Pearls and Irritations

Scott Morrison will be on another one-man campaign — none of his colleagues are much help and those who could be are focused on their own survival.

It was not as if Anthony Albanese was in desperate need of the boons Scott Morrison was bestowing. The week had begun with fresh opinion polls indicating that the gap between Labor and the Coalition was widening — in two-party preferred terms to 56 to 44 per cent. The same polls suggested that Albanese’s personal standing with voters was improving and that Morrison’s was in decline. There are some people, including myself, who bear deep scars from over-reliance on polling results at the last election, and, on this ground caution must be exercised. But pollsters held inquests into their 2019 failures, and have changed, and almost certainly improved their sampling techniques. The results, moreover, are broadly in line with the feel that many experienced observers have for the popular mood, and the way the players are performing.

One should also remember the events of 1993 — when the polls indicated, wrongly, that Labor was in a for a beating. Three years later, John Howard defeated Paul Keating comfortably. Some observers thought Labor had entered the 1993 campaign well behind, largely on the ground that a majority reckoned the party had “had its go”, had more or less run out of puff and ideas, and that it was time. But during the campaign, largely about a GST, Keating had persuaded voters to defer this judgment on the grounds that a Liberal government under John Hewson was too risky, compared with the devil they knew. Three years later, Labor lost not only on its instant merits, but with the “bonus” to the Liberals, of the deferred retribution of 1993. If there is a parallel with today, Morrison’s 2019 “miracle” deferred an electoral judgment due the Coalition, but is unlikely to sandbag anything like enough seats this time around. Even more than 1993 to 1996 the past three years may have confirmed that the coalition has run out of an agenda, sense of direction, or appearance of calm control of events.

If, as I think, Morrison and his Treasurer Josh Frydenberg deserved credit for their initial 2020 response to the coronavirus, whether in their health precautions or in their flexibility in applying Keynesian principles to the problem of massive job losses, and a serious reduction in demand, both pretty much squandered this credit during 2021. First they completely mismanaged arrangements for securing vaccines and distributing them, initially to high-risk cases. Second, they progressively made their health policies hostage to a theory of getting the economy going again, regardless of health risks or costs. In the process — because many premiers would not go along with the Commonwealth’s ideas, they lost a good deal of control over pandemic measures but were ultimately responsible for prolonged lockdowns and increased mortality. They failed to anticipate both the Delta and Omicron variants of the virus, each of which caused dangerous resurgences for which existing strategies were ill-adapted. One has to be fair to ministers and officials who failed to predict novel effects from novel events. But even making proper allowance, pandemic management ended up as a classic example of a characteristic — and characteristically inadequate — Morrison style of coming late to a problem, being slow to appreciate its dimensions, and of failing to take decisive action. They also showed other characteristic Morrisonisms — government by announcement, slogan and PR blather, with all too little attention to the substance or the follow-through; refusal to admit either error or indifferent performance, even as others were belatedly fixing things, and a willingness to throw unlimited public money for political fixes, while being mean about public needs, public poverty and impacts on particular groups of vulnerable people.

Morrison is not framing the debate, or in charge of events

The press club package also contained another spectacular mistake — encapsulated by the $400 bonuses to be distributed to some aged care staff.

The biggest story over the Christmas break — and the biggest headache for leaders and administrators actually focused on the pandemic rather than political pandemic pyrotechnics was the high strain being placed on doctors, nurses and health workers by Australians getting severe forms of Covid and requiring hospitalisation and intensive care. Mercifully, this increased demand at no stage seriously imperilled the supply of hospital beds and facilities. But it taxed, far beyond reasonable limits, the capacities of increasingly exhausted staff. Some of these staff were themselves catching Covid infections — and, initially at least had to go into isolation, thus being unavailable to assist their already over-taxed colleagues. Others had reached points, after continuous overtime, double shifts and little relief where they were hardly able to carry on, and some left the sector.

The refusal of ministers and health bureaucrats to admit how much the system was stretched and the dimensions of the crisis being faced, also sapped their morale. In time, it was also aggravated by the pretence of some of the politicians and health bureaucrats that staffing problems could be managed if sick and infected health workers carried on, if isolation and testing standards were lowered, putting everyone at increased risk, and if classes of potentially infected patients, such as returning travellers effectively saw standard isolation rules waived.

While this was occurring, millions of Australians were searching for rapid antigen tests that were almost entirely unavailable, thanks to the negligence of both the federal and state governments, but particularly the federal government, in preparing for “living with Covid”. The shortage of RATs combined with the resurgence of the disease caused many Australians to lockdown of their own (sensible) accord, in spite of the increasingly laissez-faire and “let-it-rip” policies being urged or applied by the prime minister and his ministers, some premiers, the News Corp propaganda machine, and some, but not all, business lobbies.

Yet again, the imagery showed a government not in charge of events, being in denial about obvious problems for far too long, and acting too late and in too limited a fashion once the problem was ultimately appreciated. Increasingly too, a government which had not hesitated to throw money at big business — including many billions given away by Frydenberg to businesses not eligible for the handouts — was suddenly and publicly very mean with help for ordinary members of the public, even to groups, such as the disabled and teachers. The belated focus on fiscal prudence, on the need to help a business solution, including the profit motive, to the provision of RATs sat uneasily alongside the government’s willingness to hurl money at advertising campaigns, the hydrocarbon industry, and iconic environmental assets, getting some PR gloss, but no systemic help in coping with climate change.

Nothing much is going Morrison’s way. The Djokovic visa affair looked simply incompetent, and may yet undermine efforts, routine for any election these days, to suggest that Labor is weak on border control. Neither Morrison nor his defence minister Peter Dutton are as well positioned as they would like to be on hostilities with China, or now, perhaps Ukraine. It won’t be for want of trying, or for want of effort by those urging more tension with our chief trading partner. Alas, our domestic belligerency is unlikely by itself to provoke an international crisis, or to deeply disturb popular complacency. Which is just as well given the state of some of our instruments of war, and some of the warriors in or behind them.

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