Newspolls worsen as Canberra sinks into giant control fraud

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Via Paul Kelly:

When a parliament is discredited the presiding government usually pays a fatal price. The current parliament is discredited and dysfunctional on fiscal, legal and symbolic grounds, our democracy continues to be damaged and the decline in trust in our institutions is intensifying.

Just as the Tony Abbott-led opposition in 2010-13 was pivotal in ruining the Gillard government’s legitimacy, so the Bill Shorten-led opposition — though facing a different situation — is advanced in its quest to delegitimise the Turnbull government. But that only happens because of the government’s own ineptitude.

…The killer scenario is the reference of Deputy Prime Minister to the High Court leading to a minority Turnbull government. That should not happen. Indeed, it is hard to see how it could happen. But these are strange days. If the worst eventuates for Joyce and he must face a by-election in New England, he would surely win. But history tells us — from the Gillard era — that minority government is a guaranteed political death.

In this environment, where the parliament and public culture are being diminished, the Turnbull government is certain to be lacerated. Can the wisdom of judges assist in this debilitating saga? Rarely have events put the High Court in a position where its judgments will have such far-reaching political impact.

The court will decide the eligibility of a number of MPs (and that number seems sure to grow), whether Joyce must resign and contest a by-election, and also the legality of the same-sex marriage postal plebiscite on which rests Malcolm Turnbull’s entire strategy to resolve the marriage issue.

Australia suffers not just from systemic defects in its parliament but from a polarised culture — far less severe than that in America, which has become a violent internal confrontation, yet alarming in the depth of conflict over same-sex marriage, religious freedom, the role of Islam, indigenous recognition and its historical icons from Australia Day to the meaning of secularism.

You’ve been in the press gallery far too long, Paul, and are personally symbolic of what’s gone wrong. You believe that pollies are the nation. That they in some way represent the polity. The truth is more simple and reassuring. Australia is remarkably tolerant and harmonious, thanks to some weird combination of sub-altern psychology, old fashioned English pragmatism, laziness and because it can afford to be. The pollies in the chamber are thus completely unrepresentative, curios in time and space, gallahs to be laughed at and ignored, and ironically, free to rort the nation for all it’s worth.

The primary schism in Australian politics is between Canberra and the people. This has all been made much worse by the contemporary political ethos, arising from Carl Rove, that pollies need not respond to reality when they can shape or even create it. This has led the chamber to a point of disconnect so far from the average Australian that its daily circus transpires in a near perfect post-modern theatre in which everyone can see the pollies pulling their own strings except the pollies themselves.

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This is the import of the dual national crisis. It is also why Baaaarnaby should have resigned. It would have shown substance, that he supported his own meaty statements when the Greens jumped out of the plane. One Nation has blundered too, protecting the idiotic Malcolm Roberts. So too XenoPom. I mean, how’s this for farce, via Peter Hartcher:

The survival prospects for the Turnbull government continue to narrow, with another key crossbench member of Parliament withdrawing support.

Rebekha Sharkie of the Nick Xenophon Team said that Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull needed to stand aside from his cabinet two ministers with citizenship problems, pending a High Court ruling on their eligibility.

A third Turnbull government minister has been caught up in the dual citizenship crisis that has rocked parliament, with Nationals senator Fiona Nash advising she is a British citizen by descent.

Ms Sharkie told Fairfax Media on Friday that “I am quite frustrated with the Prime Minister” for retaining in cabinet Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce and Regional Development Minister Fiona Nash.

Mr Turnbull was showing “disrespect to the Australian community” and she has decided she will no longer support the government on the survival matters of confidence and supply.

Yet her own leader has already declared his refusal to resign now he’s a confirmed Pom!

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Katherine Murphy put her finger on where this is all leading, rather obviously:

Governments can weather a lot of storms, even in our febrile, half-mad times, but they don’t generally survive a loss of authority so profound as to become a public laughing stock.

That’s dead man walking, dead government walking, territory.

The constitutional dramas that have plagued the government in recent weeks are not Turnbull’s fault.

This is not a drama created by prime ministerial deficiency, but by institutional laziness, incompetence and deficiency inside political movements.

The lack of care taken by a number of politicians about something as basic as their eligibility to sit in the parliament speaks volumes about the lackadaisical attitude of Australia’s political class to the rules of their road, which reflects our entirely deficient mechanisms for accountability and enforcement in politics.

When there are rules that are never properly enforced, you get precisely the kind of problem that is unfolding now.

So it’s unfair to lay the current problems squarely at Turnbull’s feet.

The distinct lack of interest in having a serious accountability regime is a collective and pervasive affliction in Australian politics, not a specific failing of one political leader.

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Whether you can project a sense of calm and confidence, matters.

Whether you are still in an active contest with your political opponent, matters.

While the prime minister can credibly say a lack of attention to detail by the National party is not his fault, nor the fault of the Liberal party, Turnbull is not in a position of being able to distance himself from the growing perception that his government has no ballast to help it weather storms, no clear sense of purpose or intention, and little collective resilience or clear thinking under pressure.

When the question demanded by the events of the week is as existential as is your government legitimate – your answer cannot be intemperance, inconsistency, florid overstatement and mass panic.

It can when that is all that you are made of.

The import of the dual national’s crisis is purely this lack of substance. Only The Greens have shown any ticker. Everyone else is simply underlining the gulf between themselves and the nation.

To wit, today’s Newspoll:

The Turnbull government has taken a battering after a week of turmoil over the citizenship of key ministers, with the Coalition trailing Labor by 46 to 54 per cent in another brutal verdict from voters.

Labor has climbed to its strongest primary vote this year, with its core support at 38 per cent, giving it a convincing lead that would see it form government with a gain of 20 seats if the trend held at the next federal election.

The latest Newspoll, conducted exclusively for The Australian, shows the government’s primary vote has fallen from 36 to 35 per cent over the past two weeks, amid internal rows over same-sex ­marriage and the storm over the foreign citizenship of three cabinet ministers.

Canberra is today a giant control fraud. It arbitrages the nation to benefit itself:

Control fraud occurs when a trusted person in a high position of responsibility in a company, corporation, or state subverts the organization and engages in extensive fraud for personal gain. The term Control Fraud was coined by William K. Black to refer both to the acts of fraud and to the individuals who commit them.

Australians deserve and would elect so much better given the chance. The national values of a fair go, fair pay for a fair day’s work and having a go are intact. They ought to have us flourishing in a liberal global order. The great majority are not comfortable watching their kid’s futures in housing, infrastructure, health, education, wages, balance sheets and environment go up in smoke. But Canberra subverts them by bribing those inside the system to stay loyal and channeling those outside into cuckoo solutions.

This is an interests-led political economy on a scale at least equal to that of the Washington “swamp” in the US.

Canberra doesn’t need draining, it should be razed.

About the author
David Llewellyn-Smith is Chief Strategist at the MB Fund and MB Super. David is the founding publisher and editor of MacroBusiness and was the founding publisher and global economy editor of The Diplomat, the Asia Pacific’s leading geo-politics and economics portal. He is also a former gold trader and economic commentator at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, the ABC and Business Spectator. He is the co-author of The Great Crash of 2008 with Ross Garnaut and was the editor of the second Garnaut Climate Change Review.