Worthy aim, but Bridget Archer trips over the rules

The simple fact is Bridget Archer was used by an opposition aware that her vote would cause chaos but achieve nothing.

Liberal member for Bass Bridget Archer speaks to Treasurer Josh Frydenberg after crossing the floor during a division on allowing debate on an integrity commission.

Suggestions Liberal MP Bridget Archer was somehow bullied by Josh Frydenberg when she crossed the floor on a motion to debate a national integrity commission bill last week has fed into social media outrage.

The release of the Jenkins review into bad behaviour in Parliament House understandably put the actions of MPs in the spotlight. A photo of the Treasurer talking to a seated Archer in the chamber was tweeted out liberally with attached claims Frydenberg was standing over the member for Bass in a menacing way.

How ridiculous.

For a start, anyone who knows Frydenberg knows full well that’s not his style, not even close. To be sure, he’s relentless when making an argument, but menacing? No way. A senior member of the government talking to a backbencher about to vote against her tribe isn’t unusual. It should be expected, especially when no notice of her intent to cross the floor was given, which is how it played out on this occasion.

If Archer were a Labor MP and did what she did, party rules stipulate she’d be kicked out of the party. That strikes me as more than a little menacing as a response to an MP voting with their conscience.

The government was blindsided by Archer’s move. If she had given the leader of the house the courtesy of knowing what she was intending to do, he could have explained the procedures to her, rules that consigned her move as a failure before it was even made, thereby saving everyone from embarrassment.

The simple fact is Archer was used by an opposition aware that her vote would cause chaos but achieve nothing other than damage the government. That’s because to suspend standing orders an absolute majority is needed, 76 votes or more, not a majority of MPs who vote. With Covid restrictions and border closures in some states, that was never going to happen. Archer didn’t know that, and seemingly neither did the cross­benchers who wooed her to support Helen Haines’s bill.

Anyone who knows Frydenberg knows full well that menacing is not his style.

Archer was used to embarrass the government with no chance of achieving her worthy goal of legislating an integrity commission.

That might have suited Labor, but it achieved nothing substantial, which was Archer’s aim. And for a marginal seat MP, damaging a government is a form of self-harm.

I’m as disgusted as the next person when it comes to this government’s failure to get on with the job of legislating the integrity commission it promised three years ago. But the failure to understand basic procedures was every bit as embarrassing as the damage done to Team Morrison, even if they matter little as theatre.

MPs should know the rules of the chamber they work in. Even the new Speaker didn’t know the rules, which in that position is almost unforgivable.

More impressively, Archer has form using her conscience when voting, having refused to support the government’s cashless welfare card a years ago. On that occasion she flagged her intention to abstain from the vote, also publicly explaining her concerns.

MPs who are prepared to stand up against their party are to be admired. If only Labor would allow its MPs to do the same. But you have to answer for doing so in a political team environment, which is why the carry-on that the Treasurer having the temerity to talk to her was bullying is an example of the outrage brigade hijacking sensible discussion about the body politic.

Meanwhile, many commentators simply dismissed the rules that prevented the vote being successful as technicalities. They’re not technicalities, they’re the rules. Rules matter, which also is something that seems to be forgotten in the era of vigilante justice we live in.

The result of this culture shift is an erosion of the centre – dare we call it the sensible centre? A team red v team blue mentality is growing in this country as we follow the American lead. This is a problem on both sides of the divide, left and right. Anyone in the centre who offers nuance gets labelled an apologist by the other side.

I’m old enough to remember when debates between left and right were civil and didn’t descend into tribalism.

At least Archer is prepared to use nuance, issue by issue, when considering policies, even if she erred in the way she handled the integrity commission issue. It’s not hard to understand why she feels so strongly about the government’s failure to get on with the job of legislating a federal watch dog. If anything, it is surprising more MPs aren’t prepared to join Archer in crossing the floor, such that the absolute majority could have been reached despite Covid restrictions. That would have forced the government to act.

The fact so much has been made of the need to legislate a religious discrimination act because a promise to do so was made ahead of the 2019 election but a similar promise regarding a federal watchdog is ignored is a sure sign of hypocrisy.

Perhaps Scott Morrison doesn’t want the oversight while he’s Prime Minister. Or he’s worried that legislating such a body now would limit his capacity to pork barrel at the election. We know there was no shortage of such (mis)use of taxpayers dollars at the 2019 election.

The final sitting week of the year has now come and gone, and all the government did was table its exposure draft on the integrity commission bill. It was nothing more than gesture politics, with no commitment the legislation would be put before the parliament when MPs return in February. Assuming they do return then and an early election for March isn’t called after Australia Day. There are no guarantees.

The Coalition is banking on its failure to fulfil the federal watchdog promise being nothing more than an “inside the beltway” issue. Perhaps that is right, but it also feeds into the perception that Morrison is loose with the truth and not to be trusted. These are character issues the opposition sees as key weaknesses for the government and Morrison.

If Labor is right, the compound effect on Morrison’s standing may be damaging enough to neuter his chances of lifting the Coalition’s primary vote between now and Election Day sufficiently to retain government.

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