A former senior Liberal asked me this week: whatever happened to the Liberal Party’s commitment to developing substantial policies? I had to admit the current Coalition seems to believe it doesn’t need such things, that it can win an election by just being critical and negative, by basically undermining the credibility of the government. It’s following the Tony Abbott playbook, spitting and jeering from the sidelines, rather than having the courage to rise to the occasion, to provide constructive opposition, to take the fight to Labor. In doing so, the Coalition relies on what, unfortunately, is becoming the norm: voters and the media are largely not interested in the detail. So the opposition can get away with headline-grabbing claims and misrepresentation. It expects a sympathetic media will just repeat its message without scrutiny, that voters can more easily be scared than won over by the substance of good argument.
Of course, while all members and senators would say they entered politics to make a difference, few came with a particular commitment to, or passion for, specific policy solutions. In my experience, their interests are often more about getting power, public standing and access to entitlements, and many are happy to be fodder in their factional game – all to make a difference to them personally, rather than to the country.
So, the Coalition has ended up in the farcical and embarrassing position of weaponising virtually any issue. This was so even when it held government and failed to respond effectively to the policy challenges that emerged. To name a few: fiscal responsibility; inflation and the cost-of-living crisis; the collapse of the housing sector; the care sectors, especially child and aged care; the debacle engulfing universities; and appropriate climate/energy, defence and foreign policies.
It should be clear that effective policy development takes time and the commitment of all concerned. It requires a capacity to take expert advice and assume the costs of proper modelling, surveying or polling. The process needs to be tightly managed with shadow ministers recognising their roles and responsibilities and ensuring necessary backbench engagement.
The leadership needs to begin by accepting the reality of their current position. On becoming the Coalition leader in 1990, I focused my initial speech to the party room on the major challenges. Most importantly, we had lost policy credibility in the previous two elections: in 1987, when John Howard’s proposed budget didn’t add up, and in 1990, when Andrew Peacock couldn’t remember the detail of the health policy. Beyond policy credibility, there was also the issue of our disunity, within both the Liberal Party and the broader Coalition, and that we were not as effective a fighting force on the ground against the union-backed Labor Party.
Right now, polling is confirming economic issues are likely to be crucial in the next election: housing, cost of living, sustaining budget repair, productivity and institutional reform. Unfortunately, many in the opposition seem to believe the myth that voters still consider the Coalition to be the best economic managers. This view that conservatives are more competent on the economy is being tested in the current United States presidential campaign, with the Republicans wanting to perpetuate a similar myth. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, understandably reluctant to acknowledge the failings of his presidency in this regard, has recently attempted to turn up the heat on Democratic candidate Kamala Harris in relation to her economic policy agenda. On the face of it, Harris’s policy is more in the interests of middle America, especially small business, than that of Trump, with his focus on the top end of town.
So instead of foolishly trying to shift the blame for key economic challenges back onto Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, Peter Dutton and his shadow treasurer, Angus Taylor, would be better off presenting viable solutions. Their constant call for more cost-of-living support, given the extensive government response in so many ways, reeks of insincerity when they fail to offer any specific proposals. Similarly, the Coalition’s attempt to blame the government for creating “home-grown inflation” is disingenuous, given its profligacy in government, especially through the billions of dollars poured into several sectors to avert recession – including the housing and construction industries – and the labour shortages that we are still experiencing today.
Then there is the Coalition’s failure to implement an effective energy policy, having floated some 22 alternatives, identified by the media but never implemented. This leaves the opposition just being destructive regarding the essential transition to low-carbon, affordable and reliable energy. The Coalition is ridiculous and reckless in advocating nuclear power against all the global evidence of cost blow-outs and implementation delays. It is very difficult to understand why Dutton feels justified in delivering speeches calling for nuclear power, making innumerable false and deliberately misleading claims. He is consistently ignoring the many prohibitive issues, including costs and timing, sourcing of the enriched uranium fuel, the treatment of waste and the lack of state, landowner and community support. He is also omitting any detail of the steps to transition, despite the prospective closure of all coal-fired power plants over the coming decades.
Moreover, with Australia’s growth having slowed under the Reserve Bank strategy of sustained high interest rates, the Coalition is just plain irresponsible in advocating a recession by seeking further cuts in government spending. That would be sure to do it. It has offered no detail of what cuts should be made, except vague hints about containing the indexation of government benefits, which show no apparent concern about how much that would curtail cost-of-living support.
