The inequalities in our community now reflect not so much gross disparities in income, but the failure of successive Liberal governments to create opportunities for the overwhelming majority of our people—the lower, modest and middle income families—opportunities which only governments can make. And increasingly in Australia the national government must initiate those opportunities.
Gough Whitlam, 1969
Gough’s sentiment is as relevant today as it was on October 1, 1969. That is a sad indictment of the state of Australian politics in 2022. After eight years of conservative governments, once again it is time for a dramatic shift in Australian politics.
Since I’ve been on the planet and old enough to register any political thought, I’ve only really known four eras of Australian governance: Hawke/Keating (1983-1996), Howard (1996-2007), Rudd/Gillard/Rudd (2007-2013), Abbott/Turnbull/Morrison (2013-present). I was born in Fraser’s Australia, but outside of a brief recollection of the Ash Wednesday bushfires I really have little recollection of anything before 1983 – a year punctuated by my attending kindergarten (my first year of formal school in the ACT) more than anything else and certainly I have no memories of the political landscape at the time. Unsurprising, given I was only 5 years old.
My earliest political recollection is seeing our illustrious Prime Minister of the day, the great Robert J Hawke, proclaim on Australian morning television that any boss who sacked any worker for not turning up to work on the day in September 1983 that Australia II (infamously bankrolled by Alan Bond) was “a bum”. I’m not certain if it’s the constant replay of that phrase on television retrospective shows since, or my sincere recollection that is more prevalent in the memory. But I do recall thinking it hilarious that someone said “bum” on national TV at a bit after seven in the morning.
Since then, of course, Australia has been on a constant economic cycle of boom and regression, sometimes leading to recession but often not receding quite that far, mostly through a trick of modern accounting at the Treasury. Think the Asian Financial Crisis (Howard), the Global Financial Crisis (Rudd) and the current Coronavirus pandemic (Morrison). Each of those was preceded, and followed for the first two, by periods of relative economic boom.
Of course, prior to Hawke’s election in 1983, Australia had just gone through the same economic cycle thanks to the Fraser Government. Fraser was not really to blame here, for the most part. More conservative forces in the Government were driving the ‘razor gang’ theory to public expenditure that had gotten the Federal budget out of deficit in the wake of the Whitlam Government. Led by then Treasurer John Howard, the Fraser Government staked its mantra of responsible economic management brought about by deficit reduction. A mantra Howard continued to spruk during his time as Prime Minister some twenty-plus years later.
However, much like the Howard and Morrison Governments that followed, there was nothing of social significance that the Fraser Government (save for a very effective refugee resettlement program following the Vietnam War) will be remembered for by those who aren’t scholars of this time in Australian political history.
It is an interesting juxtaposition between the two major forces in Australian political theatre – one side is overwhelmingly remembered for its social program, the other for simply keeping the economy ticking along at best, at worst ignoring the wellbeing of the electorate for their own.
When discussing the achievements of the Whitlam Government, the consus will be the establishment of Medicare and free higher education as the major ticket items. The Hawke/Keating Government floated the Australian dollar and set about a path of economic liberalism that is bearing fruit to this day. Rudd/Gillard Government has two key social achievements to its name: the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) and the National Broadband Network (NBN); both of which have been gutted by the Coalition Government(s) that have followed since.
Or maybe that’s just the viewpoints of the circles I run in. Cognitive bias works for, and against, all of us, after all.
Australian politics is at a fork in the road. One path goes straight, and continues down the path of the ‘politics of personality’, where a man has created a persona to get elected, and done nothing since then, is rewarded for their incompetence and apathy to actual leadership. One path goes left, albeit only slightly, and places the economic security of the lesser-off in our society at the forefront of its thinking and at least promises a better tomorrow – even if it might seem a little far-fetched. Recently a third path has revealed itself – a hard right that whilst occupies a minority of opinions, should not be discounted, nonetheless.
There are other paths – single tracks more than highways – that lead off in various directions. Some taking a hard left, some down the middle, and others that just seem to vear off all over the place with no seeming sense of direction and just as likely to lead you back to where you started than to any final resting place.
We are approaching nine years of a conservative government that has had three leaders. Each leadership change has been made within shouting distance of the next election. Whilst I don’t believe it will happen again, I wouldn’t be surprised to see it happen either.
Those nine years have been punctuated with an increasing failure of political leadership. The most promising of the three Prime Ministers in that time (Malcolm in the middle, for those playing at home) was effectively a mute PM – a man who could lead, but was stifled by the forces of the party he pertained to lead. A party whose lust for power and ‘born to rule’ attitude was shaped in the Howard years and perfected in the Abbott years.
In 2018, just as the Liberal Party spill of that year was playing out, I wrote this on a friend’s Facebook page.
Two possible outcomes as I see it. Turnbull calls a snap election sometime after parliament rises this week if he thinks the leadership is going to be threatened – he’ll lose that election, retire from politics and ride off into the sunset.
-or-
Turnbull declares the leadership vacant, chooses not to run in lieu of another figure who isn’t part of the far right conservatives (likely morrison, could be bishop). Morrison more likely has he’ll split that conservative vote and carry some moderates as well. Turnbull on backbench till election.
