This week the one year anniversary of Anthony Albanese’s government came and went, which should have focused the Coalition’s attention on whether they are landing any blows on Labor big enough to win an election.
More and more it feels like the opposition’s fortune will be dictated by whether voters start to blame Labor for macroeconomic problems, rather than anything the Coalition is doing to earn their way back to government.
In question time, Peter Dutton and his senior team have found some rhythm, although their attacks are repetitive and therefore predictable.
This week’s topics were typical: Labor’s promise to reduce electricity bills by $275 (by 2025), falling real wages, inflation, infrastructure cuts or delays, and the supposed evils of Victoria banning native forest logging.
Question time is, as ever, a noisy pantomime battle between opposition and government with little expectation of genuine answers.
But Senate estimates committees, running this week and next, are a genuine opportunity to pierce the veil and opacity of government, with opposition and minor party senators taking turns to grill public servants and one representative minister in every portfolio.
The precise price tag of government programs (or cuts), names, dates, how decisions were made – all of this is discoverable from the bureaucrats who were in the room where it happened, if you know the right questions to ask and genuinely listen to the answers.
Instead, many senators treat it as a stage for grandstanding in search of social media content to be clipped for wannabe virality.
The Liberal senator Alex Antic pursued culture war issues, including whether Asio is aware of threats from “violent” trans activists (no).
Antic and his colleague Gerard Rennick both asked Home Affairs why it is asking social media companies to remove Covid misinformation, a practice that is entirely unchanged from when the Coalition were in government.
These are topics that are not helpful for a Liberal party that would prefer Australians think it has learned its lessons from the 2022 election, but there was no way to stop the freelancing on topics that would never get a start in the tightly managed question time attack.
After nine years batting at the crease in government, the reality is that even more senior Coalition senators mostly seemed rusty and did not find the right line and length with the ball.
The shadow education minister, Sarah Henderson, pursued a theory that there might be cooperation between the attorney general’s office and the Australian law reform commission about a proposal to limit religious schools’ hiring and firing powers. Officials denied it outright, meaning the fishing expedition hit a brick wall.
Henderson also pursued the infrastructure department secretary for wearing a Notorious RBG Ruth Bader Ginsburg T-shirt at a conference.
On the legal committee the shadow attorney general, Michaelia Cash, forensically pursued the fact the Attorney General’s Department used to answer letters from the then opposition Labor senator, Kim Carr, ahead of estimates but had not extended the same courtesy to her colleague Paul Scarr.
Not best practice in transparency, to be sure, but throwing a pity party for the Coalition in the prime morning hours when the media are all watching the committee instead of drilling down to meatier issues was not time well spent.
This is the Coalition’s third go at estimates in opposition, after sessions in February and November, and they seem little improved.
The shadow infrastructure and transport minister, Bridget McKenzie, seemed more productive on the rural and regional affairs committee, teasing out inconsistencies about whether certain projects in Labor MPs’ electorates had been exempted from a review that could lead to cuts.
The Greens also took up most of the running on the PwC scandal, with Barbara Pocock and David Shoebridge probing the finance department and Australian federal police about the adequacy of measures to prevent conflicts of interest.
The reason senators’ match fitness matters is that they’re pursuing answers for all of us. Nobody benefits if norms around transparency are so eroded that officials don’t feel they have to explain what they’re doing.
Some things never change no matter which side is in government. Attorney General’s Department officials took on notice questions about why Clive Palmer’s Zeph Investments is suing Australia (again), pending a public interest immunity claim. That’s legalese for a dead end, so we’re not holding our breath.
The independent MP Allegra Spender tried to strike a blow for transparency in the House of Representatives with an amendment that Infrastructure Australia cannot put projects on its priority list without an analysis showing that the net benefit outweighs the cost.
Labor and the Coalition defeated it despite the fact that, in opposition in 2014, the then shadow infrastructure minister, Anthony Albanese, had proposed the same thing.
The infrastructure minister, Catherine King, explained Labor would try to do better than the Coalition but it couldn’t agree to blanket rules because some advice would be subject to cabinet confidentiality.
Given Labor’s lower house majority, private members’ bills and amendments are a near-impossible task, so it’s especially important the opposition parties make use of compulsory processes like estimates to push the government.
Adam Bandt is trying to position the Greens as a more effective opposition than the Liberals.
And while estimates hearings are only one small part of parliament’s work, it’s worth noting that in private Labor parliamentarians noted what little heat they felt this week was coming from the left flank, not the right.
