If we think back to election night, which, granted, seems like a lifetime ago now, Malcolm Turnbull emerged with bellicose declarations of victory but the body language looked like he’d lost. Bill Shorten, on the other hand, looked like he’d won. He proceeded on a victory lap while Turnbull sweated on the result.
In the weeks since 2 July, Shorten has grown in confidence rather than deflated as the reality of the election loss sunk in. While the prime minister has battled restive colleagues, and the lack of a settled agenda, and the manifest difficulties of a finely balanced parliament, Shorten has rolled on cheerily, bothered by only a couple of short-lived internal brushfires.
Shorten is fully intent, in other words, on taking advantage of Turnbull’s structural weakness while pretending to be positive.
We can call this strategy smile, while landing the kidney punch.
Hence Wednesday’s expansive outing at the National Press Club. Bill Shorten was here to help – a compromise on superannuation, which could, if the wind blew in the right direction, actually be a compromise – but, if not, it would work at the political level. If nothing else, it would highlight the fact the treasurer, Scott Morrison, is currently waist-deep in aggrieved backbenchers.
“It might have been tempting, even politically advantageous, to sit back and watch the humiliating spectacle of Scott Morrison floundering,” Shorten said at the club. “But that’s not who I am.”
The Labor leader managed to deliver this flattering diagnosis of his press club overture without laughing. Shorten, The Generous Statesman, was supplemented by a list of budget repair measures that the Coalition, if it was being reasonable, could do worse than consider. A call to the prime minister, a pitch to co-operation and working together.
With parliament set to return next week, it was a useful scene setter. Shorten is practising his modus operandi for the new political contest.
The Labor leader likes the notion of himself as a deal-maker and a unifier. He’s always most comfortable in that pocket, which is part of the reason the Liberal party have underestimated him, because Shorten’s dovish default is out of sequence with the pugilistic politics practised by the Coalition.
The Liberal party in contemporary times has become a party of war: internal war about ideology and personal advancement, the brutal hyper-partisan war of the Abbott period (which Abbott now claims to regret), rolling culture war – periodically, a war on facts. Turnbull has tried to halt all the roiling and bridge the substantial gap in philosophy between moderates and conservatives by making accommodations that haven’t bought a lasting truce and have damaged his personal credibility with voters.
Turnbull still hasn’t recovered from the election. His public pitches are unconvincing because, right now, the government has nothing substantial to say. The prime minister needs a meaty cause to try and recover his mojo, yet the heavily contested internals make it difficult to settle on one.
Shorten, therefore, has scope to steal a march. He can revert, ostensibly, to type, reach across the aisle, quite comfortable in the knowledge that Turnbull can’t really reciprocate, not because Turnbull instinctually is a warlord, like Abbott, but because his own people are showing only limited interest in putting down the weaponry.
Will the major parties come to terms on budget repair in this new parliament? We’d better all hope so, because the task is pressing, and substantial, and the downside risks in the economic outlook are obvious. Voters are also fatigued by faux fighting, posturing and jelly analogies.
Reaching a major party consensus on budget repair is desirable for a number of reasons. We can start with the obvious. It will serve to hold the policy propositions more or less in the political centre, rather than careening off in the manifestly unfair and politically disastrous direction of the Abbott period, or being captured by the inevitable quid pro quos that would be demanded by the new Senate crossbench.
But to make tangible progress a couple of things are required and neither of them are yet certain.
Turnbull and Morrison have to be less tribal and they have to be able to rise above their internal quagmire, which will require various people to make up their mind whether they want to rally and try and recover the Coalition’s political fortunes this term, or whether ventilating their own sense of grievance and laying a foundation for their own personal advancement is more important.
And Shorten has got to be serious about finding some common ground on budget repair, which is, of course, a quantifiably different proposition than smiling genially while landing the kidney punch.
