By ABC's Barrie Cassidy Friday 3 October 2014
Photo: The politics around some Government decisions, the flexing of political muscles, has been enthralling to watch. (Liberal.org.au)
No matter how deep the media digs, much goes on behind the scenes in any Cabinet that if reported when it happens, would be devastating for a government, writes Barrie Cassidy.
Politics is a funny business. It's full of hypocrisy, inconsistency, cant and opportunism, on all sides.
Joe Hockey was in full stride on Thursday in the Parliament regaling Labor for supporting nothing and opposing everything. Labor said precisely the same thing of Tony Abbott in opposition.
The parliamentary system does that to political parties. It's brutally adversarial.
Occasionally you get bipartisanship. It's happening in spades at the moment on Iraq and the anti-terrorism laws. And just this week Labor finally gave the Government a break on the budget by supporting the lowering of the means test on family tax benefits.
But that's about it. There is no prospect of the Opposition giving in on the $7 Medicare co-payment or the change to university fees. To listen to the debate, you would think they are two bedrock issues in the Labor Party and to give any ground would be to deny their very existence.
To that end, it's instructive to go to Gareth Evan's book, Inside the Hawke-Keating Government, and his diary entry made on May 9, 1985.
He wrote of an unscheduled Cabinet meeting that took up most of the night.
The ERC has been up to its tricks again, proposing to reduce the refundable Medibank component from 85 per cent to 80 per cent for non bulked bill patients, in order to save some $80 million.
The rationale for the proposal ... was put by Hawke, Keating, Walsh and Dawkins ... the need to have some large, highly visible "painful" items to show the money markets that we really mean business.
Blewett's (the health minister) case against all this was extremely strongly mounted, with him - for the first time that I can recall - barely concealing his anger at the stupidity of it all.
Not only, he said, would the cuts significantly affect lower/middle income earners, not only would it put at risk our credibility in the party where Medicare had been such an act of faith, not only would it re-create all the imagery of Fraser's endless tinkering with the old Medibank system, not only would it threaten the future of the Accord, but it would also cut a swathe through the government's credibility with the whole medical profession.
As the debate went around the room, it became apparent that only Lionel Bowen (the deputy prime minister) supported the committee's position - although Kim Beazley remained silent for the whole debate, no doubt because he didn't want to offend his patron (Hawke) although disagreeing with him on the issue.
(Hawke) ... was, as very often when a debate is going against him, very petulant and snappy, quick to resort to school ground abuse (of the "you are just wanking yourself" variety) and extremely crude misrepresentations of opposing arguments.
Eventually Hawke and Keating capitulated. Imagine that now. The equivalent would be Abbott, Bishop, Hockey, Cormann and Robb putting up a proposal and getting rolled.
Evans wrote that Hawke and Keating made "another feeble attempt in the process to throw back in tertiary fees as a substitute, but equally obviously getting nowhere with that". Increasing tertiary fees? Who would have thought.
Evans wrote that Keating ended by putting the debate in "personal-reputation terms" by warning that if the discussion was reported as "'Blewett rolls Hawke and Keating', that will be disastrous for the government". No kidding.
There were no such headlines and the ERC agreed in the end to "go away and try and patch together a number of lesser, and less extreme alternative savings options".
Discipline held and there were no leaks.
The anecdote now told almost 30 years after the event is a reminder that no matter how deep the media digs, much goes on behind the scenes that if reported when it happens, would be devastating for governments.
You get a sense that the behind-the-scenes debate around the co-payment, university deregulation, the petrol excise and the paid parental leave scheme would be just as willing as that around Medibank in the Hawke government. But as then, it's all happening behind closed doors.
You get the same sense with the debate around the need or otherwise for a special ministry of homeland security, one that Scott Morrison would surely head.
The politics around that, the flexing of political muscles, has been enthralling to watch.
On Insiders on Sunday, the Foreign Minister, Julie Bishop, was asked about a reshuffle in the context of a light hearted speech she and Bill Shorten had given at a football function. Yet she bristled. There would be no reshuffle, she insisted, ending weeks of speculation that had been allowed to run.
She later told the West Australian that she had seen "no such idea" about a US-style homeland security portfolio, and "if there were one, it would have to address the failings in the current system and as far as I am aware, there are no failings such as would justify a rearrangement of our intelligence and security agencies at this time".
Bishop was clearly shoring up the Defence Minister, David Johnston, and perhaps at the same time slowing down some of the momentum behind Morrison.
To that end, she was given support at the National Press Club on Wednesday, by the Attorney General, George Brandis, who didn't think much of the homeland security idea either.
It would be fascinating to be privy to some of the conversations surrounding that issue - and the debate around the rapidly changing budget strategy - but in that regard the Coalition is even more disciplined that Labor ever was. Maybe 30 years from now?
Barrie Cassidy is the presenter of the ABC program Insiders. View his full profile here.
Behind closed doors, how united is Cabinet? - The Drum (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)