The recent positioning of the Coalition seems ad hoc and opportunistic. An example is its decision not to support Treasurer Jim Chalmers’ proposals to reform the Reserve Bank. It has rejected the recommendations of the independent review panel, which clearly sought to reflect global best practice. It seems the opposition is arguing that it fears the government may seek to stack the bank’s boards with Labor supporters, referencing the government’s recent appointments of union representatives. I assume this means that the Coalition prefers its own stacking of the board to that of the government? This position is conspicuously opportunistic, since the opposition ignored the review panel’s recommendation for a specialist or professional monetary policy board. Taylor was apparently insisting to Chalmers in their so-called negotiations that all the existing RBA board become members of the specialist monetary board – also overlooking the other recommendation for a governance board.
The current Coalition has obviously been caught short. Its policy confidence has taken a sizeable hit from the government’s capacity to turn around the budget from years of deficits to deliver two consecutive surpluses – while introducing substantial cost-of-living relief in a non-inflationary way. The Morrison government’s early ridiculous celebration claiming to be “back in black” has been exposed for its hollowness – not to mention its gross appropriation of Australian rock royalty – a beacon to the Coalition’s lack of substance and capacity to misrepresent. The Liberal–National Party policy credibility is in tatters.
The tragedy is there are so many other policy issues for which the current Coalition could and should have a specific policy proposal. It could pick an issue of overriding national importance from a growth and productivity point of view, such as urgently needed broad-based, integrated taxation reform – an issue the government has been ducking for some time. The system needs overall reform, not just piecemeal changes to specific taxes, against the multiple objectives of productivity and growth, fairness and simplicity. The efficient funding of the totality of spending commitments calls for a comprehensive tax package. The exhaustive and authoritative Henry tax review from 2010 still stands as the most appropriate base for reform. It was unfortunate that then secretary to the Treasury Ken Henry wasn’t asked to propose a package for overall reform, rather than just offering a list of recommendations without any indication of priorities. That just provided an opportunity for the Labor government of the day to cherrypick from the recommendations, as indeed then prime minister Kevin Rudd did, with a focus on mining taxes. It would probably be worth offering Henry an opportunity to propose a package for comprehensive tax reform now.
More broadly, the question now has to be asked: has the Liberal Party simply lost its way under Scott Morrison and since? Members usually prattle on about the need to go back to traditional Liberal values, but what does this actually mean, now it is no longer a tolerant “broad church”, and instead is drifting further and further to the right, and taking guidance from Tony Abbott and his former chief of staff Peta Credlin? The recently launched federal takeover of the New South Wales branch only consolidates this trend. It smacks of a loss of confidence, a sign of a party unsure of what it believes, let alone how to translate those beliefs into policy development, and then to an electable platform.
1 Comment
A former senior Liberal asked me this week: whatever happened to the Liberal Party’s commitment to developing substantial policies? I had to admit the current Coalition seems to believe it doesn’t need such things, that it can win an election by just being critical and negative, by basically undermining the credibility of the government. It’s following the Tony Abbott playbook, spitting and jeering from the sidelines, rather than having the courage to rise to the occasion, to provide constructive opposition, to take the fight to Labor. In doing so, the Coalition relies on what, unfortunately, is becoming the norm: voters and the media are largely not interested in the detail. So the opposition can get away with headline-grabbing claims and misrepresentation. It expects a sympathetic media will just repeat its message without scrutiny, that voters can more easily be scared than won over by the substance of good argument.
Of course, while all members and senators would say they entered politics to make a difference, few came with a particular commitment to, or passion for, specific policy solutions. In my experience, their interests are often more about getting power, public standing and access to entitlements, and many are happy to be fodder in their factional game – all to make a difference to them personally, rather than to the country.
So, the Coalition has ended up in the farcical and embarrassing position of weaponising virtually any issue. This was so even when it held government and failed to respond effectively to the policy challenges that emerged. To name a few: fiscal responsibility; inflation and the cost-of-living crisis; the collapse of the housing sector; the care sectors, especially child and aged care; the debacle engulfing universities; and appropriate climate/energy, defence and foreign policies.
It should be clear that effective policy development takes time and the commitment of all concerned. It requires a capacity to take expert advice and assume the costs of proper modelling, surveying or polling. The process needs to be tightly managed with shadow ministers recognising their roles and responsibilities and ensuring necessary backbench engagement.
The leadership needs to begin by accepting the reality of their current position. On becoming the Coalition leader in 1990, I focused my initial speech to the party room on the major challenges. Most importantly, we had lost policy credibility in the previous two elections: in 1987, when John Howard’s proposed budget didn’t add up, and in 1990, when Andrew Peacock couldn’t remember the detail of the health policy. Beyond policy credibility, there was also the issue of our disunity, within both the Liberal Party and the broader Coalition, and that we were not as effective a fighting force on the ground against the union-backed Labor Party.
