Lenore Taylor, political editor Friday 28 November 2014
The Abbott government has been mired in broken promises and stalled budget measures for so long it is hard to recall what a good administration looks like
Tony Abbott’s rhetoric about budget crises and debt and deficit disasters is proving a problem now that it is facing much lower than expected revenue as did the former government. Photograph: Alan Porritt/AAP
After a week dominated by questions that answer themselves (did Tony Abbott promise not to cut the ABC?) or questions that have different answers depending on who in the government you talk to (is the GP co-payment a barnacle?) it seems like a good time to ask a bigger question. What would a good government look like? Because it’s been a while.
Abbott told his party room on Tuesday (in the same speech in which he promised to clean the barnacles and before all the confusion about what they were) that his government’s “historical mission is to show that the chaos of the Rudd/Gillard years is not the new normal”. After a truly chaotic week we can safely say that mission has not been accomplished.
1. A good government would have a clear plan
If we mute the shouting and ignore the slogans, the former government and the current government have a broadly similar understanding of Australia’s economic challenge. This may be because they have each been getting exactly the same advice from the Treasury, delivered in a sort of one-last-time-with-feeling speech by the outgoing Treasury secretary, Martin Parkinson, this week. Economic growth fuelled by resource investment boom is fading, and Australia needs to find new growth engines. Responding to the financial crisis has left the nation with too much public debt and unsustainable levels of government spending were locked in during the boom years.
The government can point to its trifecta of free trade agreements as possible generators of additional growth, but the rest of its plan is contradictory and confusing. Roads, whatever century they are built in, might save commuters time – usually if they are built in conjunction with public transport which the federal government is defunding – but they don’t actually create new industries or jobs. Nor does cutting spending on higher education, research and development concessions, science or renewable energy.
Voters, quite adept at extracting reality from rhetoric, are worried about this. As Laura Demasi, the research director for the Ipsos Mind and Mood report, told Guardian Australia recently: “People are not confident about the future. They don’t know where jobs will come from when the mining boom ends, when manufacturing companies close, when agricultural land is sold off. They are fearful about where we are headed ... and whether it means their lifestyle or their children’s lifestyle will go backwards.”
In his speech to the National Press Club this week, Labor’s leader, Bill Shorten, promised he would indeed “reach for higher ground” and “seek a mandate based on a positive plan” but apart from talking about the importance of education he didn’t let us in on what it might be.
2. The plan would be explained clearly, before an election, without hysterics or hyperbole or outright untruths
Attention this week has been on Abbott’s “verbal gymnastics” over his obvious “no cuts to the ABC” broken promise, but equally difficult for the government is its ongoing hysterical rhetoric about “budget crises” and “debt and deficit disasters” and “economic vandalism” now that it is facing much lower than expected revenue as did the former government. (The Coalition used to say revenue downgrades were a sign of government incompetence). With a large proportion of savings from the last budget stalled in the Senate, this inevitably points to bigger deficits. The Coalition’s rhetoric would suggest that means an even bigger “disaster” under its watch, but actual sensible economic advice, like that from the OECD, suggests the government should proceed cautiously with alternative budget cuts lest it damage the sluggish economy.
3. The plan would include long-term, careful budget cuts that were fair, and were seen to be fair
The government would have a far better chance of blaming Labor and a recalcitrant Senate for its disastrous budget if it had not so comprehensively lost the public debate. Modelling clearly showed the budget pain fell disproportionately on the poor. A few policies were particularly toxic – including the $7 GP co-payment and paying unemployment benefits to under-30s for only six months of the year. If these policies are not to be “barnacles” but remain as unimplemented government policy, it is hard to see how the government will escape the perceptions of unfairness. It hasn’t, and can’t, win this argument by claiming the budget is the only way to make spending cuts, because voters understand that governments have choices, and they really don’t like the choices this government has made.
Points two and three would ensure the government was trusted by its citizens. This trust would mean the government had an actual chance of implementing bigger reforms that both major parties have acknowledged are necessary. In the Sir Henry Parkes oration in October Abbott tried to start a constructive new conversation about the roles and responsibilities of the states and the commonwealth and the tax system that pays for it all.
What was needed, he said, was a “readiness to give and take with opponents of good faith … [an] ability to understand the other person’s point of view, and to concede something to it,” he said.
Which is all absolutely true, but neglects to mention that he had already begun the “give and take” in his budget by taking $80bn from the long-term funding promised to states for health and education. Labor started giving right away with a full-bore GST scare campaign. And then the government took a bit more by imposing an increase in petrol indexation – against the will of the parliament - via a tariff measure.
And if Labor wins the state election in Victoria on Saturday, the almost coast-to-coast conservative governments upon which the reform plan really relied won’t be there any more either.
So much for dreaming. Time to batten down for a final parliamentary sitting week, replete with barnacle identification and attempted bludgeoning of budget measures through the Senate. It’s unlikely to look very good.
Three things that a good government would do | Australia news | The Guardian
