Just two weeks after returning from a disastrous holiday in Hawaii in the middle of the summer bushfires, Scott Morrison announced a new agency and $2bn to recover from the emergency.
The policy was the first of a string of announceables after a tone-deaf tour of bushfire affected areas, which included victims refusing to shake his hand in Cobargo.
With incidents like that in the rear-view mirror, it was easier for the prime minister to project that he was present and hard at work by doing what governments do best: bringing the cash and coordination to solve problems like the recovery of bushfire affected communities.
In public policy, announcements come fast and delivery comes slow. Governments can be assured a day’s good press for having the right idea, but proving the program wasn’t all it’s cracked up to be can be the work of months or years for the opposition.
Labor has spent much of 2020 constructing that narrative, first with bushfires and then with Covid-19, that Morrison is “there for the photo-op, not for the follow-up”.
Two weeks of Senate estimates scrutiny have helped Labor frame Morrison as the ad-man who has failed to deliver. Here are the major promises the Coalition has made and where they’re up to.
Budget surplus
One of Morrison’s most notorious unmet promises was his claim before the 2019 election that the Coalition was “bringing down the first budget surplus for next year”, a projection that never materialised.
Of course the deficit in 2020 was necessary to boost an economy battered by Covid-19, but the Coalition was chipped for the certainty with which it claimed Australia was Back in Black. Mugs emblazoned with the slogan were removed from the Liberal store.
In October, Josh Frydenberg delivered a budget with $98bn of new spending and a deficit of $214bn.
Integrity commission
When the government is on the wrong side of popular opinion, sometimes a backdown is in order. At times it has announced an intention to fix a problem, but the solution gets stuck on the backburner.
In December 2018 Morrison announced it would create a commonwealth integrity commission and had been working to do so since January.
No legislation has been introduced, despite a draft being ready in December 2019, a fact the government is now blaming on Covid-19 despite other non-Covid priorities being delivered in 2020.
Bushfires
Remember that $2bn fund? Labor’s Murray Watt went on the attack after discovering in estimates that the Bushfire Recovery Agency said it had spent $1.2bn but, of that, $717m was spent by the commonwealth and the rest by states who will later be reimbursed.
Andrew Colvin, the head of the recovery agency, rejected Watt’s claim this was “dishonest”.
“In my travels I’m yet to have someone ask me what the accounting treatment is behind the money that’s in their account,” Colvin said. “They’re interested that the money has been given to them.”
There’s also a separate $4bn emergency response fund legislated in October 2019, an endowment intended to pay out up to $150m a year for emergency response and recovery and $50m for mitigation.
Marc Ablong, the home affairs department’s deputy secretary of national resilience, told Senate estimates that none of the $4bn has been spent.
Ablong said “there may be” Australians still living in caravans after the summer bushfires – it isn’t in his knowledge – but the legislation states the department can’t release emergency response fund money while other sources of funding are available.
Recycling fund
In May 2019, the Coalition promised a $100m Australian recycling investment fund to provide concessional loans of $10m to large-scale recycling projects.
The chief executive of the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, Ian Learmonth, told Senate estimates that no recycling projects had been approved for loans despite “a very active pipeline of transactions and some active negotiations with proponents”.
Covid-19 economic response
The Covid-19 response didn’t get off to as slow a start as the bushfire response, but it has still produced programs that critics claim don’t do what they say on the box.
There was a $1bn “relief and recovery” fund for the hardest hit industries including aviation, agriculture, fisheries, tourism and the arts.
Spending in the tourism sector was limited to transport links such as airlines and airports, and major attractions such as supporting zoo animals.
Margy Osmond, the chief executive of the Tourism and Transport Forum, told the Covid-19 committee in August there was “considerable concern” tourism operators missed out and it is an “ongoing bone of contention that it was not spent extensively in the industry”.
Coalition MPs have lobbied the government to do more for travel agents, and on Tuesday Morrison conceded in the party room they may need a new package of support due to the “unique pressures” they face processing refunds.
According to new figures provided by assistant treasurer, Michael Sukkar, the homebuilder program has had 14,599 applications.
Earlier in October, just 1,022 applicants had received their money, because the program requires applicants to buy a house and land or conduct substantial renovations then claim in arrears. But treasury officials confirmed the program is on track to reach estimates of 27,000.
The arts
It was the photo op par excellence, when singing star Guy Sebastian was on hand to help Morrison announce a $250m support package for the arts in June.
Communications department officials told Senate estimates $50m has been spent, and all of that has gone to Screen Australia to help 20 film and television productions.
With 80% of the money still unspent, Sebastian said his heart “breaks” for the industry. Sebastian has followed up with the prime minister’s office to find out how the money will be spent.
Jobkeeper shrinkage
It was the $130bn wage subsidy program designed to keep Australians attached to their jobs. Until, suddenly, it became a $70bn program.
First, Treasury overestimated how many people needed to claim the jobkeeper payment. Then the tax office took until late May to advise its figures were also inflated because some businesses were mistakenly entering the value of payments they were claiming instead of the number of eligible staff.
The lower cost was spun as a good thing – fewer Australians needed the payment than first thought and debt would be lower as a result. Still, the government refused to extend jobkeeper to millions of workers who had missed out including short-term casuals, visa-holders, and employees of public universities.
In July, jobkeeper was extended but the payment rate was cut from September, with lower rates particularly for part-time workers. Treasury had warned the government against cutting rates because it was “not clear that the net benefit of these changes would be positive for such a time-limited program”.
The program has already paid out $69bn and is estimated to cost a total of $101bn by March.
Covidsafe app
Morrison described it as like sunscreen, because nobody should leave home without it. But despite more than 7m downloads, the Covidsafe app has detected just 17 close contacts of people with coronavirus not discovered by contact tracers.
The acting chief medical officer, Paul Kelly, has said Covidsafe is “a very useful tool when used correctly and integrated into a well-functioning system of contact tracing”.
Health minister Greg Hunt claims the app’s data was also used to identify an “unrecognised exposure date” at Mounties in New South Wales, resulting in an additional 544 contacts being found.
Budget 2020 and beyond
The 2020 budget contained $73bn over four years in new jobmaker measures – including income tax cuts, business tax concessions and youth wage subsidies.
We have not evaluated these because it’s too soon to compare delivery with the announcement.
On 9 October Morrison said the government wants to enable investment in the private sector, “to bridge [the] gap during the course of this Covid-19 recession”.
“We don’t see government as the solution forever.”
Perhaps the private sector will take up the incentives in the budget to bring forward investment and hiring.
Or perhaps the estimates of how many jobs will be created will be a further rod for the government’s back as Labor hammers the announcement delivery gap.
