Confidence blooms as recovery hopes rise

‘If you don’t know how you got into recession, you don’t know how to get out’: Scott Morrison in question time on Monday. Picture: Sean Davey

Josh Frydenberg has declared “the economic recovery is under way”.

This is a big and bold call based on the confidence boost to business and consumers from the budget and signs employers and employees are “graduating” from the JobKeeper subsidies for workers to fully paid employment.

There’s still a long way ahead for the Treasurer, including the likelihood of unemployment rising again as Victoria’s economy lies moribund and the world faces delays in finding a vaccine, but his parliamentary pledge is a sign the Coalition is confident of more success fighting the dual health and economic crises of the ­pandemic.

Scott Morrison has three huge advantages going into next year: incumbency, credibility on the COVID-19 pandemic and early signs of an economic recovery.

Anthony Albanese faces a ­triple whammy going into next year: he’s an Opposition Leader, he hasn’t tarnished the Prime Minister’s pandemic response and his economic alternative is still weighed down by Labor’s big-spending, big-taxing election agenda.

Election results in New Zealand and the ACT at the weekend, as well as previously in the Northern Territory and the likely outcome in Queensland, demon­strate that a solid response to coronavirus will trump previous failures of politics and policy.

In Queensland, Annastacia Palaszczuk’s border closure has firm support despite business complaints and she’s determined not to change until after the election. Likewise, WA Premier Mark McGowan is happy to isolate the west until his election in March.

Federally, Morrison has overwhelming support for his pandemic management and has combined it with an economic response that is popular, confidence-boosting, supported by business and showing early signs of working. He is framing the debate with success on coronavirus, “who do you trust to manage the economy?”, more tax cuts, ­private-sector led job creation, ­tapered emergency spending and turning Albanese’s “Morrison recession” back against Labor.

Claiming Albanese was the “only one” who didn’t know the cause of the “pandemic recession”, Morrison thundered that “if you don’t know how you got into recession, you don’t know how to get out”.

Albanese started the parliamentary week accusing Morrison of failures on managing COVID-19 by “abandoning a nat­ional cabinet meeting” to raise funds for the Liberals, the ­COVIDSafe app, aged care, childcare, limiting parliamentary sitting days and allowing New Zealanders into Victoria.

Economically, he has switched from his headline “Morrison recession” to the “trillion-dollar Liberal debt” but can’t offer a comprehensive alternative and is being tagged as wanting to take back tax cuts from people earning as little as $45,000 a year.

2020 is tough for oppositions, good for incumbents who can point to a reasonable pandemic response and “hope” for economic recovery — it will take more than a two-word tagline or two to lift Albanese’s prospects.