Coalition is sleepwalking towards a cliff

Despite a transparently reckless agenda and ominous intent, Labor is sailing towards victory. It’s extraordinary to watch.

Bill Shorten promises a demonstrably inferior policy agenda, and is sailing towards victory nonetheless. Picture: Lyndon Mechielsen

Malcolm Turnbull and the ­Coalition have been so maladroit in their policy advocacy and political management that they are set to usher in a rarity in Australian politics — the election of an opposition with a demonstrably inferior agenda. This is extraordinary to watch; Labor is hamstrung by the promise of higher taxes, unsustainable spending, energy policy madness and a history of dysfunction in fiscal management and border protection, yet it is sailing towards victory.

The frustration of Coalition supporters is evident in the ill-discipline of dissenting MPs and the bleeding of votes to minor parties — especially the 16 per cent primary vote for One Nation in the Longman by-election. Everyone has seen this movie before — it is Thelma & Louise — and government MPs are torn between enjoying the ride as they go over the cliff and mustering the courage to do something about it.

It has all been unfolding in slow motion. The drifting away of the conservative flank, diminishing policy differentiation with Labor, recurring inability to sell policy strengths and confounding unwillingness to attack Labor’s weakness have all been on display from the early days of Turnbull’s prime ministership. Save for the very occasional exception serving to prove the rule, there has been no improvement. Not even the warning of almost losing in 2016 seems to have jolted this operation from its soporific trajectory.

In a twist of self-harm difficult to believe given Turnbull’s history on the issue (in 2009 he lost the leadership over climate activism), the Coalition is shrinking from a potential contest with Labor over climate and energy; preferring to appease the gods of Paris rather than reclaiming the nation’s cheap energy mantle. Instead of championing the mainstream, the ­Coalition is joining the elites in a campaign against their interests.

From Gough Whitlam to Malcolm Fraser, Bob Hawke, John Howard, Kevin Rudd and Tony Abbott, oppositions have won government with a promising agenda. They haven’t always delivered but at the swing elections they have heralded positive change — new programs, better policies and fresh priorities.

Not Bill Shorten. He offers higher taxes on personal incomes, real estate investments, company profits and retirement incomes. He offers a tax on carbon and a doubling of renewable energy and emissions targets, which can only fuel the electricity price crisis. Labor promises tens of billions of dollars in additional spending — for no designated outcome — in education, health and foreign aid. It also admits it will reduce union accountability measures and overrule the independent umpire to increase weekend penalty rates.

Shorten tries to put a positive spin on this suite of measures but it is transparently reckless, anti-growth and worrying. The Opposition Leader and his Treasury spokesman, Chris Bowen, seek to make a virtue out of their “tough decisions” and lack of appeal.

Matching this unattractiveness is Labor’s vulnerability on border protection. The chaos and trauma it created a decade ago — 1200 deaths, 50,000 arrivals and detention centres built and filled in every state — would be the worst reprise Shorten could deliver. Apologists who claim this has been inoculated against through the adoption of boat turnbacks in official ALP policy must take voters for mugs. Rudd said he would turn boats back before he was elected; then he was insipid, triggering a tragic shambles, and claimed turnbacks were impossible. With many of its MPs agitating to weaken the policy, voters instinctively know Labor might lack the resolve to manage borders. Yet Shorten has one foot on the threshold of the Lodge. How can this be and what should be done?

Most of Labor’s agenda was taken to the last election and Shorten managed to get through the entire election campaign without ducking a punch. Neither Turnbull, nor any Coalition attack dog, nor negative ads effectively targeted Shorten over power prices, border protection, union power or fiscal recklessness. It was excruciating to watch, day after day, as we waited for the rhetoric or commercials to turn up — like Godot they never came and Shorten ­almost arrived instead.

It was as though the Coalition MPs expected to be anointed rather than sully themselves in a fight for re-election. They survived primarily because of the size of the majority they started with.

Yet in the two years since we have seen only limited attempts to take up the battle with Labor. Last weekend’s by-elections provided a dress rehearsal for the general election campaign and we heard no coherent message from the government, either positive or negative, while Labor’s class warfare attack on company tax cuts combined with scares over schools and hospital funding was impossible to miss. This is politics 101 — have a message and convey it.

