Not too hot or cold: PM seeks Goldilocks formula
Scott Morrison and Josh Frydenberg had agreed they should take it easy last week. The trade war with China, the border wars between the states, the almighty bungle by Treasury and the Australian Taxation Office in estimating then executing the JobKeeper package were not enough to entice the Prime Minister to appear anywhere for 10 days.
It has been a gruelling few months, so taking time to reflect and catch up with ACTU secretary Sally McManus is a good thing, although it was curious that hardly anyone remarked on his absence. Simon Birmingham handled China, Gladys Berejiklian slugged it out with Annastacia Palaszczuk and the other premiers on borders, while the Treasurer fronted on Friday to take his lumps on the costings debacle.
These are the most perverse of times, when we feel compelled to welcome the fact the government is not subsidising the wages of the estimated six million people. Good news folks, only three million drawing down a piddling $70bn, rather than the $130bn announced on the advice of Treasury that it was prepared to pay to keep workers attached to employers. Crack open the prosecco.
It’s what happens when policies are forged under great pressure after a U-turn by a government and a degraded, in part demoralised, public service. Bureaucrats and governments share the blame for the debacle, as they must.
Morrison’s self-imposed media isolation ended on Sunday after Fiona Kotvojs was preselected as the Liberal candidate for Eden-Monaro, when he accompanied her to an event at Murrumbateman, on the outskirts of Canberra. There he accepted responsibility for the bungle and trod softly, even a little meekly, on the border wars. It was smart to deal with his costings error then, because any other message he later sought to deliver would have been overwhelmed.
Neither did he want to antagonise any state or territory leader lest the national cabinet fractures when he is anxious to cement his image as a consensus builder. As the week progressed though, with the damage to the economy scrutinised as the recalcitrant premiers faced increasing criticism, he dialled up his responses.
Morrison spent some of his time in seclusion working on his speech for the National Press Club on Tuesday, billed as the one to get the economy out of the intensive care unit. Leaving aside whether this was the most sensitive analogy during a pandemic, no actual cure was presented, only a script for more consultation.
As well as qualifying as his personal job-keeper package, it was the resurrection, or recycling, whichever R-word you prefer, of Bob Hawke’s hugely successful 1983 slogan of Reconciliation, Recovery and Reconstruction, which morphed into the Prices and Incomes Accord with the ACTU. That also invaded the opposition’s territory, much as Morrison seeks to do now, and while it sidelined the opposition for years, it also incited considerable internal unrest.
Hawke and Paul Keating triumphed despite facing greater resistance from their own side. It was not uncommon for leaders of Labor’s Left caucus to hold press conferences to dissociate themselves from government policy. You can almost hear Anthony Albanese rehearsing his lines: “I knew Bob Hawke. Bob Hawke was a friend of mine. Scott Morrison, you’re no Bob Hawke.”
Morrison’s lack of ideology, his policy flexibility, which at its kindest interpretation means he can shift position at will and at its unkindest means he stands for little, is not shared by sections of his party, particularly the capital-C conservatives. So when he reaches the crunch points, he will come under pressure to throw out red meat to satisfy the bloodlust of the base and those who cater for it.
Morrison’s act of good faith, requested by McManus, was to announce his abandonment of the so-called union-busting Ensuring Integrity Bill, which had been defeated last year in the Senate and which the government kept threatening to resubmit but never did, mainly because the numbers weren’t there. It wasn’t a flat-out empty gesture, but it was painless and costless. Giving up something already lost was easy. Here is another R-word: repackaging to make a virtue out of necessity.
Morrison resisted attempts to say explicitly what he was seeking, other than a cessation of hostilities, to work on change. There are considerable dangers for him in this exercise so it was bold to take it on. The first danger is that he ends up doing little or nothing; the second, that he tries to do too much. He is gathering the big bears of business and unions, hoping for a Goldilocks solution.
The complication was highlighted when he subjected himself to more detailed questioning the morning after the speech. Back to his breathless worst with Sabra Lane on the ABC’s AM, he would not guarantee that no worker would be worse off, which unions see as non-negotiable. McManus responded early, saying she would never agree to “cutting wages or making jobs more insecure”.
ACTU president Michele O’Neil underlined how difficult it will be with a reflexive condemnation on Sky of the NSW Premier’s freeze on public servants’ pay, despite Berejiklian’s accompanying guarantee of not a single job loss for a year.
Morrison refuses to say what he will bring to the table other than the table itself. He urges everyone to lay down weapons — including the media, with gotcha questions — arguing that belongs in the past. He mightn’t like it, but seeking detail or attempting to get to the nub of what he is proposing is what the media is supposed to do, and he needs to have answers.
Although he avoided setting benchmarks against which success or failure can be measured, and he deserves credit for not seeking to stoke divisions during a crisis as other world leaders have done (a hopeless Donald Trump and hapless Boris Johnson), Morrison will be judged on results. Another R-word, much more difficult to deliver than fine speeches.
Finally, a few words on Tom Krause, the television producer who died this week and whose picture on Twitter featured another media legend, Hunter S. Thompson. It was a privilege to deal with Tom as a political staffer and as a journalist. I will miss his advice, his friendship and his regular, always overly generous, herograms.
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