Federal election 2022: Morrison vows Coalition ready to rule on day one

Scott Morrison has vowed the Coalition will be ready to govern on Monday unlike Labor, which has announced more reviews than policies.

Scott Morrison has a rare quiet moment in his official car following his interview with The Australian in Brisbane on Monday. Picture: Lyndon Mechielsen

An upbeat and assertive Scott Morrison has vowed a Coalition government re-elected on Saturday will be ready to govern on Monday and “know what to do” unlike the Labor Party, which has acted “like a shadow” and announced more reviews than policies.

Fresh from his official campaign launch on Sunday in Brisbane and campaigning in the Labor-held seat of Blair, the Prime Minister said there would be no delay if the Coalition was returned to government because they would know what to do on Sunday and Monday.

Mr Morrison extended the immediate post-election agenda to the critical Quadrilateral meeting of Australian, US, Indian and Japanese leaders in Tokyo next Tuesday to discuss the regional response to China’s assertion and influence in the Indo-Pacific.

“We know what we will do on Monday; we know what we will do on Sunday,” Mr Morrison told The Australian in an exclusive interview in Brisbane on Monday.

“We know what we have to do on the national security side. We know what we have to do on the Quad for that meeting on Tuesday.”

He indicated there were “conventions” to cover such important meetings if the election result was unclear after the Saturday poll.

At the first leaders’ face-to-face Quadrilateral meeting in Washington DC then Japanese prime minister, Yoshihide Suga, was only serving until he was formally replaced by Fumio Kishida.

“I don’t want to be presumptuous about this at all but there are conventions in place,” he said.

Mr Morrison said the 2022 election would be decided in the last week of the campaign because voters were suffering from disengagement, fatigue with politicians, a final realisation the time had come to make a decision and a wish to go beyond the pandemic.

On national security and the three-way agreement between Australia, the US and the UK to supply nuclear-powered submarines to Australia, Mr Morrison totally rejected Labor’s claims he had disappointed US President Joe Biden by not consulting more with the opposition.

Mr Morrison said the US had left “Australian domestic politics to Australia” and, despite general concerns about the ALP on national security, he never doubted there would be bipartisan support for the historic agreement.

On the economy, he said managing the budget needed a level-headed approach. Wages were rising and would beat the budget’s predictions for real wage increases before the first half of 2024, while skills and labour shortages were the priorities for a re-elected Coalition.

“What you are seeking to do is manage all the competing forces and all the moving parts,” he said. “It’s a much more challenging job to manage the budget now than it was five years ago.”

Mr Morrison said that skills policy would be the “most important part” of the first 100 days of a new government.

“That is the most important thing facing the economy: skills and the labour force,” he said.

“We have seen two years when there was no inflow of population and so we will see that moving back to normal levels to provide some support.” Mr Morrison said there was no precise measure to managing the economy. It was like making “a 12-point turn” and a single solution “belies experience”. “Because we have placed so much emphasis on ‘the doing’, I think that’s what gives us our advantage,” he said.

“If we are re-elected on Saturday we will be able to just get on with it immediately. There will be no delay, there will be no ‘finding their way around’.”

He said Labor had announced 54 reviews. “They have announced more reviews than they have policies,” he said. “They have also adopted ours so we’ve had to do their work for them. That’s not a government. That’s a shadow.”

Labor, he said, seemed to be of the view that “we will work it out when we get there”.

“But you cannot risk that in these times,” he added.

Mr Morrison defended his decision to hold back the Coalition’s campaign centrepiece policy of providing people access to their superannuation to help fund a deposit for their first home, which directly confronts Labor’s government-funded scheme to provide a shared equity in a first home.

Because voters were not engaged in the campaign, Mr Morrison said he decided, as he did in 2019, to announce help for home buyers on the Sunday before the election.

Mr Morrison set up a last-week showdown with his landmark housing policy, allowing first-home buyers to access superannuation, and claimed Mr Albanese wanted the government to “own your home”.“So, if you’re asking me, ‘Am I going to agree with those who want to stand with the big-union super funds?’ I’m going to stand with the homebuyer,” Mr Morrison said on Monday.

“Labor doesn’t want you to have access to your super. I know they think that those who run superannuation are more important to them than you are to them … they want to keep your money in someone’s else’s control,” he said.