Political catch-up splits the nation

The main parties are divided on issues of national importance.

Illustration: Sturt Krygsman

Scott Morrison’s game plan is to run on the economy, jobs and national security at the 2019 election but his “barnacle removal” end-of-year agenda has thrown up critical splits between the government and opposition over cultural, social and border protection issues.

The more people pretend there is little difference between the sides the more the differences and deadlocks are accentuated. The 2019 election will be dominated by the economy and taxation but this election will constitute a turning point for Australia on many non-economic fronts.

The most recent audacity by Labor has been its joining with the Greens and independents to attack offshore processing and settlement of asylum-seekers. This is a major change to border protection. The amendments supported by Labor would appear to allow most of 1100 adults on Nauru and Manus to come to Australia on the advice of doctors for medical treatment or assessment.

The government has laid this charge against Labor and, to this point, nobody from Labor has rebutted this interpretation based on how the amendments advanced two weeks ago would actually work. The minister’s powers are curtailed. The minister could stop a transfer to Australia based on medical advice only by invoking ­national security.

Public opinion is shifting given the campaign by doctors based on health and cruelty alarms. The cycle here is known: when the boats stop the compassion factor surges, and when the boats start the demand to halt them dominates. The Morrison government has reduced the number of children offshore to 10, seeking to neutralise any campaign based upon children.

While Bill Shorten insists Labor remains pledged to the offshore policy, its actions undermine this stance. The government, however, has also been bringing hundreds of people to Australia for medical reasons with the de facto consequence that they remain.

The progressive side of politics has mounted another argument — that keeping people on Nauru and Manus is now irrelevant to border protection. Witness the article in The Monthly by former Immigration Department official Shaun Hanns, saying that refusing to resettle these people no longer serves any purpose and they should be given residency in this country.

Legal changes to the offshore regime by enshrining decision-making to doctors, not public servants or ministers, is a novel but dangerous idea. While Labor has made significant changes to the original bill proposed by independent Kerryn Phelps and imposed a transparent system of medical assessment, the political logic of these amendments is unmistakable: that it is time to get the people off Manus and Nauru.

How this plays out in the election remains uncertain but the Prime Minister, as a former immigration minister, has declared: “I will fight to stop any change to that offshore processing arrangement.” The questions are whether Labor has picked the changing mood and whether Labor in office can make such changes consistent with denying any return of the boats.

Labor’s confidence has been on further display this week in its response to the government’s dual announcement of a religious discrimination act as recommended by the Ruddock religious freedom review, and a Commonwealth Integrity Commission. Both show the Morrison government in catch-up mode.

These initiatives should have come far earlier this year, giving the government the chance to sell its plans and possibly legislate them. The upshot is that neither measure is likely to become law before the election. For the Liberals, they constitute defining positions taken too late.

Morrison has given the Liberals what they needed long before the same-sex marriage debate — an initiative for a religious discrimination act. Labor has little interest in the idea. Shorten and opposition legal affairs spokesman Mark Dreyfus are unconvinced it is necessary. Shorten has said Labor’s No 1 priority in relation to schools is protection of gay schoolchildren.

The Liberal-Labor differences on religious protection are yet to be fully spelt out. But the signals are they are substantial and will become over time a fault line for the nation. Morrison has provided the Coalition parties with a platform around which they can now rally with the ability to tap into ­religious, school and ethnic communities.

Morrison captured the mood of a section of the community when he said people of faith “feel that the walls are closing in on them”. This exploits an emerging mood — witness the recent statements by religious schools that they feel threatened, and by religious leaders, notably Catholic Archbishop of Sydney Anthony Fisher, who talked about the cultural changes now under way in this country when he supported Morrison’s proposal.

Fisher said the raft of attacks on religious freedom revealed the need for protection. “We used to be ‘live and let live’ on religious matters,” he said.

“We gave each other space to be different, but lately there has been a hard-edged secularism that wants to stamp out religion from public life.”

Dreyfus repudiated Fisher. He denied any threat to religious freedom. He said no inquiry into religious freedom had found this and the Ruddock review did not identify “any real threat”.

Asked for his response to Morrison’s proposed law, Dreyfus said: “We will look at it.” Labor offers nothing more beyond its ritual line of opposing all forms of discrimination, including religious discrimination.

While the Ruddock review “did not accept the argument, put by some, that religious freedom is in imminent peril” it said protection of belief or faith in Australia “requires constant vigilance”. The panel reported it had “a broad range of stakeholders” expressing concern that religion was not adequately protected, that their ability to “hold and communicate” religious views, wear religious symbols and engage in public life was compromised because of discrimination.

With many previous inquiries having recommended tougher laws against discrimination on religious grounds, the Ruddock panel concluded “religious belief or activity” should be protected under stronger federal laws. This is not a new argument; it is an old argument. The Liberals could have addressed this years ago.

