Comment

Is Scott Morrison’s latest slogan – ‘can-do capitalism’ – simply an overarching abrogation of his responsibility to provide good government in our national interest?

Former Australian tennis great John Alexander doesn’t like the way the game of politics is being played. Winning is everything and the biggest losers are Australians. Good policy and a genuine bipartisan search for what is best for the nation, in his opinion, comes a poor last.

Under the current New South Wales law, a person commits sexual assault if they know the other person is not consenting, if they are ‘reckless’ as to whether the other person consented, or if there are no reasonable grounds for believing there was consent. According to the court, my frozen body was all the consent that was needed.

The request itself is obscene. It is the kind of tinpot thinking you might expect in a failing dictatorship, maybe for a show trial after the coup. The attorney-general, Michaelia Cash, wishes to introduce evidence in the prosecution of Bernard Collaery that could not be known to Collaery or his lawyers and would instead be assessed by a special counsel engaged by the Commonwealth. It would form the secret basis for a secret trial, the premise of which has already been rejected by a court.

It has been demonstrated that incumbent state governments have been advantaged in their elections, but this sentiment is unlikely to be translated as support for the Coalition federally.

Morrison, like Howard, has made no secret of his determination to turn the election into a referendum on who people can most trust to run the economy, secure in the knowledge that come next May the country should be humming along.

When a citizen criticising an elected official can be sued by that official and potentially bankrupted by an adverse finding, the effects on democracy are profound.

Omid Masoumali was 22 when he arrived on Christmas Island. Days later he was taken to Nauru. When interviewed, he said he had no existing mental health issues. He was found to be a refugee but was not offered settlement in Australia. The Queensland coroner heard that he was warm and funny. His partner described him as optimistic, confident and cheeky. His mother described the death of her only son as an “eternal, unbearable grief”. The coroner said: “Her son had died in a foreign country, lonely and innocent.”

When will Scott Morrison and the Liberal National Party realise that three-word slogans are not a policy; indeed, they may not even be an effective way to deliver the desired marketing message? In the past two elections we were bombarded with ‘Jobs and growth’. Absent any detail, we were left asking, Which growth? In what sectors? On what time line? The latest slogan covering the absence of policy detail is ‘Technology not taxes’.

In one of the most remarkable developments, certainly since the Second World War, an Australian prime minister has leaked a highly confidential security document against an American president. Think about that. On the international stage, Scott Morrison put his own domestic political interests ahead of maintaining public trust between Canberra and its most important strategic and treaty partner, the United States.