Opinion
Coalition served its dream campaign issues - and fails to deliver
Peter Hartcher
Political and international editor April 30, 2022
https://www.smh.com.au/national/i-w...ese-eyes-political-prize-20220428-p5ah05.html
Reality has knocked on the door of the federal election campaign. The big, dangerous reality beyond the tiny homes occupied by the political campaigns and their tiny plans. But who’s answered the door?
First came
China’s hard knock on Australia’s security. Then came the knock of
raging inflation, which must lead to rising interest rates, the rising cost of living rampant.
Illustration: John ShakespeareCredit:
Neither was a complete surprise. Both pose serious challenges to the country. How did the Coalition and Labor, the two parties of government, respond?
The twin themes of national security and the economy are heaven-sent for the Coalition, nominally. These are the Liberal Party’s two great brand strengths and Labor’s brand weaknesses. These are the themes that Scott Morrison wanted to campaign on.
Morrison and his ministers had rhetoric at the ready. Morrison said that a Chinese military base on Solomon Islands would be a “red line”. He returned to his theme that
Labor was “soft on China”. He’s earlier accused Labor leader Anthony Albanese of being “on China’s side” and its deputy leader, Richard Marles, of being a
“Manchurian candidate”.
Defence Minister Peter Dutton won attention for saying on Anzac Day that “the only way you can preserve peace is to prepare for war”.
But that was about it. They produced no policy response. Morrison’s “red line” might have been a marker of a new policy, but, when pressed, he had nothing to add.
Likewise with the news that inflation had surged at an exceptionally fast rate. There was
rhetoric but no policy response. Sure, Morrison immediately pointed out that the government was giving some temporary relief for the rising cost of living. The government announced in the
budget that it was halving petrol tax for six months, giving pensioners and other concession cardholders one-off cash payments of $250 each, and giving a one-off tax offset of $420 for low- and middle-income earners.
But this doesn’t constitute a policy response to rising prices. These measures are gimmicks. The cost of living will keep rising. These supposed offsets will all be gone and forgotten by September. Worse, the combined cost to the taxpayer is $8.6 billion. That goes straight onto the national debt. And adds to inflationary pressures in the economy. It’s junk policy. It actually aggravates the problem.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison visits Mersey Yacht Club in the seat of Braddon.Credit:James Brickwood
A reporter asked Morrison on Wednesday: “On the rising cost of living. Australians will say $250 today, that’s going to be spent pretty quickly. So in six months’ time when that cash is gone and the fuel excise has gone back. What will you be doing then to help with cost of living?”
Morrison replied: “Making sure that our economy is strong, that we continue to manage our finances well because that’s what puts downward pressure on inflation.”
Which is, of course, nonsense. This government is hopeless with budget management. The pandemic emergency has passed but the spending continues to grow, deficits continue to run and the national debt heads towards $1 trillion. The national debt hasn’t been this big since 1956, as a proportion to the economy.
In other words, the government has no policy response. So the task of responding in the real world falls to the Reserve Bank, which must now raise
official interest rates to contain inflation. It’s had zero help from the Morrison-Frydenberg budget. On the contrary.
Reality knocked, and Morrison had no answer......
