Politics

It’s rather odd that this government is running on the idea that people want the government out of their lives, yet they seem intent on doing the opposite and restricting individual choices. The Religious Discrimination Bill opens up other interesting questions, for instance on superannuation.

The raucous, shambolic penultimate sitting of federal parliament this year is all the evidence you need to know Scott Morrison is running very scared. Governments can find parliament a political killing field and never relish the scrutiny its opponents may apply. This aversion becomes all the more acute with the clock ticking down to a general election.

During the Cold War, fear of serried rows of Russian tanks rolling through the Fulda Gap kept European and American leaders awake at night. How is it the West finds itself back in a place it thought in the 21st century it had left far behind?

A hung parliament after the next election is emerging as a real possibility, enhanced by this week’s divisive religious discrimination debate. Among the winners could be the Greens and others who have stood up against a push to wind back years of Australian anti-discrimination laws for the sake of pandering to a loud fundamentalist Christian minority.

Two years ago, at the end of 2019, as the crises that would mark his tenure and demand an unprecedented public-sector response began to unfold, Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced an apparently innocuous decision. It is one that has quietly haunted his government ever since.

Before the pandemic, at most of my speeches to business and civil society groups, a question or comment was almost always made about why we don’t abolish state governments. The reasons were many and varied but all around a theme: a basic concern was that Australia is overgoverned; concern about the counterproductive consequences of the governance structures, in terms of blame and competition, or competitive federalism; that there are too many politicians; and that government is too expensive.

Make no mistake: the tumbrel is rolling for the Morrison government and the political guillotine is looming as its inescapable fate. Responding to a devastating Newspoll at the beginning of the week, Treasurer Josh Frydenberg reminded us that ‘many political obituaries were written ahead of the 2019 election and many false prophecies were made by those in the media’. He also said Scott Morrison was the best person to lead the Coalition to the election.

We know that before the last election nearly a billion dollars of taxpayers’ money was used for pork-barrelling, to improve the government’s electoral prospects rather than in the community’s interests. That is political corruption as Transparency International defines it, and the remaining question is: How much more money was actually spent in the same dishonest way in other grant schemes? Without a national integrity commission, we simply cannot tell.

We have finally arrived. After an almost daily campaign since the 2019 federal election, we are just a few months short of the next one. Naturally, attention is turning to focus on Anthony Albanese and his opposition. From one perspective – namely that governments usually lose elections and oppositions don’t win them – many feel Albo should be a shoo-in.

The Australia Day holiday is now behind us. By convention, this signals that the nation is back at work. It also sets the clock ticking down for a federal election within four months. The sense of foreboding within the Morrison government is palpable. Likewise, excitement is mounting within the Labor Party that this time it will not be thwarted.