Leadership change puts Coalition back in business

Scott Morrison is making his mark as a centre-right Prime Minister with blue-ribbon Liberal credentials. He is steering the Coalition towards the political centre after years of a centrist experiment that sacrificed principle for politicking and fuelled the rise of minor parties. While Labor is flirting with populism, Liberals are going back to basics. Disenchanted voters are yet to rate the new political order, but without a doubt the major-league parties are back in business.

The new PM is vindicating the Liberal leadership change by neutralising Labor’s frontline of attacks with a combination of popular appeal, policy nous and politics. Where Malcolm Turnbull was easily stereotyped as Mr Harbourside Mansion, Morrison pre­sents as down to earth. Turnbull was a cosmopolite with a fondness for equivocation, abstract art and high finance. Morrison is sure-footed, footy mad and talks to people like they’re his next-door neighbour. Against Turnbull, Shorten looked street smart. Against Morrison, he looks tired.

In his last year as PM, Turnbull lost vital ground to Labor on education and energy policy. Picking a fight with the Catholic Church is never wise unless you have a 360-degree view from the moral high ground and God on your side. Turnbull’s initial support for the Gonski education reform was problematic because it was based on a flawed funding formula set to create structural disadvantage for Catholic schools. Simon Birmingham’s use of a Judas reference after the church rejected the reform package was a gift to Labor. It drove the Catholic backlash that contributed to Labor securing victory in the Batman and Longman by-elections.

In less than a month, Morrison has repaired the damage caused by Turnbull and Birmingham’s misadventures. On Friday, he announced a fairer funding model based on a revised methodology to measure socioeconomic status. The NSW Liberal Left has joined Labor to denounce the new model. It is retrograde of them, given the measure has been modified to reflect better data-capture methods. It is a rational policy reform.

Morrison is honing his conservative political instincts and broadening his appeal to voters alienated by the Liberal tilt to the Left in recent years. The battle between Morrison and Shorten is shaping up as a contest between the founding values of the Liberal Party and the ALP.

It has been a long time since voters have enjoyed a clear choice between distinctive political agendas. The centrist experiment led to the demise of the two-party system as the Left and Right embraced principles of free-market capitalism and progressivist social values while adopting a more internationalist approach to domestic affairs. The loss of anchoring values and clear demarcation between major parties produced horizontal hostility and hardened factional lines. Labor’s base made the party pay at the 2013 election. The Liberal base punished its elites for rolling Tony Abbott by fleeing to minor parties en masse at the 2016 election. The backlash has left deep wounds. The party bled members and campaign funds dried up.

Whether Left, Right or fence-sitting opportunists, minor parties campaign on variations of the anti-establishment theme. It works when the establishment isn’t working for the people. But Labor and the Coalition are doing whatever it takes to bring voters back to the major leagues. Labor is preparing an anti-establishment platform to restore faith in its founding principles. Its support for the banking royal commission and the government’s initial lack of it will be a major campaign theme next year. Within hours of becoming PM, Morrison sustained heavy fire for rejecting the commission. He has conceded error, but will need to do more to restore trust with people on Struggle Street.

Shorten has supported the royal commission from the outset, ostensibly on the basis of integrity. If only the principle were applied without prejudice. Many Labor MPs shrink from integrity duty when faced with corruption in affiliated organisations such as unions. It makes the ALP’s pitch to Aussie battlers look like a transactional affair that will end when the last vote is cast.

While Labor applauds increased scrutiny of banking practices, it appears less concerned with predatory spending. Despite Australia’s unprecedented debt, it continues to promote big state programs. It wants more funding for education, despite decades of poor academic results. And it defends unsustainable energy policy. Despite the evidence of substantial risk, Labor continues to promote a 50 per cent renewable energy target. It has claimed the policy will reduce energy prices, but a recent report effectively counters the claim. As economics editor Adam Creighton reported, bills are likely to rise by 84 per cent under a 55 per cent target using renewable sources of energy.

Research demonstrates that people who vote Left express a strong interest in social and environmental issues while people who vote Right are more focused on the economy. Rusted-on green-Left voters might be persuaded that energy deprivation is a social virtue. The rest of Australia won’t take kindly to the elderly going cold while politicians invoke international agreements to ­defend the easy virtue of poorly modelled environmental policy.

The best way to get government spending under control is to freeze it, but no politician will propose austerity in an election year. An alternative approach is to make smarter policy by restricting funding to programs with a good business case. The Coalition is quietly making such headway in welfare reform. As you know from reading your tax statement, welfare is a grand canyon lined with taxpayers’ dollars. The government is on track to initiate the most progressive social reform in decades, if it can transform early testing of the cashless debit card into a new model of welfare.

Labor’s annus horribilis began when Morrison became Prime Minister. One can chart the ALP’s desperation by its trail of failed no-confidence motions. But greater challenges lie ahead for Morrison. He needs to craft a coherent policy platform, restore public faith in government and bring the ­Coalition team with him.