Comment

Two weeks ago, during the last sitting of the federal parliament before the budget early next month, Anthony Albanese decided it was time to take up the fight against the government on the economy. The Labor leader sensed the prime minister and his treasurer, Josh Frydenberg, were embarking on a course of action that would see jobs and economic management become the key issue at the next election. Rather than it being the Coalition’s strong point though, Albanese saw what could be its fatal weakness.

Here is a fact about life in Australia in 2020: the material and geographical manifestations of Aboriginal cultures developed over more than 65,000 years are being rapidly destroyed by mining companies, urban settlement, road and infrastructure development, and vandalism. This destruction is authorised by state and federal governments.

For nearly half a century, Australian foreign correspondents have reported from China – a period of change in the country so dramatic it reshaped global geopolitics. This week, that convention came to an end.

Gadfly had the temerity to turn his back for a fortnight and on reporting back for duty discovers everything has turned to mush. It’s starkly apparent that language and ideas no longer have the same meaning and value they once did. Take the “rule of law”, for instance – a well-worn notion, beloved of lawyers, meaning judges and courts as the third arm of government are independent of the other two arms. The idea is that judges, right or wrong, have authority to make binding decisions according to law.

Scott Morrison emerged from last Friday’s meeting of his national cabinet a defeated leader. His hastily constructed vehicle to co-ordinate a coherent response to the coronavirus pandemic crisis had fractured. The prime minister announced that the notion of ‘100 per cent, absolute consensus on any issue’ is not the way ahead. The notion was his entirely but if consensus meant everybody agreeing with Morrison, it was always doomed to failure.

The forecasts don’t paint a pretty picture. The Reserve Bank expects unemployment to climb to 10 per cent by the end of the year and still be above 8 per cent by the end of 2021. The Parliamentary Budget Office projects the economy will run below potential for the best part of a decade. This is not inevitable though – government policy choices can change this path.

Tony Abbott, the former prime minister who ate through Australia’s crops like an aphid, is likely to be appointed as an adviser to the British Board of Trade. While we were initially thrilled at the possibility of being able to trade Abbott for someone else – David Attenborough, perhaps? – it appears we misunderstood the nature of the arrangement.

On Wednesday, when the national accounts confirmed Australia’s biggest economic contraction since the Great Depression, the federal government had a ready and credible excuse. But it was of little consolation to the one million Australians already out of work, or for the 400,000 people who the government expects will lose their jobs by the end of the year.

The reason Australia doesn’t have a death tax – when almost every other developed nation does – can be traced back 40 years to a fear that old people would move to the Gold Coast to avoid paying one. On such absurd grounds, Australia has forfeited hundreds of billions of dollars and inequality has deepened.

It is possible that when Tony Abbott stood on the lawns of Parliament House in 2011, in front of a sea of cardboard signs and conspiracy theories, he changed the Liberal Party forever. At that No Carbon Tax Rally, he welcomed into the party a kind of madness.