The levels of delusion in Coalition ranks are quite something to behold and media coverage on the weekend gives us some idea of why. Paul Kelly preens the PM:
Turnbull goes to Christmas with a strong period as a transactional prime minister — having been more successful in parliament than many predicted — but facing problems in the budget’s trajectory, the risk to the credit rating, the negative quarter of gross domestic product numbers and confusion around energy markets and investment.
In his end-of-year interview with The Australian Turnbull was agitated about the so-called era of post-truth politics that defies his rationalism and frustrated that his post-election legislative results were not sufficiently recognised. He struggles with the task of grievance management given the extent of regional economic downturn across the nation but insists that the coming year will be shaped by his ongoing “growth and jobs” strategy.
The Prime Minister’s mission is to prove centre-ground politics can still work. He faces serious threats on the Left from a populist and determined Bill Shorten, a superior master of retail politics, and on the Right from a motley but dangerous crew of Coalition fringe dwellers, Pauline Hanson and conservative populists in minor parties and the media.
His first message is that this parliament is working, bills are being passed — “we have done more with this Senate in less than six months than we did in the whole of the previous parliament” — the double dissolution is vindicated and the economic plan is being implemented. Turnbull’s problem, however, is that this message of qualified success has not registered with the public.
…An incendiary climate is building and will explode. Turnbull’s view of budget sabotage is buttressed by the end-of-week pension fiasco and the election’s Medicare scare. It is what he calls “the preparedness of our political opponents to lie shamelessly”.
“It should be called out,” he says. “I make no apologies for that.” Accusing Shorten of “deliberately lying” in the campaign, Turnbull says Labor sought to “frighten and mislead” older, poorer people for its own ends. The government accused Labor of ruthlessly doing it again yesterday on the pension changes.
…The Medicare scare has left a deep, enduring mark on Turnbull. It offends his view of how politics and the world should work. But there still seems to be no coherent government response to Labor’s permanent Medicare campaign. Turnbull leaves no doubt he will frame Labor as an ideological, pro-union, anti-business, populist party, prepared to break any rules to take office.
…Conflict over climate policy is set to become toxic. Turnbull will take electricity prices as an issue to the next election, again in contrast to this year, when energy was hardly mentioned. He is convinced Labor has made a huge strategic blunder by locking into high-cost renewables. The energy fiasco in South Australia is his new vista of what Labor represents. Turnbull’s message is manifest: Labor puts green ideology before investment and jobs.
Idiot. The defining lie of the campaign was not “Mediscare”, it was “Negiscare”, the PM’s own personal betrayal of everything he stood for in public life by lying in support of negative gearing. On climate change policy Turnbull is a raging, self-evident hypocrite and his party is now a laughing stock across its own business base. The government’s only budget policy is a massive, and massively unaffordable, company tax cut that was brain-farted out days prior to the last election without modelling.
Each time Turnbull pursues Labor on these three fronts – integrity, energy and the budget – it will only remind the polity of its own failures. The harder Turnbull pushes the worse it will get for himself.
This is what happens to an empty government surrounded by media “yes men”. The less effective its policies become, the more its towering view of itself soars, buttressed by blame for the increasingly obscure.
And as it sinks, it’s native cowardice deepens, via the AFR:
After a long year during which the Turnbull government has unerringly narrowed the scope of its ambition, Morrison suggests the last thing the nation needs is another round of policy adventurism.
“Too often the economic policy debate grows tired of the discipline that is required,” Morrison tells AFR Weekend when challenged about what his reform agenda for 2017 will look like.
“In the absence of immediate support or gratification, too many are too quick to want to move on to the next new thing.”
His central message? He’s not going to give Parliament a “leave pass to say ‘let’s try something new'”.
“I said at the budget that it’s an economic plan and you don’t run an economic plan for six months.”
It’s a hardline stance that’s likely to enrage critics on both sides of the political spectrum. To those on the left it confirms that Morrison is missing the main game by focussing on his $48 billion plan to cut company taxes over 10 years.
Labor insists that delivering mostly foreign investors a tax windfall will do little to spur fresh investment or jobs growth and result in further delay to the return to surplus in 2021.
If that happens in Monday’s mid-year economic and fiscal outlook (MYEFO), the AAA rating is history, and the Treasurer’s credibility – as the first man in the job to lose the top-notch rating in three decades – will be severely wounded.
Let’s hope so because couching a pre-election brain-fart as a long term “economic plan” deserves it. ScoMo’s only objective here is to not upset house prices. That’s the only plan one should expect from a glorified real estate agent who generates housing inquiries with zero recommendations and appoints realty parasites to the RBA board.
But, he’ll not have that luxury, via the AFR:
Treasurer Scott Morrison has told cabinet’s powerful budget razor gang to prepare for the worst on the AAA rating, suggesting it will be lost barring some unexpected change that sways credit agencies at the last minute.
In what would be a severe blow to the Coalition’s credibility after more than three years managing the budget, the downgrade is now seen inside the government as a very real threat.
The eight-member cabinet economic review committee, or ERC, is understood to have been told to expect that ratings agencies haven’t been swayed by recent efforts of Parliament or the prospect that a rebound in commodity prices will rescue the budget.
…A sense of doom around the rating has intensified this week after both S&P and Moody’s Investor Service signalled they could announce their decision if there is a clear case for either a downgrade or no change as soon as Monday afternoon.
…S&P is seen within the government as the agency most likely to strike first, but sources are equally concerned that Moody’s might seek to beat its rival to the punch.
…Senior government sources have told AFR Weekend that while they don’t expect a downgrade to have a massive impact on the government’s interest rate burden, there is deep unease over what it might do to consumer confidence.
They are right to worry about households. But they should worry about one other effect more. This will be an indelible stain on the Coalition brand for decades. This is its Banana Republic moment, all the more damaging given its brand halo is its “economic” and in particular “budget management” credentials. What answer does the government have? A corporate tax cut that the drover’s dog knows will make the budget and fairness worse.
This is a government hemmed in by its own history of lies and ineptitude, a dead man walking in a hall of mirrors from which it haplessly beseeches life.
If ever there was one deserving of a downgrade, it is this one.
