Many Australians may not yet comprehend the scale of the economic crisis that has beset the country.
And today’s national account numbers revealing a seven per cent contraction in GDP between April and June are unlikely to deepen the national pessimism that already exists.
With billions of dollars going into keeping households afloat, the psychological impact could simply be absorbed as just more bad news, following months of other bad news.
And there’s plenty of more bad news to come.
This desensitising to “catastrophe messaging” presents yet another challenge, among the many, for the prime minister.
A research paper by Coalition pollsters bears out the difficult political contest ahead.
How to turn the dry economic argument toward “humanising the economic damage”.
The ability to do this has been a hallmark of Morrison’s leadership but has been lost recently to political arguments with the states over borders and doomsday politics.
While today’s national accounts have revealed the deepest economic downturn since 1945, it only confirms what the prime minister and treasurer have been saying since June.
It’s arguable that most people won’t have a sense of what this actually means.
As a consequence, Labor’s attack will be framed less around the numbers and how well Australia is doing against the backdrop of global recession than it will be around the scaling back of JobKeeper.
The timing of legislation on Tuesday to taper off JobKeeper and today’s national accounts revealing economic misery may appear a political paradox that Anthony Albanese will seek to exploit.
While Morrison has extended JobKeeper until early next year, Albanese has framed it as a cut to the payments and an assault on forcibly idle workers.
Intellectually, Albanese knows there is no “money tree” and the welfare tap must be turned off eventually.
But this is not a point Labor will concede, given the political opportunity to focus its contrary condemnation to an attack on workers.
Albanese knows that Labor cannot win an argument over economic management.
Instead he will be seeking to cut down the prime minister over compassion, a trait that Morrison currently has in abundance.
Labor will frame its narrative around “withdrawing” support for JobKeeper at a time when the Government is telling people how badly smashed the economy is.
Albanese’s argument will go to accusations that the recession will be deeper and longer as a consequence, with more workers losing work and suffering ongoing pain.
Having mined just about every other grievance to no effect, this is one of the last places Labor has to go if it wants to put the government under real pressure.