The Ruddock review identified two trends — the need for firmer laws and “the low level of awareness and understanding in the community about these issues” tied into “the limited focus given to religious freedom in more general discussions about diversity, understanding and tolerance”. This is because the Left has run and controlled these debates — another failure of the Liberals.

It offers, however, some context for Shorten’s remark pointing to Labor’s real attitude: “I could not say to you that religion is in the top 100 issues that get raised with me”, though he also said “I accept for some people it is a very important matter”.

Australia’s public culture frowns on the raising of religious issues, and for those who try, media retaliation is more likely than not. This is widely understood. At a time when Labor moves amendments in parliament threatening the capacity of religious schools to uphold their mission, Shorten says he wants to work constructively with the government but is worried that it wants to “make religion a political football”.

The bottom line is Labor denies the existence of the problem that religious communities increasingly feel is threatening their freedom. Morrison does not seek to make this an election issue. He is keen, however, to have his commitment to a religious discrimination act entrenched as part of his political character. Morrison can articulate the core issue: “There is no more fundamental liberty that any human being has than their fundamental right to decide what they believe or not believe.” His proposal is not about any religion but about individual freedom.

Morrison has tied his proposed law to two concepts. First, that religious freedom is pivotal to a multicultural society — he says while 70 per cent of Australians identify as having a religious belief this proportion is far higher in many ethnic communities. He did not mention Sydney’s western suburbs that voted No in the same-sex marriage plebiscite and where religious faith is palpable but the politics are obvious.

The second concept is equality. This was put by both Morrison and Attorney-General Christian Porter, who said individuals cannot be turned away from entering a room because of sex, race or disability since this was illegal, but they could be turned away because of their religion.

The government’s purpose was to put religion on the same legal basis as other established discrimination laws.

In effect, this raised the question: does Labor believe in equality for religion in Australia? From Shorten’s reaction this week, Labor has not decided. The reality is that much of its progressive base has decided — it wants religion as a second order priority with weaker legal protections. Shorten’s dilemma is whether to resist this or seek to disguise it.

On the decision for a Commonwealth Integrity Commission, Morrison is cast as a pragmatist. This became an imperative in purely political terms. Morrison refused to face an election campaign where Labor would beat the drum about integrity in government and offer its own anti-corruption body while the government was left naked.

The case for such a body has neither been made nor won. But that is now irrelevant. Both Morrison and Shorten back the concept. Is it bipartisan? — yes and no. “Yes” as a concept but “no” as a commission. The differences are serious and the rhetorical warfare over the past two days has been hysterical and ignorant.

Obsession about an integrity commission is a classic elitist issue. It is a preoccupation of retired judges, journalists and left-wing politicians convinced the power structure is heavy with corruption. In truth, given the mainstream dysfunction in our politics on the priority issues that shape the country, corruption is a third-order problem — which is not to say it should be overlooked.

The briefing paper from the Attorney-General’s Department shows the federal bureaucracy is groaning with integrity and anti-corruption bodies. The paper says current arrangements are so successful “that the Australian public sector is consistently ranked as a low corruption jurisdiction and it is generally accepted that there is no evidence of systematic or endemic integrity issues in the federal public sector”.

Shorten said: “I am not aware of any corruption, full stop.” Anti-corruption bodies operate in the states but there is no evidence whatsoever that the states where they operate have higher trust than the commonwealth. Indeed, the reverse is likely to be the case.

Dreyfus said Labor’s preference was for a body that “should most resemble the New South Wales ICAC” — which is the anti-model for the Morrison government, with the PM saying “I have no interest in establishing kangaroo courts” that are used for political purposes. Labor’s statement is alarming since a NSW ICAC at the federal level would have the potential to become a net negative and render damage to confidence and trust in the system.

The Morrison government’s model based on Porter’s work during the year constitutes a Commonwealth Integrity Commission with two divisions — a law enforcement division incorporating a streamlined existing agency and a public sector integrity division that will investigate allegations of criminal conduct and corruption in the public sector.

Porter said his aim with the new arrangement was to make integrity “better rather than worse” — the point being this result was far from guaranteed depending upon the model. The Law Council of Australia supported the government’s initiative and its two divisions. The architect of the NSW ICAC model, Gary Sturgess, said he supported the “less aggressive” model designed by the government.

The Attorney-General said the commission could investigate parliamentarians and ministers. It would be able to receive referrals from the public. It would have serious investigatory powers and would be funded to $120 million over the forward estimates.

Labor deputy leader Tanya Plibersek called Morrison’s model “a superficial, weak, half-hearted, toothless tiger of an integrity commission that’s as fake as he is”. Porter said he was ready to negotiate with the crossbench to secure the model. But time will surely deny that process. Shorten wants an anti-corruption commission with more powers, wider scope and public hearings.

That’s right, we now have an ideological conflict between Liberal and Labor on how to devise an integrity commission.