Major parties get set for campaign capers
With the chances of an early poll now low, Malcolm Turnbull and Bill Shorten jostle to build political momentum — and avoid the killing season.
This week’s return of parliament after the winter recess is a sobering reminder for the government that it needs to avoid a rot setting in and to start building momentum for the next election.
Both major parties will treat the second half of this year as a countdown to polling day. The party strategists are already in campaign mode, and any and all issues debated in the parliament will be viewed through the prism of the next election.
The question time performances of Malcolm Turnbull and senior ministers will be crucial.
Expectations management went out the window during the break, which was dominated by campaigning in five by-elections. Polling suggested the Liberals might be the first government to pick up a seat from the opposition in nearly 100 years.
It wasn’t to be, and the mistaken optimism didn’t help Team Turnbull. The Liberal National Party primary vote in the Queensland seat of Longman collapsed off the back of a rise for One Nation, and the margin for the Tasmanian seat of Braddon stayed roughly where it was in the 2016 general election. The results were better than the long term by-election averages, but Labor won the spin and the outcome was widely interpreted as a failure for the Coalition.
Because members of Team Turnbull talked up their chances in these seats, and ministers lined up to declare the votes a referendum on the Prime Minister’s leadership and company tax cuts, the failures became a bigger blow than they should have been.
Now the Coalition enters the new parliamentary period without momentum and stripped of the opportunity to advance its “kill Bill” strategy into a debate about alternative Labor leaders.
Anthony Albanese is more popular than Bill Shorten, but the by-elections put paid to instability stemming from that fact.
The policy debates on the table for the coming weeks are anything but easy for the government. The opportunity to dump the remaining parts of the company tax cuts package, as a sign that Turnbull was listening to the electorate, was lost soon after the by-elections when ministers reaffirmed the government’s plans to take what’s left of the package to the parliament. The chances of success in the Senate are low but, by not dumping the tax cuts immediately, Liberals and Nationals in marginal seats can’t tell their electorates the government is listening to voter concerns. It feeds the impression the government only “looks after the big end of town”.
That is the Labor attack, and as simple and lacking in nuance as it may be, it’s effective, especially in the context of the financial services royal commission, which continues right up until the election is due in April or May next year. Liberal strategists fear Labor plans an attack similar to the Medicare scare campaign the opposition ran in 2016. It was mischievous to say the Coalition would privatise Medicare, but the argument cut through with voters.
The risk for the government is that even if it withdraws the remaining company tax cut legislation, it still will be attacked by Labor for plans to bring it back if re-elected. In the context of a financial services royal commission, that is a powerful political scare.
The national energy guarantee has been well negotiated by Environment and Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg, but he remains a long way from sorting out a deal. The partyroom must vote on what has passed the first phase of the Council of Australian Governments, which it surely will, especially with Turnbull indicating a willingness to include coal in the energy mix.
But the heavy lifting to turn the NEG into law will happen later this year, when the states and territories reconvene. Victoria remains the problem state for the Coalition, and federal Labor won’t mind its intransigence as a barrier to the perception that the federal government is getting on with business. The roadblock is whether emissions target changes require regulation or legislation. Currently, legislation is required, meaning no government can change settings without the support of the house and the Senate.
Victoria is arguing for change to be possible via regulation, which would take away the power of the parliament, making it easier for a future federal Labor government to increase the targets. That is not something the Coalition joint partyroom will tolerate and Frydenberg knows it. If Victoria won’t budge, the NEG will be defeated. Expect debate in this policy space to dominate much of the parliamentary year ahead.
‘The risk for the government is that a less popular prime minister faces more internal instability, driven by policy differences with his right flank’
Yesterday’s Newspoll highlights that while Labor’s dominance continues, the lead is wafer thin. Four 51-49 per cent two-party-preferred Newspoll leads in a row for Labor has the government close enough to steal the election during the campaign, as long as the issues debated between now and then can run the Coalition’s way, and as long as the popularity contest between the Prime Minister and the Opposition Leader is maintained.
That contrast took a blow yesterday when Turnbull’s net satisfaction rating dropped from minus six to minus 19. Shorten is on minus 24. Equally, Turnbull’s lead on the better prime minister stakes dropped from 19 to 12. The risk for the government is that a less popular prime minister faces more internal instability, driven by policy differences with his reactionary right flank. While no obvious contender exists to replace Turnbull, the instability alone may become a self-fulfilling prophecy that gives way to a challenger.
But Labor has its own problems. The decision by Labor MP Emma Husar not to run in the next election has taken some of the heat out of the salacious allegations by her former staff. But she remains in Labor’s ranks; questions hang over exactly what Shorten knew; and the government has called for an inquiry into her conduct, in particular with regard to entitlements. This issue won’t go away. The challenge for Labor is whether the damage can be confined to its electoral chances in the marginal western Sydney seat of Lindsay or spills out more widely.
Even if the only threat is to Labor’s chances of retaining Lindsay, that’s no small matter. The government holds 76 seats and any chance to reclaim seats from Labor would be welcome.
Labor strategists are worried that if the election is close, there is a real risk that the next parliament is hung, leaving both major parties to scramble to form minority government. That is not the way Shorten would like to lead Labor back into power.
One of the policy issues the Coalition is grappling with internally is immigration levels. We have seen an increased willingness of senior Liberals to speak out on this issue, tying it to crime rates in a way that risks a race debate that will divide the nation. Peter Dutton and Alan Tudge are two of the more vocal ministers in these broad policy spaces.
There are genuine debates to be had on immigration, but the challenge is to keep the discussion civil and avoid it morphing into dog-whistle politicking, or even accusations of it. West Australian Liberal senator Dean Smith has been at the vanguard of trying to advance a civil debate.
Given how polarised the political settings have become, it’s hard to see such debates avoiding a descent into madness. And Liberals aren’t just divided on immigration. The finance team is worried that any policy shift to significantly downgrade rates will have an impact on economic growth. As we count down to the mid-year economic and fiscal outlook report, that’s the last thing they want.
In the coming weeks the Senate is set to debate David Leyonhjelm’s bill giving territories the right to enact euthanasia. The issue for the commonwealth to consider is what rights territories should have under the Constitution and via the federalist structure under which we operate. But inevitably this debate will be about euthanasia, not territory rights. Turnbull has promised a free vote (in a horse trade for Leyonjhelm’s support on previous legislation). Sections of the government aren’t happy about that, but it reflects the position John Howard took as prime minister way back when this issue first emerged.
Expect Labor to continue to target the $444 million funding allocation to the Great Barrier Reef Foundation, especially in question time in both houses. Senator Kristina Keneally has done a good job of highlighting concerns over a lack of tender and no clear contract with terms of engagement. The methodology of the funding allocation is damaging at best, a public policy fiscal failure at worst.
Sending so much money to preserve the reef should have been a good news story but, again, poor processes have soured the outcome. Strong media interest is likely to keep this story prominent unless the Coalition revises the funding allocation.
A busy second half to the parliamentary year is the last thing marginal seat government MPs want in the lead-up to the election. With their opposing candidates largely chosen and out campaigning every day, being stuck in Canberra is not the ideal way to plan a defence of tight seats.
The chances of an early election are low, especially following the by-election results last month, which means the federal debates will also intersect with Victoria’s election in November and the NSW election in March next year.
For now, the aim of both leaders will be to thrive in the parliamentary debates that will help establish who takes momentum into next year. Doing so is the only way to avoid the killing season again striking down a leader before the end of the calendar year.
Peter van Onselen is a professor at the University of Western Australia and Griffith University.