National cabinet usurps COAG role

Scott Morrison talks to Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk during a National Cabinet meeting. Picture: Getty Images

The most important message Scott Morrison has delivered about our eventual transition from the COVID-19 crisis was his assertion the national cabinet is “very focused on the road out as well”, which means the transformation in Australian governance is not a temporary phenomenon.

The national cabinet will remain in place to deal with recovery. Reinforcing this point, a senior source told this column: “COAG is dead” – referring to the Council of Australian Governments, the forum of leaders whose reform momentum dried up years ago.

Morrison plans to vest the national cabinet with a longer-run responsibility. That means a departure in executive government in Australia reflecting the common interest created among the Prime Minister, state premiers and chief ministers. This is bad news for federal Labor, struggling for a meaningful role in the crisis.

“National cabinet is the new model,” the same source said. The states retain their sovereign power but enter into a collective decision-making forum. Their interest as incumbents is cutting across traditional party interests. It gives premiers, Liberal and Labor, a bigger platform and more authority. Morrison as PM has greater authority because he chairs a national cabinet, not just a federal government cabinet.

Written off just three months ago, Morrison has learnt the great lesson from the bushfire crisis where he was held politically responsible for state government functions. The COVID-19 event has seen Morrison inaugurate a new strategy that seeks to unify political and policy responsibility in a decision-making national cabinet. It is not called Morrison’s cabinet; that would be utterly unwise. But Morrison is its chair and five of the state and territory ALP leaders are its members. Federal ALP leader Anthony Albanese’s attacks on Morrison’s strategy are partly attacks on the national cabinet strategy that involves Labor participants.

The logic of the crisis, so far, favours incumbents. Albanese denigrated the national cabinet from its inception, dismissing it as a COAG hook-up but then complaining he was not a member. Labor’s petulance was seen in its refusal to even use the term “national cabinet”, pretending it was merely a stunt. But Labor has missed the plot: it is COAG that is becoming obsolete.

The scale of the problem for federal Labor deepened this week. On the measure of “better PM” Newspoll showed Morrison heading Albanese 53-29 per cent, a reversal of Albanese’s 43-38 per cent lead at the end of January after the bushfires. It showed the primary vote for the major parties close to the 2019 election result with the government leading 51-49 per cent on the two-party-preferred vote, reversing Labor’s 52-48 per cent lead at January’s end.

Yes, it is just one poll. But it also showed a remarkable 86-10 per cent approval for the $130bn JobKeeper scheme. This underlines federal Labor’s absence of options: it has no alternative but to vote for the package this week on Morrison’s terms. The folly, however, of the long list of people writing off Morrison during the bushfires should now apply equally to people thinking he is unbeatable due to COVID-19. This saga has many cycles to run.

Morrison now operates on the principle of “the policy not the politics”. His purpose as a national leader is to generate unity. So far, the national cabinet has held together despite differences. There are no guarantees. But the only way forward for Morrison is to limit partisan politics; witness how he ignores federal Labor’s critiques (while ready to embrace its ideas). The polls suggest this is exactly the brand of leadership the public wants.

Indeed, it would be surprising if every premier and chief minister was not rewarded with higher approval ratings that, in turn, will reinforce the national cabinet’s momentum. The abandonment of the parliamentary sittings schedule denies Albanese the main platform he needs. He is consigned to a risky “two faces” tactic – criticising Morrison’s packages but voting for them.

Albanese should abandon his pathetic lament that, as Opposition Leader, he should sit in the national cabinet. Opposition leaders don’t sit in cabinets. During the war Robert Menzies as PM invited John Curtin to form a national government that included cabinet positions for Labor. He didn’t invite Curtin to sit in the cabinet as an opposition leader. Curtin disagreed with key elements of the war plans and he was justified in holding out as an alternative government. An influential War Advisory Council was created instead.

Albanese should learn from Curtin. An opposition leader has no role in a decision-making national cabinet constituted by executive heads of government, as distinct from an advisory committee. Morrison, however, needs to watch his back, not because of Labor but because of an emerging fusion on the right between populist conservatives and ideological libertarians, searching for relevance, frustrated by this historical moment and selling phony propositions.

There will be big trouble on the right. It will exaggerate the inept overzealous policing of social distancing in Sydney and Melbourne. We are already being dished up mantras about dictatorial governments. Morrison was aware of this risk from the start and gave other leaders a consistent message — bring the people with you, only apply measures sustainable for six months. This guidance necessitates a degree of ongoing individual liberty and application of common sense.

The bigger issue, however, will be the Morrison/Frydenberg $213bn spending measures to save the economy. Wide sections of the right remain in psychological trauma from this. They believe the economic measures went too far, saddling the nation with unacceptable debt, big government and a future of higher taxes. Morrison will be accused of exaggerating the crisis and shutting down much of the economy, thereby precipitating the massive “survival” spending.

It highlights Morrison’s acuity from the start in presenting this event as a dual crisis — health and economic — to be confronted simultaneously with a balance between these conflicting needs. Can you imagine the trouble facing Morrison now if he had gone for a total economic lockdown at the outset?

Of course, the PM has made mistakes, the main one being failure to properly police the borders with ruthless rigour after getting the initial China travel ban right. But Morrison has repeatedly warned against shutting down too much of the economy. Morrison and Josh Frydenberg have insisted on keeping open the “productive” economy — mining, factories, construction, energy, utilities. Indeed, Morrison has even told the premiers: don’t damage your economies so much they cannot reignite when the time comes to ease restrictions.

The grand joke is that Morrison and Frydenberg have become socialists, probably the left’s main solace from the crisis. The reality, however, is they have responded to the greatest health crisis facing Australia for a century with logical but unprecedented government-led survival policies. From the start Morrison outlined the principles he would follow. The packages will save, literally, the jobs, livelihoods and businesses of countless numbers of Australians.

The government avoided the classic mistake, a weak fiscal response that would have expended significant funds for little gain. Morrison, however, is now under pressure to ease the restrictions. Indeed, the more the success on the health front the more this pressure, particularly from the right, will intensify. Morrison will not be fool enough to fall for such folly.

Chief Medical Officer Brendan Murphy said yesterday that “complacency is our biggest risk” and warned “it could all come undone”. Look at how Singapore has been forced to toughen its policies after a second outbreak. The single worst mistake Morrison could make now would be to listen to the false prophets, reopen parts of the economy and provoke a resurgence of the virus. The likely consolation for Morrison is that the populist right will emerge from the crisis not just deeply unhappy but much weaker.