Back in the Howard era, we used to talk about dog whistles. The point about dog whistles is they are subtle things. The sound is supposed to be inaudible to humans.
Scott Morrison holds power in a much noisier era. Everybody shouts, the prime minister loudest of all. There was nothing subtle or inaudible about the penultimate sitting week of the current parliament. It was one of the ugliest political weeks in recent memory.
The short version of this story is Morrison weaponised national security. The prime minister knows a significant chunk of voters don’t yet have a settled view about Anthony Albanese, so, generously, he filled in some blanks.
Albanese was weak. He was sneaky. He was China’s candidate for the prime ministership, which of course made him deeply suspect.
Morrison was very obviously trying to outrun the leaks and the disaster of the previous week. Trying to stay one step ahead of conservatives furious about his failure to deliver the religious discrimination package. Trying to keep level pegging with Peter Dutton, who is auditioning for the top job. Most of all, trying to capture the attention of disengaged voters who determine the outcome of elections, and consume their politics in broad brush strokes. Trying, like a boss.
As Jenny Morrison shared about her husband on last Sunday’s 60 Minutes program, the prime minister is very task orientated. His current task orientation is twofold: don’t die wondering about whether you can pull off the second coming, and don’t worry too much about what it might cost.
If you were watching the week, you’ll already know Morrison’s pre-campaign framing of Albanese and Labor was about as subtle as a meat axe. It was also reckless and destructive enough to trigger rare public pushback from Canberra’s national security establishment – both past and present.
What you might have missed was Morrison’s pep talk to the party room on Tuesday. That was also pretty extraordinary, but in the cacophonous quest to unmask the Manchurian Candidate, it got much less coverage.
A few quick points to explain this convention. Government MPs meet every Tuesday when the parliament sits. These discussions nominally happen behind closed doors, but the meeting is semi-public in the sense that a government MP provides a background briefing to journalists afterwards about the subjects canvassed, usually with a prime ministerial staffer hovering in the background.
Now – to what Morrison said. There was an implicit apology from the prime minister. “You haven’t seen me as focused as I can be yet.” Morrison said he intended to get sharper. He gave MPs a predictable lecture about unity. Then he gave an unvarnished explication of the government’s immediate political objectives.
Reviving the character test legislation (which makes it easier for the immigration minister to cancel visas) would highlight “the risk of Labor” more than any other piece of legislation, Morrison told his MPs. If Labor could oblige the government by voting against that measure, that would deliver some “sharp contrast”.
Morrison urged his colleagues to put “the starkness of the choice in front of the Australian people”. The prime minister said: “I know how to do that, and I know that is how you win elections. I know what the path is and I’ll be following it.”
I said a moment ago this contribution was extraordinary. Best explain.
Extraordinary at two levels, I reckon. The first was how naked Morrison’s objectives were. A lot of political leaders would feel compelled to dress up their intraday political tactics in more lofty terms, particularly when the tactics are reductionist and brutal. But not Morrison. He relishes the mechanics. They aren’t a means to an end. They are the end.
Which brings us to the second point. All of the focus in Tuesday’s presentation seemed to be on the nuts and bolts of winning. How you compete for attention in the attention economy. How you tenderise your opponents before landing the knockout blow.
Lots about the how. Seemingly absent in Tuesday’s tutorial was the why.
Some MPs wondered whether Morrison would get around to articulating a purpose for winning. Obviously there is an implicit purpose: keeping Labor out of office. When everything is this bareknuckle, and tribal, when cortisol levels are raised to the levels we witnessed this week, mired in the thrum of fight or flight, I guess that would feel like a goal of sorts.
But it’s not at all clear what the agenda of a fourth-term Coalition government would look like, or even what this disparate group of people sitting behind the banner of the Liberal and National parties would want it to be. Thus far, the government’s pitch for retaining office is all backward looking.
Morrison won’t care about the hole in the middle of the doughnut. He won an election three years ago with no policy, and no pitch, apart from Bill Shorten is the bill Australia can’t afford. I suspect a concrete agenda creates liabilities for a prime minister who wants to be able to pivot with maximum speed until he hits the precise formula to drag the Coalition across the line.
If you think this last point is an overstatement, or a cynical eyeroll, just think about this past month, where Morrison has lurched between we must get government out of people’s faces, right now, because who needs government – to come to Big Daddy. Only a Coalition government is sufficiently present and muscular to save you from Xi Jinping and his useful idiots in Australia. Whiplash is for wimps.
Morrison also won’t care about the institutional backlash that has accompanied his tactical hysteria this week. That’s a transaction cost of changing the conversation from deaths in aged care to national security. If the current play doesn’t work, he’ll pivot again.
But out in the real world, voters really are entitled to know whether this government has a plan for them and for the country that extends beyond Morrison’s inveterate brinkmanship.
Given Morrison hasn’t really articulated the why, funny then that the media narrative casts Albanese as the small target actor.
It’s fair enough of course. The Labor leader is a small target.
When the communist hunters rolled into Canberra looking for scalps, Albanese rolled Labor up into a tiny ball. Labor waved the character test legislation through the House of Representatives this week, and when the government regrouped around a second security wedge, a proposal to increase maximum sentences for firearms trafficking and mandatory minimum sentences of five years in prison offences, Labor promptly suspended standing orders to debate the bill, which then passed the lower house without opposition.
The government had hoped for a succession of speeches from Labor MPs objecting to mandatory sentencing, given the current party platform is unequivocal. It states: “Labor opposes mandatory sentencing.” When it was obvious that wasn’t going to happen, Dutton crunched the proposal through to the third reading so it would clear the lower house without the political inconvenience of Labor being seen to support it.
So small target, absolutely.
But Labor does have policy out there that begins to map a story about the future.
Albanese told the house this week the pandemic had shaped Labor’s policy thinking. A public health emergency was “an opportunity to take a step back and think about how you should emerge from the crisis even stronger”.
“We in the opposition have been doing just that,” he said. His objective was creating “a better future for Australia as we emerge from this crisis – a stronger economy that lifts up living standards, delivers for working people and is more resilient going forward”.
Albanese listed policy commitments Labor has already rolled out in energy and emissions reduction, enhancing sovereign capability in manufacturing, 475,000 free vocational education places in areas of skills shortages and 20,000 additional university places, additional health spending, an expansion of the national broadband network, and cheaper childcare.
The Labor leader has the bedrock in place for a campaign.
Albanese’s core strategy of surviving until the time comes to live has kept Labor in the contest.
What remains to be seen, though, is whether Albanese can find an extra gear.
He’ll need it, because Morrison isn’t bringing a knife to a gunfight.
