Morrison must be wary of the politics of distraction

Scott Morrison in Canberra on Monday. Picture: Gary Ramage

Parliament returns on Tuesday after a bruising week for Scott Morrison. The Prime Minister was booted in the polls, mobbed by the media and kicked when he was down by faceless men. He has time to recover political capital, but the risks are substantial.

If the government is distracted, Labor will capitalise on it. If Morrison falls into the trap of reacting to polls and the press, he will look weak. If Liberal wets obstruct the passage of religious freedom laws promised before the 2019 election, conservative voters will walk away from the party. The government’s future depends on its ability to tune out distractions and focus on what matters most to Australians.

The media’s gossip about Morrison has been cheap and nasty. However, it could be amplified to undermine the government, distract voters from key policy issues and delay passage of legislation in the crucial sitting weeks before the election. The front pages are filled with ad hominem attacks on Morrison. But the questions that matter most are about policy; what do the Coalition and Labor want for the future of the country and how do they plan to deliver it?

Morrison and Anthony Albanese unofficially have launched their campaigns. Both have focused on job creation, post-Covid economics and instilling optimism in voters. For Morrison, that means using the government’s track record as proof it can protect Australia during a devastating external shock and deliver a better economic recovery package than the opposition.

Labor has seized on the challenging politics of the pandemic to attack the government’s economic record. It cannot deny the Coalition’s success in managing the economy during the pandemic. The OECD praised the JobKeeper program, which saved an estimated 700,000 jobs in Australia while other developed economies were struggling. In November last year, 366,000 jobs were added in a stunning rebound that Josh Frydenberg attributed to the Australian people. Albanese has shifted the focus to the growing size of government and the federal debt and deficit.

The Treasurer argues that the Opposition Leader cannot be trusted with the economy. Writing for The Australian, he noted Albanese’s proposal to spend $6bn in taxpayers’ money convincing people to get vaccinated even though they had already had the jab. Albanese wanted the $2bn a month JobKeeper program to keep running for fear the “economic roof” would come “crashing down”. It did not.

To add to Labor’s woes, the Australian Bureau of Statistics reported that in December the unemployment rate dropped to 4.2 per cent, its lowest level in 13 years. In his press club address, Morrison was heartened by the reduction in youth unemployment to 9.4 per cent – 2.2 points lower than in March 2020 before the worst of the pandemic struck.

The extraordinary figures pose a problem for Labor, given it looked set to run a fairly conventional campaign on jobs. It seems to have adopted a finer tuned strategy with issue-based mes­sages that appeal to a fractured electorate, target demographically divergent seats, feed the 24-hour news cycle and whet public appetite for information novelty.

Labor has set its sights on cost of living as an election winner, for good reason. In October last year I warned that the government would need to manage rising costs. I pointed to ABS data showing basic necessities were becoming significantly more expensive. In the absence of intervention, pain at the bowser would worsen and food prices would rise.

The ABS has released the Living Cost Indexes for the December quarter. All five LCIs rose during the period. Higher global oil prices and limited supply drove the automotive fuel series to record levels. The data does not reveal the degree to which rising prices can be absorbed by different demographics or households but it does indicate that cost of living will be an election issue again.

In his press club address, Morrison responded to cost-of-living concerns. He highlighted the government’s record on job creation and cited data from the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission showing the average cost of supplying electricity to households has fallen to an eight-year low. The ACCC notes while inflation is driving up costs, the government’s Prohibiting Energy Market Misconduct laws are working to pass savings down “from generators, to retailers, to consumers”. The Coalition designed the so-called big stick laws to punish anti-compet­itive conduct in the energy sector.

Labor opposed the reforms in the lead-up to the 2019 election, with then opposition Treasury spokesman Chris Bowen describing them as “Venezuelan-style intervention”. The party later agreed to support the reform but the Labor leadership subsequently argued it was useless. Jim Chalmers, now opposition Treasury spokesman, and environment spokesman Mark Butler stated the law would not support clean, reliable and affordable energy. They claimed as a consequence “power prices will continue to go up and up and up”.

Opinion polls show Labor taking the lead on several fronts. The government needs to restore the trust and confidence of voters. However, the parlous state of democracy will be driven into further disrepair if the press continues to focus on the politics of distraction and personal attacks instead of vital questions about the nation and our place in the world.