Shorten’s stunts warrant serious political scrutiny

Scott Morrison’s impassioned plea yesterday for border security — his warning not to lurch back to the horror days of people-smugglers and deaths at sea — assumes that voters are ready for serious politics. The election campaign has all but begun and the next dozen weeks must answer the question: Who is capable of making hard judgment calls in the national interest? Labor’s substance and mettle as the alternative administration stand to be judged. Especially since October’s Wentworth byelection Bill Shorten has focused on populism and stunts calculated to feed the 24 hour news cycle with images of a chaotic and humiliated government. This brings a political inner glow but it is not risk-free. Voters do not need another reminder of instability after six prime ministers in 12 years; they are looking for a way back to a government capable of giving sustained attention to a raft of domestic and international challenges to our living standards and other national interests.

Today, the Opposition Leader’s latest manoeuvre is expected to be an attempt to extend parliamentary sittings, ostensibly to deal with the fallout from the Hayne inquiry. This serves Labor’s narrative of underpaid workers struggling with a higher cost of living because of a nefarious conspiracy between conservatives and the fat cats of banking. The Prime Minister’s reasonable response was to dismiss as “reckless” any attempt to shoehorn as many as 40 pieces of legislation into eight politically charged sitting days on the eve of the election. One of the lessons of the Hayne report is that careful thought has to be given to unintended consequences if financial services are to be regulated without damaging their function in the economy. For its part, Labor hasn’t shown any haste to help enact reform proposals already before parliament, including the rescue of
so-called zombie superannuation accounts. And it remains to be seen whether Mr Shorten will defy the ACTU and back Kenneth Hayne’s default super account proposal, which would favour the interests of workers over those of the union-backed funds.

As for wages and jobs, the central bank believes that the long-awaited growth in incomes is not too far away. The question voters want answered is how Labor in office would maintain and deepen economic growth and drive productivity, thereby supporting job creation and sustainable wage growth. But Mr Shorten’s line in business is serving union bosses and the punitive populism of his capitalist bashing.

The other vital issue where Labor miscalculation invites voters’ scrutiny is border control. Yesterday Mr Shorten used the fig leaf of a government briefing to cover an awkward retreat from support for the Kerryn Phelps-inspired “medivac” bill that would undermine the deterrent effect of offshore processing of asylum-seekers. Shadow cabinet put up a three point compromise which was approved by caucus last night. Yet since last year, Mr Shorten has suggested it was a simple humanitarian matter that would not compromise border security. That position takes no account of the low threshold for doctors to order a transfer and the determination of asylum-seekers to get to the mainland and frustrate their return offshore with costly litigation.

It’s likely that the Labor leadership would not itself have initiated the amendments it backed in the Senate last year. The ALP has already pledged to remove one of the three pillars of border control — temporary protection visas — but otherwise for some years it has denounced as lies any suggestion that its stance is weaker than the Coalition’s. Yet last November it voted for the medivac bill without the benefit of a security briefing, suggesting it could not resist the temptation to impose a legislative defeat on a vulnerable government in a policy area where “compassionate” populism wins approval from progressive elites. Now the party is seen to have flirted for months with a policy change judged by security agencies to pose a risk to border control. Will a hasty compromise by the ALP persuade voters that a Shorten government would not give priority to appearing compassionate, with little regard to the human cost of open borders? The division papered over at the 2018 national conference has been on display again. The party has thus reminded the public of the Rudd-Gillard catastrophe: more than 51,000 illegal boat arrivals and at least 1200 people lost at sea.

And again, it was Labor that gave Mr Morrison yesterday’s opportunity to command a national audience with his powerful argument that those pushing the medivac bill have “no idea of the consequences of what they’re playing with — they will unleash a world of woe. I’ve seen it before and I never ever want to see it again.” Without questioning the good intentions of the other side of the debate, he pointed to one of the compassionate outcomes of restored border control: the arrival of more than 7000 women “at risk” and their children since 2013 under an expanded (and orderly) component of the humanitarian intake. That’s the reality.