Morrison’s shaky integrity might fail the confidence test

Community confidence comes down to believing what politicians tell us and the PM’s track record is hard to deny.

Cartoon: Eric Lobbecke

Should the federal Coalition be lampooned for its “back in black” gloating when handing down last year’s budget, now that the promised surplus this year appears dead, buried and cremated?

In a word, absolutely.

Not because the coronavirus outbreak could be predicted; of course it couldn’t. Not because during the past 12 months the federal government has mismanaged the books; it hasn’t. Not in any meaningful way, anyway.

The Coalition deserves to be lampooned for its back-in-black gloating because it got ahead of itself, displaying hubris while counting chickens. And the Coalition showed Labor no quarter when it over-promised and underdelivered in government on its surplus pledge in the wake of the global financial crisis.

What goes around comes around.

That said, the more likely scenario is that the Coalition gets away with the hypocrisy and the KPI failure. Partly because Australians want spending and action to curb or perhaps help control the fallout of coronavirus. Partly because the research tells us voters have more faith in the Coalition when it comes to economic management than they do in Labor. Hence changing economic circumstances can be successfully explained away using well-worded political rhetoric.

I can only imagine how much the double standard must irritate Labor MPs and strategists.

Readers might not remember, but the Coalition made its back-in-black pledge when delivering a budget it brought forward to April last year as an election strategy so that it could draw a distinction between its own economic management record and that of the previous Labor government.

The words were used by Josh Frydenberg when handing down the budget on the night, and again at regular intervals during the campaign.

However, it now appears the two sides of politics are two peas in a pod: promising surpluses that don’t materialise; pledging to bring down debt when it continues to build; using stimulus packages to ward off recession.

The national debt has more than doubled since the Coalition came into office, and that was before COVID-19 and the bushfires hit. The Coalition’s build-up of debt has come despite its MPs regularly attacking the build-up of debt on Labor’s watch.

While Wayne Swan certainly got ahead of himself promising surpluses that never eventuated, he didn’t preside over the production of coffee mugs gloating about something yet to happen as the Liberal Party did. I picked one up for a bargain $35 months ago, just in case the Treasurer didn’t get there come the May budget.

Apparently the mugs have now sold out. More likely they have been removed from stock. They can no longer be ordered online.

Scott Morrison gloated at one of the election debates against Bill Shorten that his government “brought the budget back into surplus, next year”. The (mis)use of tenses saw the debate audience laugh at his use of language. Satirical ABC program The Weekly did an entire skit on it.

The GDP growth figures for the December quarter released on Wednesday spoke to the changing expectations within the Australian economy.

The 0.5 per cent growth rate was stronger than anticipated, putting the annual figure at 2.2 per cent. That also exceeded expectations, but is well below long-term growth assumptions, and below where growth was when the Coalition came into office.

A low-growth environment is the new black, a consequence of both sides of politics failing to embrace the sort of economic reforms previous governments of both partisan stripes had the courage to do. We therefore have sluggish wages growth, high underemployment and weak productivity growth as a way of life.

Australia enters this coronavirus-induced phase less resilient than we entered the early stages of the GFC. Back then debt was non-existent. Growth was higher to begin with. The Reserve Bank had plenty of room to move when it came to lowering interest rates to help stimulate the economy.

None of the above are positive features today.

And make no mistake, the seriousness of this health crisis should not be underestimated. Even if the mortality rate is lower than current projections of 1-3 per cent, depending on how contagious the virus is — and experts say it is extremely contagious — if it takes hold here millions of Australians could get it. Many could die. But it’s not just the tragedy of that occurrence that will shake the economy to its core (not to mention people’s lives).

Those who get sick will understandably panic. The health system will be stretched. People will stop going to work. Children will stop going to school. Social and sporting events will be cancelled. The fabric of our community will change, at least for a while.

These tangible impacts will gut confidence and translate into the economy potentially grinding to a halt. The most important thing at such times is confidence, namely confidence in government: what it communicates to us and how it responds.

But will Australians have confidence in Morrison’s government? The polls confirm the Coalition as preferred economic manager, but that isn’t necessarily the same thing as trust in a government to manage a crisis.

We are already seeing evidence of the bushfires recovery being mismanaged. The Hawaiian adventure sapped confidence in the Prime Minister’s immediate personal response to a crisis. At least the nature of COVID-19 means he won’t want to travel overseas again.

Then we have those colour-coded spreadsheets from the sports rorts saga. I assume the government won’t allocate necessary health assistance and expenditure in a similar way: targeting marginal seats and favouring its own electorates. If the government finds that suggestion offensive, too bad. It has form.

Finally, community confidence comes down to believing what politicians tell us. The Prime Minister’s office hid his trip to Hawaii, and this week Morrison confirmed his misleading dismissals of questions about whether he invited controversial pastor Brian Houston to a White House dinner were wrong. He did invite Houston, even though he brushed off questions on the issue as mere “gossip”.

These are micro-issues, to be sure, but they go to character and honesty, both of which build or erode trust.

It was Albert Einstein who once wrote: “Whoever is careless with truth in small matters cannot be trusted in important affairs.”

Peter van Onselen is political editor for the Ten Network and professor of politics and public policy at the University of Western Australia and Griffith University.