This week the prime minister, Scott Morrison, was very much engaged in an exercise of answering the two questions most people are wondering about him: who are you and why are you here? When you find yourself the leader of a nation, it is generally good to have a reason for being there other than Morrison’s current explanation that he basically tripped into the job by accident.
Thus this week, in response to the needles in strawberry scare, out he strode in full “look at me being a leader” mode to announce tougher penalties and new laws.
None of this was particularly needed. No one was sitting around thinking, “gosh it is a pity that it is not a crime to put needles in strawberries”. Neither was anyone really thinking: “Oh, there is a crime and it is punishable by 10 years in jail? Hmmm, sounds a bit weak, better make it 15 years to really deter.”
It was a pretty standard “tough-on-crime” response that we often see from conservative governments – not a great deal of thought was going into the impact or need for the laws, but it looked tough, it looked like something was being done, and it looked like the type of thing that conservative governments think leaders are supposed to look like they are doing.
At any rate it got them into the news cycle, which was really the only purpose.
Over the next six months, Morrison’s campaign to explain who he is and to hope people forget to wonder why he is there looks set to be a mixture of the usual things that leaders who have dumped a prime minister do.
We’ll get the “oh gosh, I’m just one of the regular folks, here’s an anecdote about the time Donald Trump didn’t understand me” moments, and we’ll get a lot of killing off of political headaches.
Just as Julia Gillard in 2010 sought to end the issue of the mining tax by doing a deal with the mining companies, so too has Morrison sought to end any problems with the Catholic and independent school sectors by throwing a lazy $4.6bn at them over the next decade.
It has not been met with great raptures from anyone except those who are about to receive the money. The NSW education minister, Rob Stokes, responded by arguing that “we don’t want a return to the school funding wars of the past that pitted private schools against public schools, and urge the federal government to provide equal treatment for all schools, public and private”.
It was the type of issue that would have been well debated at the Coag meeting in October, especially as education was an issue the meeting was slated to discuss. But the prime minister this week announced he was cancelling the meeting because he didn’t think it was needed and that “the only thing that happens as a result of not having that Coag meeting is less Tim Tams will be consumed in Canberra that week”. I guess that is better than admitting his government has no idea what its policies are on the issues of health and education.
It was a very Trumpian response from a man who seems to be neck deep in the US style of Republican party politics – including playing the culture war over religious “freedoms” (ie allowing religious groups to discriminate). Oddly, however, the government wants to fight that war only once the Wentworth byelection has been run, as it is refusing to table the report of the “religious freedom expert panel”, despite having had it since May.
At least it is making no bones about its position on climate change. This week the new energy minister, Angus Taylor, told parliament, “the renewable energy target is going to wind down from 2020 ... and we will not be replacing that with anything”.
Of course, why would any government want to have a policy other than to do nothing?
But don’t be fooled that the next election will see the government seeking only to go small target with a focus on culture wars and asylum seekers.
The shift of Kelly O’Dwyer to minister for jobs and industrial relations signals that the Liberal party, unconcerned that on an average afternoon the royal commission into the financial sector reveals more systemic abuse than did the entire royal commission into trade unions, looks eager to make industrial relations a key issue.
Of course, given we’re talking about the Liberal party, industrial relations really just means an anti-union policy.
This was evident from O’Dwyer’s speech this week to the “Australian chamber business leaders’ summit” which rolled out the usual furphies about bipartisanship reforms during the Hawke and Keating years, and suggested that “a law-breaking culture infects” the building and construction industry.
But this is an area where the Labor party is certainly up for a fight.
This is not only because the era of deregulated labour markets has culminated in a period of stagnant real household incomes, but also the changing nature of the labour market has many worried about the future.
This week the Senate committee on the future of work and workers released its report. The issue of the future of work is one fostered not just by the advent of new technologies and the use of apps to foster a “gig economy”, but because, as the committee noted, “for the first time in history, the wealth accumulation trajectory of the generation of workers entering employment is well below that of their predecessors at comparable ages”.
The committee found “that workers whose jobs are at high risk of automation are already more vulnerable, as they are often on lower incomes”. But importantly it noted the submission by the Australia Institute’s Dr James Stanford, who argued that Australia’s industrial relations laws have so restricted the parameters around collective bargaining, that “it isn’t always clear that it’s even a permitted matter to discuss technological change in the course of enterprise bargaining”.
The committee, dominated by the ALP and the Greens, thus recommended some fairly interventionist steps – including establishing a central body within the government to coordinate planning for the future of work and for a review of “the definition of casual work in light of the large numbers of Australians who are currently in non-standard employment”.
Casual work has been an area of particular debate recently.
The dissenting Liberal senators noted that “the share of casual work has been relatively stable since the 1990s”.
And while that is true, mostly it is due to an increase in the number of women entering full-time work. The proportion of men doing casual work has risen since the turn of the century from 19% to 23%.
Moreover, the percentage of full-time workers who are casuals has increased solidly in the past five years and the proportion of those under 24 working as casuals is at record levels.
The committee also recommended that the definition of “employee” be broadened to include gig workers and “ensure that they have full access to protection under Australia’s industrial relations system”, and that labour-hire workers be required to “have access to and be paid at least the same wages and conditions as the directly engaged employees working alongside them”.
These are moves that were very much disagreed with by the Liberal party members of the committee and highlights that both sides are squaring up to present very different positions come the election.
And it is why amid all the bulldust of culture wars and attempts by the prime minister to look like a prime minister, policies – as ever – will be the real issue of the next election.
• Greg Jericho is a Guardian Australia columnist