Right now, polling is confirming economic issues are likely to be crucial in the next election: housing, cost of living, sustaining budget repair, productivity and institutional reform. Unfortunately, many in the opposition seem to believe the myth that voters still consider the Coalition to be the best economic managers. This view that conservatives are more competent on the economy is being tested in the current United States presidential campaign, with the Republicans wanting to perpetuate a similar myth. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, understandably reluctant to acknowledge the failings of his presidency in this regard, has recently attempted to turn up the heat on Democratic candidate Kamala Harris in relation to her economic policy agenda. On the face of it, Harris’s policy is more in the interests of middle America, especially small business, than that of Trump, with his focus on the top end of town.
So instead of foolishly trying to shift the blame for key economic challenges back onto Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, Peter Dutton and his shadow treasurer, Angus Taylor, would be better off presenting viable solutions. Their constant call for more cost-of-living support, given the extensive government response in so many ways, reeks of insincerity when they fail to offer any specific proposals. Similarly, the Coalition’s attempt to blame the government for creating “home-grown inflation” is disingenuous, given its profligacy in government, especially through the billions of dollars poured into several sectors to avert recession – including the housing and construction industries – and the labour shortages that we are still experiencing today.
Then there is the Coalition’s failure to implement an effective energy policy, having floated some 22 alternatives, identified by the media but never implemented. This leaves the opposition just being destructive regarding the essential transition to low-carbon, affordable and reliable energy. The Coalition is ridiculous and reckless in advocating nuclear power against all the global evidence of cost blow-outs and implementation delays. It is very difficult to understand why Dutton feels justified in delivering speeches calling for nuclear power, making innumerable false and deliberately misleading claims. He is consistently ignoring the many prohibitive issues, including costs and timing, sourcing of the enriched uranium fuel, the treatment of waste and the lack of state, landowner and community support. He is also omitting any detail of the steps to transition, despite the prospective closure of all coal-fired power plants over the coming decades.
Moreover, with Australia’s growth having slowed under the Reserve Bank strategy of sustained high interest rates, the Coalition is just plain irresponsible in advocating a recession by seeking further cuts in government spending. That would be sure to do it. It has offered no detail of what cuts should be made, except vague hints about containing the indexation of government benefits, which show no apparent concern about how much that would curtail cost-of-living support.
The recent positioning of the Coalition seems ad hoc and opportunistic. An example is its decision not to support Treasurer Jim Chalmers’ proposals to reform the Reserve Bank. It has rejected the recommendations of the independent review panel, which clearly sought to reflect global best practice. It seems the opposition is arguing that it fears the government may seek to stack the bank’s boards with Labor supporters, referencing the government’s recent appointments of union representatives. I assume this means that the Coalition prefers its own stacking of the board to that of the government? This position is conspicuously opportunistic, since the opposition ignored the review panel’s recommendation for a specialist or professional monetary policy board. Taylor was apparently insisting to Chalmers in their so-called negotiations that all the existing RBA board become members of the specialist monetary board – also overlooking the other recommendation for a governance board.
The current Coalition has obviously been caught short. Its policy confidence has taken a sizeable hit from the government’s capacity to turn around the budget from years of deficits to deliver two consecutive surpluses – while introducing substantial cost-of-living relief in a non-inflationary way. The Morrison government’s early ridiculous celebration claiming to be “back in black” has been exposed for its hollowness – not to mention its gross appropriation of Australian rock royalty – a beacon to the Coalition’s lack of substance and capacity to misrepresent. The Liberal–National Party policy credibility is in tatters.
The tragedy is there are so many other policy issues for which the current Coalition could and should have a specific policy proposal. It could pick an issue of overriding national importance from a growth and productivity point of view, such as urgently needed broad-based, integrated taxation reform – an issue the government has been ducking for some time. The system needs overall reform, not just piecemeal changes to specific taxes, against the multiple objectives of productivity and growth, fairness and simplicity. The efficient funding of the totality of spending commitments calls for a comprehensive tax package. The exhaustive and authoritative Henry tax review from 2010 still stands as the most appropriate base for reform. It was unfortunate that then secretary to the Treasury Ken Henry wasn’t asked to propose a package for overall reform, rather than just offering a list of recommendations without any indication of priorities. That just provided an opportunity for the Labor government of the day to cherrypick from the recommendations, as indeed then prime minister Kevin Rudd did, with a focus on mining taxes. It would probably be worth offering Henry an opportunity to propose a package for comprehensive tax reform now.
More broadly, the question now has to be asked: has the Liberal Party simply lost its way under Scott Morrison and since? Members usually prattle on about the need to go back to traditional Liberal values, but what does this actually mean, now it is no longer a tolerant “broad church”, and instead is drifting further and further to the right, and taking guidance from Tony Abbott and his former chief of staff Peta Credlin? The recently launched federal takeover of the New South Wales branch only consolidates this trend. It smacks of a loss of confidence, a sign of a party unsure of what it believes, let alone how to translate those beliefs into policy development, and then to an electable platform.