Politics

Melbourne’s Caulfield Grammar is building a pool with a moveable floor, while Presbyterian Ladies College will soon have an orchestra lift – which would all be fine, if it wasn’t part-funded by taxpayers.

Consolidated Newspolls show a swing against the Coalition in every state. Government MPs are hoping that the budget will give them some momentum to save them, but that is optimistic.

The budget will be Scott Morrison’s attempt to buy his way back to the Treasury benches. But many of his troops believe it is too late. One MP who is battling hard to hold his marginal seat says, ‘Nothing can save us now.’ Not even massive tax cuts, which are sure to be the budget’s centrepiece, nor the promise to build roads, bridges and rail in every marginal seat in the country.

We now have a sharply reduced political agenda. There is a widespread refusal to analyse and explain complex ‘wicked’ problems. On major issues – taxation, national security – we see policy convergence, largely out of fear, while on trivial issues, toxicity abounds – a sideshow of personal attacks and ‘gotcha!’ moments.

The cowardly, hate-filled attack has shaken both nations to their core, and exposed the lethal consequences of Australia’s political obsession with playing to people’s fears and prejudices. This is a dramatic shift, more potent than the demonising of the Tampa mercy ship with its cargo of 443 asylum seekers in 2001.

This week began with the Coalition government recording its 50th consecutive Newspoll loss, and that by a margin of eight points. A National Party source has no doubt it was that result that triggered Barnaby Joyce’s declaration of war on metropolitan Liberals, as he demanded the government underwrite a coal-fired power station in north Queensland. Prompting his outburst was his assessment that the government is doomed. It is now everyone for themselves.

The perception surrounding the Coalition’s late announcers is that they have waited until the eleventh hour in the hope the Morrison government’s fortunes would start looking up. More worrying for the government, though, is that its highest-profile female MP, Julie Bishop, is clearly not going to leave politics without taking the opportunity to hold accountable the men in the party who cruelled her leadership aspirations.

The 2019 election campaign began in earnest last Sunday. There is a feeling among government politicians that Morrison will go to the polls on May 11. If he does, that’s an 11-week campaign. Liberal MPs need no persuading they are in the fight of their lives. Treasurer Josh Frydenberg, facing a challenge from independent Liberal climate change advocate Oliver Yates, already has his posters up in prominent places around his electorate, Kooyong.

No longer confident it controls the parliament of Australia, the Morrison government has shut it down for the next six weeks. And no wonder: it is reeling from revelations of cronyism, incompetence and profligate, unaccountable spending. Scott Morrison’s only defence was to accuse Labor of having its head in the “chum bucket”. If he is right, the bucket is his and he will have to do a lot of hard work to expunge the stench before the May election.

Despite narrow legal grounds for concealing documents under our freedom of information laws, government agencies routinely refuse to release them. Appeals are long and costly. Final decisions may take years and challenging decisions to refuse access to documents – as in this case – can run to many, many thousands of dollars. The cost is too high for most, and so the information remains hidden and unpublished.