In both scenarios, I can’t see Dutton winning an open ballot. He’s Tony Abbott’s new Kevin Andrews. In any open vote, Abbott will run – he’s that deluded. If Abbott does, Dutton won’t. If Abbott doesn’t, Dutton won’t win.
In any case, I think the next Liberal leader is likely Scott Morrison. Whether that’s as opp leader or PM will have to play out.
Me on My Friend’s Facebook Page, 21 August 2018
This wasn’t exactly a Nostradamus scenario here. In my mind, Morrison as PM was always the most likely outcome the way I saw it. What happened next was, however, a surprise.
The nickname ‘Scomo’ had been doing the rounds in the local tabloid media for sometime, and just prior to this spill, was picked up and amplified by the then Prime Minister (Turnbull). The ‘Scomo’ narrative had been slowly playing out for about 12 months prior. It was carefully orchestrated – a daggy dad who loved the footy, having a beer and a snag on the bbq, and sticking the middle finger up at government overreach. The irony of it being paraded out by a member of the government itself was beautiful. And that irony was lost on most of the electorate.
By the time Morrison took the leadership, ‘Scomo The Musical’ was ready to play in all the major newspapers, talkback radio stations and breakfast TV. The stage had been set, and the players in the media lapped it up perfectly.
I am sure that there will be other essays I write that will look at the 2019 election campaign so I’m not going to preempt them now, but suffice to say that the Morrison win in 2019 was as much the fault of a media that lapped up the musical as a Labor campaign that failed in every department. In any case, the Morrison win was reported in much the same vein as Keating’s in 1993 – albeit with even fewer polls considering it plausible.
Morrison, in 2019, was a relative unknown factor who was able to create his own persona, discussed above. Crises, it is said, either makes leaders or shows them up for who they really are. In Scomo’s case, it has shown him to be a marketer.
Marketing is essentially the art of telling people what they want to hear. It is often confused with being ‘trend-setting’, but in reality, marketing is simply responding to human behaviour and recognising patterns that already exist, responding to them, and creating demand for whatever product solves that problem. Marketers don’t make good politicians because, in the immortal words of one of the world’s best marketers Gary Vaynerchuck, ‘marketers ruin everything’.
And this is the core of the Scomo problem. Being proactive, responding to forecasts (as opposed to hard data), and reacting accordingly is not part of a marketers makeup. How else do you explain the ‘Where The Bloody Hell Are You?’ Tourism Australia campaign, that Scott Morrison oversaw as CEO of the organisation at that time (a job he received by virtue of the fact he was previously NSW Liberal President), that failed to anticipate that conservative Britain might, in 2006, find the use of the term ‘bloody hell’ offensive and pull the ads? The fact that TA had failed to prepare for such an outcome tells you pretty much everything one needs to know about marketing and marketers.
Such things do not a good leader make.
And so we find ourselves two years into a global pandemic and a government which has, by almost any measure, lost its way. A fish rots from the head and so it is with this government.
There are many reasons to argue why a change of government is needed. None more so, for me at least, than something that was said at a recent press conference with Dear Leader (Morrison, for those not sure). When asked about the provisioning of Rapid Antigen Tests for free (such as is being done in Britain and the US, for example), Morrison’s response was that ‘everything can’t be free’.
At first glance, this seems a fair enough comment – the Government of the day, regardless of its stripes, simply cannot afford to provide everything a community would need for survival for free (saving arguments that the Government provides the amount of circlicable currency in a country due to the malinformed notions of inflation, etc). However, the Government provides medical assistance for free to the public in many forms. Further, the argument behind this statement appears to be ‘the government can’t provide everything for free, so the government shouldn’t provide anything for free’.
I’ll deal with each argument seperately.
First, the Federal Government provides countless medical services for free, or at worst at low cost, to the public. Bowel cancer screening tests are readily available for free. I’m yet to find a person who is hoarding bowel cancer screening tests – quite simply, they’re free, there is no need to do such a thing. Oncology services are provided, mostly, free through Medicare. In-patient hospital services are provided free, or mostly free for the bulk of the Australian public. Simply put, the Government already provides an almost countless number of medical services for free for the Australian populous. Adding RATs into the equation will hardly break a health budget of several hundred million Australian dollars annually.
Secondly, this idea that ‘everything can’t be free’ sickens me to my bones. Government can change lives. Government can bring a child out of poverty and give them a shot at prosperity. That child still needs to do the work, but it evens the playing field just a little for them. That’s what Governments can do. They can help families out of domestic violence and into some semblance of relative peace. Governments have that power. Leaders have that power. Leaders know they have that power.
Which is why Scott Morrison is no leader.
Australia deserves better. Australia deserves more than a neoliberal who would rather bow down to ideology and follow that blindly through, then deal in the reality. Australia deserves a leader who, when faced with a climate crisis that brings about bushfires that threaten the entire east coast of the country, offers more than ‘not holding a hose, mate’. Australia deserves a leader who doesn’t claim to be ‘one of the lads’ despite being born the son of a Mayor of a Sydney council and attended the exclusive Sydney Boys High School. He’s no more ‘one of the lads’ than Turnbull was, but at least Turnbull owned his privilege.
It’s time.