Scott Morrison is a change agent from the centre

Scott Morrison is maintaining his focus on the practical concerns of people rather than ideology. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Gary Ramage

In this week’s 2021 agenda-setting speech and interviews, Scott Morrison had an overriding ­objective — to show he is the Prime Minister for the times and possesses a better grip on the times than his rivals.

Morrison’s messages are the latest update on his entrenched stance of middle-ground pragmatism, positioning his government in the centre, focused on the practical concerns of people and shunning the ideological agendas of right and left with their partisans in the media.

This makes Morrison a change agent, since the political centre is in constant flux.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in climate change. His aspiration seems apparent — to take to the next election a 2050 net-zero emissions reduction goal, to be delivered by a technology agenda, while keeping his own side of politics relatively united.

If Morrison pulled that off and got re-elected, it would constitute a monumental reform for conservative politics and for Australia. In the endless repetition of climate change issues in this country, the core reality is almost never mentioned — that all progress towards a strong public majority for action depends on moving opinion on the conservative or Coalition side, which has repeatedly won elections attacking Labor’s agenda.

There are two certainties with Morrison. He will fall for neither the pro-coal demands from his own side, nor for the excessive emissions-reduction demands from progressives. Morrison wants to shift the dial but stay in office. He knows the lesson from the 2019 election — that opinions in this country on climate vary enormously from Melbourne to regional Australia, and the only way forward for his ­government is not to align with either ideological camp but continue to find the balancing point in an evolving narrative.

The politics are dangerous. That’s why Morrison floats ­notions of getting to net-zero ­before or after 2050 depending upon the method. He sells the idea that 2050 won’t be achieved by higher taxes, a prelude to ­embracing the goal but keeping credibility with conservatives.

Morrison, however, needs to avoid John Howard’s pre-2007 election blunder — when Howard pledged to achieve his Kyoto targets but refused to sign up to Kyoto because it was a hopelessly flawed treaty. Howard declined to ratify a treaty whose domestic targets he pledged to uphold. It was an absurd contradiction. Howard’s policy didn’t matter; it was the symbolism that mattered. The very world Kyoto was sanctified by the progressive media — it equated with virtue.

The new virtue is “net-zero at 2050” and every pet shop galah knows it — so Morrison’s blunder in Howard’s footsteps would be to say Australia can get there, no worries, but not commit. That would be folly.

Morrison’s speech was loaded with messages, explicit and implicit. The year 2021 will be dominated by the vaccine rollout, containing the virus and managing the robust economic recovery. This is the central issue for the nation. Australia’s good performance so far means expectations remain high, and that’s a risk for Morrison who will stand or fall on this front. As he keeps saying, the virus sets its own rules (witness Perth now in lockdown).

Morrison says vaccinating up to 25 million people by October at a cost of $6.3bn is “one of the largest logistical exercises ever seen in Australia”, and the government — having now set the timetable — must deliver to keep its credibility.

At the same time, Morrison must judge the withdrawal of JobKeeper and implement his toughest rule: that support is temporary, and that he doesn’t run a “blank-cheque budget” when many people think that’s exactly what Morrison runs.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison. Picture: Getty Images

After the biggest spending year in Australia’s history his message becomes that the budget can’t operate “on taxpayers’ money forever” — a transition that will determine his future.

The idea that Morrison, amid these transitions, will decide that 2021 is ripe for a general election is fanciful. It doesn’t interest Morrison. It would gift Labor its scare campaign — “things are about to get worse”. And it would undermine Morrison’s persona as a leader putting the needs of the people before his own needs.

But there is another factor: as PM, you never recover the time in office you sacrifice by going early, you are just in office for a shorter time. Does that sound like Morrison?

He told Sky’s Paul Murray one of the mistaken conclusions about his 2020 economic and JobKeeper program was that it represented “some sort of ideological overhaul of government”. He branded such views as ­“complete rubbish”, saying he made a necessary response to an emergency.

This outlook will shape 2021 and the entire run to the next election. Morrison has not the slightest intention of running a new libertarian economic reform agenda, nor succumbing to progressive demands for ongoing, untargeted financial support to continue beyond its deadline or to impose new or higher taxes on the public.

The reasons are obvious. Morrison won the last election opposing new taxes, not proposing them. Second, there is less sentiment in the public today for free market reforms than at any time in the past 40 years. The global political movement is to the left, in America, Britain and Europe.

Third, Morrison pointed to the government’s modest IR reforms — now opposed by Labor and in difficulty in the Senate — merely proving again what everyone knew, namely, the institutional resistance in parliament to reforms, a factor central to the demise of Tony Abbott and Malcolm Turnbull.

Saying he will not “pursue things for the sake of vanity” is nothing but realism.

The high tide reform age died in this country 15 years ago, and Morrison lives by the axiom that he will not commit political suicide for marginal gains from policies unlikely to be legislated. For better or worse, he operates in the political system as it exists, and that means agendas that can actually be implemented such as aged-care reform, infrastructure, mental health, closing the gap and supply side capability.

There are many implications. Don’t expect Morrison to endorse a move to cancel a legislated benefit for workers from the lift in the superannuation guarantee beyond 9.5 per cent on the spurious grounds that people will be compensated via higher wages. Yes, there will be some super ­reforms. But as a political proposition, that specific idea doesn’t fly.

There is another centrist position Morrison put on the table in his Australia Day address. He said that “in Australia we believe in the unique value of each Australian as individuals” not casting ourselves “through the identity prism of our age, or our race, or our gender, our ethnicity or our religion”.

This was a sweeping statement of conviction that Morrison feels sure most Australians support. It guarantees a campaign against identity politics whenever Labor overreaches.