Labor back to smear after flirting with issues

Even Labor has finally decided the “scandal” surrounding Angus Taylor’s climate change fight with Sydney Lord Mayor Clover Moore is less important than low wages, the economy and stagnant retail sales.

While still trying to entrap Scott Morrison into mistakes over defending the Energy Minister’s use of false figures in a political fight, Anthony Albanese shifted priority in parliament to real ­issues.

After campaigning on slow wages growth and a stagnant economy for more than two years and seeking election off the back of promises of higher wages, Labor finally asked on Monday about the Reserve Bank’s observation that “low wages are the new normal” — a week after the statement.

The Prime Minister’s reply on the economy was far more ­assured than his pressured responses on Taylor’s false letter last week and allowed the government a better platform to talk about its achievements.

Morrison was able to immediately switch to the Coalition’s successful election campaign on taxes: “I can confirm that businesses in this country kept putting people into work as a result of not having to face the higher taxes of what those opposite were proposing to do at the last election.”

Likewise, Josh Frydenberg cited real minimum wages growth increasing every year “under us, whereas under the Labor Party three out of six years they went backwards and now we have one of the highest, if not the highest, minimum wage in the world”.

Coupled with a more concerted effort to talk about the ­Coalition’s broader policy agenda, the government’s tactics quickly blunted Labor’s foray into the economic field.

As a result, despite a week of hyperventilation over Taylor’s scandals, Labor quickly returned to the smear jar to try to build momentum against Taylor and draw in Morrison and Christian Porter, who, as Attorney-General, was part of Morrison’s personal phone call to NSW Police Commissioner Mick Fuller.

After a week of allegations and baiting, Porter had a more effective response to Labor’s claims of wrongful behaviour and hair­splitting on pecuniary interest declarations. He turned the heat back on to his Labor opposite, Mark Dreyfus, who lodged the call for an investigation into Taylor with the NSW police by repeating that Dreyfus had a long history of making complaints — eight against Coalition MPs, including himself — and calling for police investigations.

Of the eight complaints, zero had been borne out, Porter said.

Unless the NSW police investigation gives Dreyfus one out of nine, at the end of the last parliamentary sitting week Labor will have little to show for its efforts.

Of course, what Labor is about is distracting the Coalition from concentrating on a core strategy and chipping away at Morrison’s personal credibility.

Certainly, the Taylor saga seemed to divert the Coalition from extensively promoting its half-billion-dollar aged-care extra spend, which was announced and not followed up.

Labor has shown, however, that an issue with little substance can’t be stretched out forever.