payments for childcare workers would finish on July 20 (yes, after the by-election), despite an emphatic assurance from Morriso­n three days earlier that JobKeeper would operate until September. Then again, he wasn’t out there to announce bad news.

On Wednesday, despite the announcement to the contrary, Cormann insisted JobKeeper would “run its full course”.

Words do assume different meanings over time, but seriously, yes should still mean yes. And if politicians say a program is set to continue, people are entitled to believe it.

Morrison remains popular, but this mismatch of words and deeds helps build a picture of the character of a government. A bit of smoke and mirrors here, a fib there, an underhand manoeuvre or two, a few tweets on that dog whistle stowed close by the hip pocket and, before you know it, people begin to wonder anew if, at its core, the government is sneaky and a bit gutless. Just like they had begun to think after the bushfires and sports rorts before the pandemic descended like an evil mist.

After months of near insignificance, Cormann managed to crash through last Sunday morning. The man nicknamed the ­Belgian Bulldozer does not do spontaneous. He polishes his lines before he delivers them. So when he told Kieran Gilbert on Sky that the people who had marched in capital cities to highlight discrim­in­ation, the high incarceration rates and the deaths of indigenous people in custody were self-­indulgent and selfish, it had that pre-planned air to it.

Whether or not you agree with what people did (the arguments both ways were compelling), Cormann’s language was inflammat­ory and unnecessary. But it got a result. It got headlines, pressured the states to loosen ­restrictions and stirred hostile sentiments.

There were/are legitimate concerns about community health. Millions of Australians, including people denied access to ailing loved ones or forbidden to attend their funerals, have made sacrifices which have helped keep community virus transmissions low.

However, even if you set aside what happened in the US, there are still legitimate concerns about the plight of indigenous Australians. Indigenous leaders are right to say there never seems to be a good time to express them and at a time when people are most likely to notice. They sanitised, they wore masks, they tried, not always successfully, to keep their distance. And they marched, almost all of them peacefully, in their tens of thousands.

Cormann is a smart guy. English­ is not his first language. It’s his fourth. But he could have easily found a less provocative way to encapsulate the dilemma confronting people.

A few weeks ago, Tehan had barely left the ABC’s Insiders set when the Prime Minister called. Tehan had accused Dan Andrews of ­taking a sledgehammer to the Victorian­ education system. He apologised well in time for the evening news.

There was no request to Corman­n from either Morrison or his office to dial down the rhetoric. Instead, there was general agreement that Cormann had done well to express the anger and frustration of people with the protesters. Insiders insist there is no argument with the cause (citing efforts by Indigenous Australians Minister Ken Wyatt to fix the incarcera­tion rates), only the decision to walk the streets in favour of it. It sure didn’t sound like it.

The marches and the reaction coincided with the publication of a study by Australian National University researcher Siddharth Shir­od­kar showing 75 per cent of 11,000 Australians who voluntarily took an online test had implicit or unconscious bias against indigenous Australians.

Shirodkar, whose family mig­rat­ed to Australia from India when he was five, says he is ­shocked but not surprised by the results of his 10-year study. He will not buy into the politics surrounding his disturbing findings, but points out the style of survey was the only way to pick up unconscious views that “seep seamlessly into our decision-making”.