Coalition’s return to ideologies of old as the gloves come off

Scott Morrison addresses the Victorian Chamber of Commerce and Industry on Wednesday. Picture: David Crosling

Scott Morrison has begun his pre-election pivot with a bold declaration that the campaign will be a battle over values.

The Prime Minister has reignited traditional ideological divisions over the role of government in the economy and the broader social fabric. In doing so, he has effectively signalled an end to pandemic politics.

This is now a bare-knuckled fight with Labor over culture. And Anthony Albanese is alive to the threat of the argument.

Morrison’s speech to a business forum on Wednesday may have been focused on climate change and the economy and the argument that the old duality no longer exists, but the subtext was an aggressive political proposition.

The forced era of big government is over.

Business and free enterprise will drive the recovery from here, capitalism will solve the climate change question and people will be given back control of their lives. This was Morrison attempting to paint Labor and Albanese as devotees of a malignant philosophy of social and economic intervention.

As he put it: a question of “choices rather than mandates”.

This is now the key attack line of Morrison’s campaign which seeks to cast Labor as a continuation of central command. In this regard, it was one of the Prime Minister’s most important speeches of the year.

In framing an election campaign with the economic recovery as the central pillar, Morrison declared an end to forced state intervention.This was the line in the sand that the Prime Minister needed to draw.

He acknowledged that the pandemic had forced the Liberal and Nationals parties to temporarily suspend political and economic dogma, forcing the Coalition to do things it would have never usually contemplate.

Morrison has now begun steering the Coalition back to first principles and a more solid ideological foundation by using Joseph Lyons’ depression-era principle that private sector enterprise will resolve the economic challenges rather than government.

In doing so, he hopes to snare Labor in an ideological trap that has a broader global context, with a battle of ideas also at the heart of the great strategic competition: “Can do capitalists” versus “don’t do governments”.

It was no coincidence he chose Melbourne to signal the pivot. Victorians have lived under the hammer of authoritarianism more than most Australians for the past 18 months.

And they are presumably sick of government telling them what to do.

Morrison, however, will only succeed if he also delivers on a values proposition that has practical application. Central to this will be a continuation of the debate around the school curriculum and a religious freedom bill that satisfies the conservative base.