No chance of policy progress when the cabinet is bare

Balance the budget, pay down debt, stop the boats. These slogans are about as substantive as the modern frontbencher gets.

Illustration: Tom Jellett

The few remaining Liberal MPs with strong ideological views and values are increasingly demanding that the COVID crisis not be wasted. That is, they want economic reforms to be vigorously pursued, even if doing so costs the government support at the ballot box. Their argument is that power for power’s sake is meaningless.

This ideological world view butts up against the traditional conservative position that staying in office to keep Labor out of office is an end in and of itself.

While the Liberal Party of the 1980s and 90s was dominated by ideologues, before and since that time traditional conservatism has reigned supreme within the partyroom. Especially when the values and views of the Nationals are incorporated into Coalition decision-making.

It was Winston Churchill, while looking to establish the UN in the wake of World War II, who said “never let a good crisis go to waste”. The theory is that in times of crisis, or more accurately the aftermath, people are more willing to accept change. Churchill may have led the Conservative party in Britain, but he was a member of the British Liberal Party before that.

With the nation’s economy in recession (like most of the world), and unemployment and debt on the rise, Australia can no longer be complacent about our status as the “lucky country”.

To be sure, we have been lucky, better placed than most going into this COVID-induced downturn and geographically well placed to pivot quickly enough to avoid the worst of the health implications of the virus.

But as the world reaches its way out of the downturn, we will see marked differences between nation-states as to what levers they pull on the policy front.

What Australia doesn’t want to do is emulate Argentina. From the late 1800s to the late 1900s it went from being the world’s sixth wealthiest nation to one of the poorest, driven by bad decision-making in the aftermath of the 1930s Great Depression.

The real heavy lifting our politicians will need to engage in isn’t what has been required so far to manage our way through the pandemic itself. It will come in the years ahead. How do we reform our systems to insulate against future shocks and to best stimulate growth and prosperity?

These decisions matter. While much of the theatre of parliamentary democracy creates only marginal differences in the modern era, as the choice between major parties often becomes a case of Tweedledee versus Tweedledum, that may no longer be the case.

Labor is showing signs of wanting to humanise workplace relations laws, welfare processes and bolster rather than cut superannuation contributions. And that is just for starters.

Anthony Albanese has flagged the need for debate over the impact a growing casualisation of the workforce is having on the social contract, on the way families live and the way people balance their personal and working lives.

His vision and what it might mean becomes relevant only if Labor is competitive in the polls. That seems unlikely unless the government pursues economic reforms of its own that perhaps are less popular.

Notwithstanding the failures being picked at in aged care, for example, Scott Morrison has a halo over him these days, and we know from last year’s election he also is a savvy political operator when seeking to unpick his opponent.

It’s a halo that is likely to see him stare down internal ideological opponents, after which he can run on ideological empty and still beat Labor and its bolder agenda.

This parliamentary sitting week one ideologically driven Liberal backbencher said to me: “If we can’t start talking about seriously reforming super and industrial relations now, when we are in a recession, when can we?” The answer is never. If a crisis won’t induce a substantive debate about policy settings, nothing will.

So what does that mean for the policy contest between now and the next election?

Here is the depressing reality, readers: very little. You could hide the amount of ideological interest in the cabinet under an overgrown pinky fingernail.

They are a collection of ambitious political operatives who have been elevated to high office. And that’s the status of the good ones. The rest are even worse. Barely any of them have goals for their political careers beyond length of service and status in office.

They have become used to benchmarking the most banal key performance indicators, to one day look back on their careers with pride. Balance the budget, pay down debt, stop the boats. These slogans are about as substantive as the modern frontbencher gets. So how can we expect them to be capable of pivoting, thus making cogent arguments for weighty reform ideas? To challenge populism rather than echo it, because that’s what the economy might need right now?

The answer is we can’t.

Deputy Liberal leader Josh Frydenberg recently cited Margaret Thatcher as an ideological inspiration to him. Good on him for at least seeking to up the ideological ante. But I wonder if the Treasurer even read her two-part biography, or merely heard that she was an inspiration to John Howard, which was good enough for him. Thatcher’s reforms in Britain, while controversial then and now, were justified to her wavering cabinet at the time with the line “yes, the medicine is harsh, but the patient requires it”.

When Frydenberg’s Thatcherism pitch was given airtime in the media, he was quickly shot down by the former head of Tourism Australia. The Prime Minister didn’t want Australians to worry that his government might be prepared to give voters the medicine they need if it had a sour aftertaste. He’d rather feed them sugar.

So what will happen to the backbenchers agitating for meaningful reforms in the wake of COVID? They will be ignored. Or they will be bought off, as so often happens in modern politics, with frontbench promotions. Picked off one by one. Promotion brings silence, thanks to the rules of cabinet solidarity. Hopeful readers may think: perhaps then they will use their new-found power to argue the case internally. More likely they will not. Even if they do, they will be outnumbered and ultimately outmanoeuvred by the Prime Minister and his entourage, who are primarily focused on winning elections.

A scorecard they look set to achieve, just as Malcolm Fraser did. Hands up who thinks Fraser’s legacy is a grand one? The prime minister who sat on his reforming hands through a recession, only to be replaced by Bob Hawke’s Labor government. But don’t worry, Fraser was prime minister for more than seven years.

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