The real story is Clive and his puppets

Illustration: Eric Lobbecke

LIKE an episode of The Real Housewives of Melbourne, the “Get Abbott” show is trashy and predictable. Worse, bitching about trivial stuff to score points against the Prime Minister is done at the expense of focusing on what really matters. Sure, Tony Abbott is fair game. When he winks, he can expect confected outrage from his detractors. Enter stage left: Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young calls the Prime Minister a “creep”.

Never mind that it’s far creepier for Hanson-Young and the Greens to cling to asylum-seeker policies that ignore facts and encourage more people to die at sea at the hands of an evil people-smuggling trade. Others too would scale the heights of hypocrisy. Enter stage left: ABC host Jon Faine admits he first raised his eyebrows in response to hearing from a 67-year-old pensioner moonlighting as a phone sex worker and yet he still ridicules Abbott’s wink as some kind of private school boy reaction to the word sex.

While Abbott is fair game, his family deserves a higher bar. Not according to The Sydney Morning Herald, which last week published vague reports about some staff being annoyed that Louise Abbott is working at the Australian embassy in Geneva. No names were provided. Not even a quote from an unnamed source. Gossip and innuendo became the benchmark for dragging Abbott’s eldest daughter into the “Get Abbott” pursuit. Louise Abbott’s posting was made under Labor.

Similarly, reports peddled by The Guardian Australia last week suggested another of Abbott’s daughters, Frances, was given a scholarship other than on the grounds of merit. No public interest here either, no evidence of preferment, just more innuendo and gossip from a few students who didn’t get a scholarship.

Those who have pretensions of being the nation’s intrepid journalists should try focusing on matters of substance.

Come July 1, Clive Palmer’s Palmer United Party will control four Senate votes. The Abbott government, with 33 Senate seats, needs 39 votes to pass its budget. When it comes to raising revenue, Labor says “aye” to the deficit levy. The Greens, who like making petrol more expensive, will support the government’s twice yearly indexation of the fuel excise. Alas, when it comes to the hard yards — reducing spending — Labor and the Greens will go into retreat.

That means, after July 1, Abbott and Joe Hockey will need to find six votes from the following people to repair structural deficits: PUP senators Zhenya Wang, Jacqui Lambie and Glenn Lazarus; Ricky Muir from the Australian Motoring Enthusiast Party, who has signed an agreement to vote along PUP lines; independent senator Nick Xenophon; Liberal Democrat David Leyonhjelm; Family First’s Bob Day; and the Democratic Labour Party’s John Madigan. Any way you look at it, in the absence of Labor or Green support, the Abbott government will need PUP votes to pass the budget to restart the process of the economic reform in this country.

Hence it’s high time the media turned the spotlight on Palmer’s party, both leader and members. Don’t be fooled by Palmer’s claims that he loves being on the front page of The Australian. Fringe parties love publicity but hate scrutiny. Former Greens leader Bob Brown lambasted News Corp newspapers as the “hate media” for daring to dissect his policies when the Greens held the balance of power. Likewise, the Queensland businessman turned politician has arched up against analysis in The Australian of his business interests, his party and his policies.

With due respect to each of the senators-elect, they are Palmer’s puppets. They were chosen as people Palmer can control, not for their interest in public policy. Through Palmer, they will determine whether the Abbott government can return the federal budget to surplus. So who are the PUP senators? Either Palmer is keeping them under wraps or the media isn’t much interested.

To her credit, Sarah Ferguson’s cracking interview with Lambie last week on the ABC’s 7.30 program should be mandatory viewing. After labelling Abbott and the Treasurer “uncaring psychopaths”, the senator-elect from Tasmania took us on a whirlwind tour of her mind. First up, Lambie announced “all university fees for students free”, presumably meaning students should pay no university fees. When asked what this would cost the country, she said: “Well, it’s not really about cost.”

If Lambie can find a place called Utopia where it’s not really about cost, good luck to her. Given that it isn’t Tasmania, let alone Australia, senators set to hold the balance of power in determining budget reform should at least deal in real-world considerations. Lambie proffered two solutions to fix a federal budget that spends more money than it collects in revenues. First, the PUP’s policy to collect tax annually rather than quarterly. No big fix there. And second, to hit the banks with higher taxes.

“The four banks are making, you know, $30 billion worth of profit on a yearly basis, and if you spread that through 23 million people,” Lambie said, “… that ends up being $1300 (for) every man, woman and child that is living in Australia, so why aren’t we hitting people like the big banks?”

When it comes to fringe politicians, Lambie is yin to Hanson-Young’s yang. One from the populist and shallow Right; one from the trendy, equally vacuous Left. Both stoop to personal attacks on Abbott. Both rise up to bash big business for being, well, big. Both have demonstrably failed to heed the glaring lesson of the global financial crisis that the only thing worse than a profitable bank is an unprofitable bank. Neither understands the flow of capital: people and business will move elsewhere when a country imp­oses punitive levels of taxation.

Worst of all, both are entirely clueless about the fiscal realities of running a country where spending outstrips revenue, where an ageing population is supported by a shrinking pool of taxpayers, and where overall spending on health education and welfare has gone from 20 per cent of total government outlays 40 years ago to 58 per cent today. In a nutshell, it’s all about cost.

Rather than peddle salacious bits of nothing, the media would serve the public interest better by reporting on serious stuff. More scrutiny of the PUP senators-elect is a start. For now, at least, they may be Palmer’s puppets, but they also hold the future of budget repair in their hands.

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