Business, politics keep up regular supply of clangers

Labor, CSIRO, NAB and Westpac helped to make 2019 just that little bit more amusing.

What a difference a year makes. This time last year, most people were anticipating the election of a Labor government in 2019. More to the point, Bill Shorten and his leadership team — Tanya, Chris, Jim and Penny — were anticipating the election of a Labor government in 2019.

Shorten even wrote to Scott Morrison — he was a temporary stand-in prime minister, according to Labor masterminds — to pin down the transitional arrangements in the event of a Labor victory. Talk about getting ahead of yourself. Then there was that pictorial Twitter feed ­released by Labor’s Treasury spokesman, Chris Bowen, on the eve of the election declaring that the leadership team was ready. That’s getting ahead of yourself on steroids.

I mention this because I like to assemble a series of clangers each year, then award prizes for the most amusing or outrageous. Comments that are disingenuous, misleading or mawkish also rate highly on my personal scorecard.

An early entry came from none other than Bowen in January, when he made the following suggestion: “I say to your listeners, if they feel very strongly about this, if they feel that this is something which should impact on their vote, they are of course perfectly entitled to vote against us.”

He was referring to the contentious proposal to eliminate cash refunds for excess franking credits. To be sure, Shorten was making some embarrassing blunders on this topic, declaring that these cash refunds should not be paid to people who pay no tax while failing to realise that the tax already has been paid by the company.

Even so, Bowen’s suggestion to voters that they should ditch Labor on the basis of this policy is clearly a standout, given that many voters took him up on it. In fact, this entry could have its own descriptor: the shoot-in-the-foot award.

While Shorten might have missed out on being shortlisted in relation to franking credits gaffes, he easily makes the grade when it comes to climate change. When asked by a young reporter about the costs to the economy of Labor’s emissions reduction target, he simply refused to answer.

Appearing on the ABC’s Q&A program, he was asked this question again. His response was: “That is such a dumb question to say, what does it cost without looking at the cost of inaction. You can’t have a debate about climate change without talking about the cost of inaction.”

We never learned about the cost of inaction (or action, for that matter) or how Australia’s inaction would somehow have any ­impact on global climate trends. Clearly, Shorten was having a “it’s the vibe” moment.

The release of the CSIRO’s Australian National Outlook 2019 report in June provided another source of clangers. The report’s blurb contains this gem: “It signals Australia faces a Slow Decline if it takes no action on the most significant economic, social and environmental challenges. But if these challenges are tackled head-on, Australia can look forward to a positive Outlook Vision.”

No, not the Slow Decline, I thought.

The basis of this report, co-sponsored by the National Australia Bank, the reputation of which had been so badly damaged by the banking royal commission, was assembling a collection of woke-inclined thought-leaders, including from academe, business, not-for-profit organisations and bureaucrats. They were asked to nominate their preferred pet projects, most of which, unsurprisingly, involved government funding or regulation.

Now I am not suggesting that any of you bother to download this tendentious and pointless report — you all have better things to do, like cleaning out the garage — but it was the source of two of my shortlisted clangers.

But just to give you a flavour for the verbose sludge contained in the report, the final recommendation is “a culture shift will ­encourage more engagement, curiosity, collaboration and solutions, and should be supported by inclusive civic and political ­institutions”.

When I wrote about the report, I thought it was only fair to seek the views of the CSIRO and the NAB. It’s the right thing to do even though I had concluded that this report should never have been ­released. (My guess is that the sponsoring organisations and the participants had assumed a Labor victory.)

It wasn’t easy to find anyone from the CSIRO or the NAB to return my calls. But eventually a person from the bank — I think she was in the government affairs department — attempted to politely answer my questions. She didn’t really know why the NAB had been a major sponsor and she wasn’t sure whether the decision had been ­approved by the board.

When I queried the quality of the output, her response went straight to the pool room. “It’s science,” she replied. That’s right, all that arm-waving by a carefully ­selected group of thought leaders is science. Mind you, I’m pretty sure she hadn’t actually read it, which means she might be smarter than I thought.

When I asked the CSIRO’s media department representative whether there was some disappointment about the almost complete lack of coverage of the report, another clanger comment was ­uttered: no, the CSIRO was perfectly happy with the coverage.

Of course, this comment may contain a degree of truth — in real­ity, it was the best outcome that the report died almost without trace the moment it was released.

But let me return to things political and quickly point out that Malcolm Turnbull clearly makes the cut when it comes to his contribution to clangers. Asked by former politician turned media tart Christopher Pyne whether he would have won the election this year, he replied: “Oh yeah, absolutely. There’s not many people that doubt that.”

Talk about delusional. Apart from Lucy, Daisy, Alex and others in the inner Turnbull circle, there are not many people who thought Turnbull had a snowball’s chance in hell of beating Labor.

Having campaigned with all the power of a powder puff in 2016 and lost 14 seats, it was a sure bet he would be defeated in 2019. It was his replacement with daggy dad Morrison who could communicate with voters in the outer suburbs and regional areas that was critical to the Coalition’s victory.

Let me finish by quoting a clanger from the corporate world. One of my favourites was the early response by Westpac after the ­revelation that charges were to be laid against the bank in relation to numerous anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing offences.

In the hope that chief executive Brian Hartzer could ­retain his position, the bank announced that $10m a year for three years would be provided to anti-child exploitation charities.

“The bank will seek the guidance of industry ­experts to develop a program of actions to support the prevention of online child exploitation,” it said.

This seems a very long way from banking. But that’s the sort of thing that high-paid PR executives in corporate affairs will typically dream up. And let’s not forget that it didn’t work — Hartzer had left the company by week’s end.

The year is not over and there could be some quality clangers to come. It’s already a large field — I have been able to outline only a few — so I’ll leave it to you to ­decide on your favourite.