Malcolm Turnbull appeared at a book launch yesterday, his first since the by-elections last weekend. Picture: Adam Taylor

Turnbull is not in the media often enough, and when he is he tends to be on the back foot. Rather than use the by-election results as a chance to warn of the impending risks of a Labor regime, he used his morning-after press conference to offer excuses.

Then he wasn’t sighted until a doorstop interview yesterday. We learned he has again switched his chief of staff; a fourth in three years. Despite this upheaval, Clive Mathieson, who is whip-smart and was editor of The Australian less than two years ago, heads an office that is unusually light-on for political experience.

The most immediate risk is learning the wrong lessons from the by-elections. Liberals who urge the dumping of company tax cuts are being silly, spineless or Machiavellian (surely Abbott falls into the third category). The tax reduction plan is all Turnbull has for an economic narrative and if he discards it he will suffer a fatal loss of authority. He must show conviction on something — other than climate change.

If the plan must be modified to pass through the Senate (perhaps limited to companies with turnovers below $500 million), well and good; he should pocket that win and vow to fix the two-tiered system in the future. Voters understand the rationale for globally competitive tax rates and respect politicians who stand by unpalatable but sensible economic reform (think Howard and the GST).

Climate and energy policy is the government’s most serious lost opportunity. Having been elected in a landslide promising to scrap the carbon tax, the Coalition has gradually veered to the green Left on this issue so that it is now trying to win Labor support for its national energy guarantee, which is driven by the Paris emissions reductions target and will result in the renewable share of our energy doubling over the coming decade. The NEG is better than the current policies that ignore reliability and better than Labor’s plan — but that is the best that can be said.

Abandoning the Paris targets for now makes more sense, both because of their futility and the need to resolve our energy pricing and reliability crisis. Sadly, there has been so much intervention in the sector that government would again need to meddle to underwrite investment in new dispatchable power. But if Turnbull is prepared to spend up to $4.5 billion on a Snowy Hydro 2.0 project that provides only storage of energy, it is hard to argue against underwriting investments in reliable and cheap additional coal or gas-fired generation.

Clearly, reliable and affordable energy would be good for the economy and deliver an immediate political boost — looking after mainstream concerns, strangely enough, just might conjure more votes from the mainstream. The Coalition should leave the post-material posturing to Labor and the Greens, safe in the knowledge — confirmed by none other than Chief Scientist Alan Finkel — that the planet will not suffer.

The by-election defeats have robbed Turnbull of the early election option. With momentum it might have been ideal to go to the polls in October, ahead of Victoria’s state election. Now the Coalition appears locked into a predictable timetable for next year, with the NSW election on March 23 reducing options; the Coalition could go in late February or early March and risk overlap with the NSW campaign but is more likely to go for early May. That means it will be extending its term as far as possible (the election has to be held by May 18) and look as though it is hanging on for grim death.

While Turnbull’s 2016 double dissolution strategy is often derided because it was so drawn out and he campaigned woefully, this misses a more important point. The strategy might have saved the Coalition, because when he outlined his union accountability ultimatum to force the poll it was the only time he seized the agenda. This gave at least a little shape and purpose to a campaign that otherwise, as it transpired, might have been a contest about nothing.

Shorten is much underestimated. Time and again in federal and state politics we see that leadership popularity is a poor guide to voting intention. Shorten carries awful policy baggage and is uninspiring. Yet he is relentlessly hardworking and never fronts a microphone or camera without making a targeted political point, delivered from the front foot. He seems to live for the hand-to-hand combat that the Prime Minister eschews.

Right now, with Abbott and Barnaby Joyce venting their frustration and drawing policy red lines, Coalition disunity and leadership instability cannot be ruled out. Yet the former prime minister and deputy prime minister are also demonstrating their capacity to cut through on hot-button issues. Turnbull has never found a way to harness their skills or appeal to their mutual best interests, and those of the nation.

We should not expect any detente or partnership. If Turnbull folds on company tax cuts, sticks with his NEG and fails to aggressively expose the ALP risks on borders, taxes and electricity prices, next year’s election will be about next to nothing. As Abbott said this week, a party must give its people something to fight for and voters something to hope in. A government that trumpets stolid progress on unsteady convictions will be swept away by a hungry opposition with ominous intent.

Chris Kenny was chief of staff to Malcolm Turnbull as opposition leader in 2009.