On a parliamentary day when everyone talked about co-operation, constructive behaviour, team Australia, working together and agreeing to pass the $130bn JobKeeper payments for six million workers, the Coalition and Labor were actually talking about different things.
Scott Morrison talked about what the government had done to protect “lives and livelihoods” over the past 16 days, listing billions in expenditure for health measures to fight the COVID-19 virus as well as for welfare, childcare, business loans and disability payments.
The Prime Minister’s focus was on what has happened so far, the success in flattening the coronavirus curve, and what needed to pass parliament on Monday night.
“What we do today is what governments have always done in such circumstances, when our nation is under threat that previous generations of Australians have done before us — today we act to protect our nation’s sovereignty,” he said. “When Australian lives and livelihoods are threatened, when they are under attack, our nation’s sovereignty is put at risk and we must respond. As a government, as a parliament, as a nation, together.”
It was a “we will fight on the beaches” moment and full of thanks and praise for the Australian people, workers, businesses, the unions and even Anthony Albanese and the opposition.
We left “ideology” at the door, Morrison said, as he continued to talk in a co-operative and constructive way while knowing his unprecedented, un-Liberal wage subsidy would be waved through parliament with Labor’s (qualified and grudging) support. While he talked about 2020 being our worst year and there being six more tough months, Morrison didn’t really talk any detail about the time after the pandemic.
The prime ministerial focus was on the past two weeks, the next six months and the immediate threats and challenges. “We will respond to this challenge, and we are up to the fight. We will pay the price needed to protect our sovereignty, and we will chart our way out. We will get through this, together, Australia,” he said.
The Opposition Leader, all constructive and co-operative, had to accept the JobKeeper package but wanted to look at a different timeframe from Morrison.
Albanese threw forward to well beyond the end of the virus crisis — to when Labor will be able to point back to the different approach it advocated but was unable to implement. It’s about being able to say Morrison should have taken “a different path” while calling for him to do and spend more.
While calling for the JobKeeper allowances to be expanded to another one million casual workers, Albanese warned there would be a “trillion dollar debt” for generations to come. But he also saw beyond the next six months, “unprecedented changes to the way that we live our lives”.
Continuing to defend the Rudd government’s economic stimulus during the global financial crisis, Albanese warned, “Labor has a responsibility to be constructive and to make sure the government gets this right.”
He and Labor’s Treasury spokesman, Jim Chalmers, then outlined new objects for government in this unprecedented world of change — Morrison’s stimulus packages and plans to “snap back” the spending must not stop the economy in its tracks.
It should also involve keeping a new childcare system, penalty rates, higher wages and expanded welfare system in place without casting the sneer of the dole bludger label on recipients.
For Morrison the focus is now, for Labor the focus is later.
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