The Morrison government has suffered a double blow on integrity — its union-busting “ensuring integrity” legislation has bitten the dust at the hands of One Nation and Labor has forced Scott Morrison into mistakes defending his own integrity.
It has been bad politically and legislatively for the Coalition in the penultimate parliamentary week for 2019.
Enforcing “integrity” on militant union officials is the sort of integrity the Prime Minister wanted to talk about and exactly the sort of integrity Anthony Albanese did not want to talk about.
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In a parliamentary week dominated by the integrity of Westpac, the CFMEU, Energy Minister Angus Taylor and Morrison himself, the blocking of the integrity of registered organisations bill is the most substantive.
This is the result Labor wanted and sought in order to defend the labour movement and repair damaged relations between the new Opposition Leader and some unions.
It’s a bad result for the Coalition and demonstrates lack of power in the Senate, the unpredictable behaviour of independent senators, the inability to deliver policy and Labor’s ability to negotiate for government defeat.
It’s a worse result, given that the political attack in the House of Representatives on the integrity of Taylor and Morrison — initially aimed at linking the Coalition to Westpac’s appalling behaviour — morphed into an all-consuming campaign over Taylor’s bungled climate change attack on Sydney Lord Mayor Clover Moore.
Despite a late comeback under cover of Labor’s tactical mistake over gagging a Liberal MP from talking about veterans’ suicide and a full-blooded attack on Labor’s integrity, the Coalition lost the political and parliamentary fight.
A NSW police investigation — at the behest of the ALP — changed the dynamics of the integrity fight and forced Morrison into errors of judgment and of fact.
After realising the mistake of not targeting Morrison as a new leader before the election, Labor is concentrating on damaging his credibility and standing for the long term.
Albanese ignored confirmation of low wages as “the new normal” and the exposure of problems with the government’s robo-debt system to ask every question in parliament about the integrity of Morrison and Taylor.
Albanese was also gifted Morrison’s mistake in personally calling the police commissioner and a blunder in quoting the wrong person.
Albanese won the politics of integrity in the House of Representatives and substance over union integrity in the Senate.
While the proposed legislation was aimed at “registered organisations” — and the government claims it is equally weighted for corporations as unions — the full-blooded intent was to “stop militant union officials who are actively, deliberately and repeatedly breaking the law”, as Attorney-General Christian Porter said Thursday.
It has now failed.
The sum total is a loss for the Coalition over integrity on politics and substance.
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