How Labor and the Government made a deal that lost Tasmania $52 million
THERE are good things and bad things about being on the crossbench in the Senate in Canberra.
The good things are obvious. You don’t have a boss telling you how to vote. You’re able to work with all sides to get things done. And when you’re the swing vote, you can put a high price on your vote of support.
The bad things were on show this week though. Because when you’re on the crossbench, your vote means nothing when the Liberals and the Labor Party team up to cut a deal. Their combined numbers mean your vote is treated like an afterthought.
And so it was with the Emergency Response Fund Bill.
The details of this aren’t complicated. The Government had $4 billion locked up in a fund designed to invest in university and TAFE infrastructure like buildings and equipment. It wanted to close the fund and move it over to a new fund that would earn a bit of interest each year. The Government planned to keep the interest it was earning and make it available in case a natural disaster happened.
Labor spent weeks saying the bill was a bad idea. They argued the Government should be funding both natural disaster relief and education.
Seems like Labor changed its mind.
They ended up voting to shut the whole fund down — the one they set up in Government, and argued passionately to retain, because it was so important a week ago.
Here’s what went on behind the scenes.
I went to the Government and said that if they wanted my vote, they’d need to secure $500 million for TAFEs around the country, including $52 million for Tassie.
I told them that if they agreed, they’d have the numbers to get it through.
They told me they’d get back to me.
After that, I went to the ALP. I said to them, let’s share notes.
“The Government wants this bad,” I said, “and they can get it through me, or through you.
“I don’t want to undercut you and I don’t want you to undercut me. We share notes, we copy each other’s asks, we give the Government no choice.”
Labor said they’d come
back to me. And I heard nothing. I called to check in with a few different people, and each of them said they didn’t know what was happening. But before long, I heard the ALP was negotiating with the Government. I went back to them. “If you’re negotiating with the Government, what are your terms? I’m asking for $500 million and if you match it we’ll get it.”
They’ll get back to me, they said.
And I heard nothing — until a minute to midnight, when the deal was already done.
They finally tell me that they’ve struck a deal and it’s got a little bit extra for TAFE.
Guess how much the ALP managed to secure for its vote? Fifty million dollars. A 90 per cent discount. Pennies on the dollar.
That’s the down side of being on the crossbench. I can’t negotiate anything for Tasmania if ALP Senators come in and vote to undercut me. I can’t force them to work with me.
But I’ll tell you, if I turned up to work every day and ended up negotiating how to give up $450 million in funding for rural and regional TAFEs, I wouldn’t keep turning up to work for long.
There’ll be other opportunities to use the power of the crossbench to negotiate deals for Tasmania.
And the next time they need me, they know that I’m coming back for that $52 million.
The Government knows that too. Next time, I just won’t ask Labor to work with me to get a better deal.
Forgive me, but if Labor’s got 26 votes in the Senate and this is all it’s able to achieve with it, I reckon I might be better telling their crack negotiating team, “I’ll get back to you”.