Shorten’s perilous game of internal appeasement

Opposition Leader Bill Shorten during Question Time. Picture: Kym Smith

The 45th parliament has reached a status probably ­unmatched since Federation — Scott Morrison stumbled into minority government against his will and while Bill Shorten can humiliate the government on the floor, he cannot­ ­destroy it through a no-confidence motion.

The parallels drawn with the Bruce-Page government in 1929 and the Fadden government in 1941 are more conspicuous for their differences, not their simil­arities with today’s government. Nor does Morrison’s minority status­ much resemble the Gillard minority government formed after the 2010 election.

No Australian government has been terminated by a formal no-confidence motion as such. That is not likely to change this term. Today’s situation will not climax in an election-induced showdown as in 1929 or in a change of government as in 1941. When a government faces defeat on a pivotal legislative measure, it is essentially the prime minister who exercises the discretion on whether or not this is tantamount to an issue of confidence and should trigger a resignation or a dissolution.

The only prime minister who was the subject of a successful no-confidence motion was Malcolm Fraser, as caretaker PM, who had a motion passed against him on the afternoon of November 11, 1975, moved by the dismissed PM, Gough Whitlam. It called for Whitlam’s reinstatement, an event that did not materialise.

Shorten’s fascinating position is that he can comman­d the parliament against Morrison but not to finish his governmen­t. He can wound but not kill. This has led to a completely different situation from either 1929 or 1941 — in those cases the opposition had the numbers and used them to terminate the governmen­t (forcing the Bruce government to a 1929 election and securing the 1941 fall of the Fadden government.)

Shorten, by contrast, has done something very different. He has used his numbers to embarrass Morrison by passing a law on border­ protection that the opposition majority wants, yet a law the Morrison government will implem­ent with all the discretion at its disposal to embarrass Labor as it does so. This is the lethal defec­t in Labor’s approach.

The upshot is that Shorten’s spectacular success so far — the medivac law — is double-edged. The government is humiliated but Shorten has to live with the consequences of the law, an extremely unusual situation for an opposition leader. Giving the public a demonstration of how Labor can weaken border protection even before the election is an entirely novel venture.

The key to Morrison’s position is that he doesn’t want an election before May. The Prime Minister has a lot of territory to claw back. He needs time, a budget, consolid­ation in Coalition seats and a ­sustained focus on the border protectio­n issue for the next three months. The significance of the 51-49 per cent Ipsos poll is that it suggests a trend injecting new heart into the government. Future polls will ­reveal whether the trend is real and substantial.

Morrison, unlike Julia Gillard, has become a minority PM late in the term without the comprehensive and formal agreements Gillard­ negotiated to secure both confidence and much of her legislative agenda. The upshot is extraordinary — Morrison has control of neither house, a situation only tenable for a short time, yet it is only a short time until the parliament is dissolved.

Exposed to an unpredictable parliament where he is a target for Labor-induced embarrassment, Morrison’s tactic is to limit parliamentary sittings as much as possible­ and engage in pragmatic retreat to avert further parliamentary defeats. Hence his reversal to support a Labor measure allowing small business to more easily take legal action against larger business, his switch on a royal commission on the treatment of people with disabilities, and accept­ance of Labor amendments about higher criminal penalties for business misconduct.

Morrison, in short, must try to conceal his lack of numbers and authority. He has been immeasurably assisted, however, by the ­medivac law, a Shorten victory that also revealed the trap that Shorten faces — he can achieve a majority but mainly on a progressive agenda backed by the Greens and independents. This would be popular on banks but is unpopular on softer borders.

On a major policy change such as medivac, Shorten tied himself to a progressive agenda that comes with multiple dangers. What are they? The revelation that Labor’s heart, notably its rank and file, ­opposes tough border protection, thereby raising doubts about the ability of a Labor government to secure the borders. Shorten chose internal appeasement — changing policy rather than enduring the ­internal Labor divisions that otherwise would have erupted. That Labor opted for medical­isation of entry from Nauru and Manus promptly after Morrison succumbed to minority status testifie­s to the sheer priority Labor ­accorded to the policy shift.

Could Morrison have used the medivac defeat to dramatise a politic­al showdown and call an election? That was entirely his dis­cretio­n but he wasn’t tempted. It was noteworthy but not critical that some independents voting for the bill made clear they didn’t see it as an issue of confidence.

Sir Ivor Jennings spelt out the situation in his book Cabinet Governme­nt: “It must not be thought that a single defeat necessarily ­demands either resignation or dissolution. Such a result follows only when the defeat implies­ loss of confidence.”

Since Federation, governments on eight occasions have either ­resigned or advised a dissolution having been defeated on a measure­, the last such occasion being almost 80 years ago in 1941. On that occasion, ALP leader John Curtin moved that the first item in the estimates be reduced by one pound, a symbolic move that constitute­d, in effect, a de facto vote of no confidence in the Fadde­n government.

At lunchtime on the fateful day, Curtin said to Artie Fadden: “Well boy, have you got the numbers? I hope you have, but I don’t think you have.”

Fadden didn’t. Two ­inde­pendents not just voted against Fadden but switched their support to Curtin who, with the confidence of the house, became PM. Politics had different norms in those times.

That 1941 situation has little similarity with today. Nor does the spiteful 1929 drama, when prime minister Stanley Melbourne Bruce, in an industrial bill, panicked­ and sought to largely ­remove the federal government from the industrial field. This was a critical policy step.

Denouncing Bruce, Labor’s “Red” Ted Theodore said: “One man is threatening to undo the work of a generation of men.” The bill was opposed by Labor and, decisivel­y, by a revolt from within the governing Nat­ionalist Party where Billy Hughes, in vengeful payback, determined to bring down Bruce. An amendment was carried and Bruce, ­accepting this as a vote of no ­confidence, went to the people only to suffer a humiliat­ing defeat including the loss of his own seat. Again, no real similarity with Morrison’s plight.

Meanwhile, Shorten lives with the consequences of his flawed method — asking Morrison to ­implement Labor’s law. How mad was this? The consequences run everywhere. The government is taking people from Nauru and Manus to Christmas Island on the public advice of the Home ­Affairs Department. This is about protecting the borders. What else would it do?

The legislative allies that passed the law have split, with the Greens and Kerryn Phelps outrage­d but Shorten saying he will accept it. Sounds like a retreat of sorts? At the same time, the government­ of Nauru — insulted and traduced by the passage of this bill and by many of its champions — passed a law banning transfers based on “telemedicine” assessments, the heart of the law.

There is a long list of what else might go wrong. The boats may or may not come. One thing is certain: if the people-smugglers were Australian, they’d vote Labor.