PM smart to learn from past
BACK in 1987 Pat Cash made it to the final of Wimbledon, where he beat poor old Ivan Lendl in straight sets.
That year the tournament happened to fall during a federal election at which John Howard was trying to unseat Bob Hawke.
“Hawkie” of course knew the political value of draping himself in the flag at the time of an Australian sporting victory as he showed when he had declared an unofficial national holiday when Alan Bond won the America’s Cup.
On that Sunday night he made sure the cameras were there to record him in front of the prime ministerial TV cheering on “Our Pat”. From memory he may have even been wearing a green and gold tracksuit.
The next morning Howard was asked if he too had too relished this national triumph live via satellite? Err, no he admitted. Tired from a long day’s campaigning, he’d gone to bed. Howard lost that year, not because of that of course, but because of, among other reasons, the Liberals’ opposition to Medicare.
Fast forward to 1995 and Howard returned to the Liberal leadership promising he would be the best friend Medicare ever had. And if there was an Australian sporting triumph during his 11 years in the Lodge that he wasn’t on hand for, I must have missed it.
Like Bill Clinton who once said “My daddy never had to whip me twice for the same thing”, Howard showed in both small things and big he could learn.
Until now, you couldn’t say that of the prime ministers we’ve had since then.
In the last few weeks however Scott Morrison is showing increasing signs he might be the first proper, talented, political hack to get to the top since Howard. And that he learns.
Fairly or — in my opinion anyway — unfairly, he was held to have a tin ear for public opinion for his management of last summer’s bushfire crisis. Since his ill-advised and later abandoned plan to attend a rugby league game it has been hard to point to how he has put a foot wrong. His creation of the National Cabinet has, of course, sidelined Anthony Albanese.
What has been less commented upon is that through the process he has managed more or less to get what he wants, leaving the premiers to explain to their publics why they have deviated from what has been agreed to. It has also of course increased his authority within the government — as it has incidentally done for Daniel Andrews as well.
Last week Morrison showed he’s also learnt that when you’re on a loser the smart thing to do is to get off it as quickly as you can.
The robodebt fiasco was an absolute disgrace, with almost half a million, mostly poor, people hit with demands for money they didn’t owe.
Last Friday’s announcement the government will refund $722 million gets the commonwealth out of a lawsuit it was never going to win.
Humiliating? Sure, but it is a smart move to end this farce before we have weeks of court hearings.
Morrison is also smart in that he’s showing he doesn’t mind offending slabs of the Liberal Party.
Religious freedom is a totemic issue for many of the people who have joined it in recent years and a Bill guaranteeing it was promised to them as consolation prize for the fact they were beaten by the length of the straight in the same-sex marriage survey.
It might or might not have passed the Senate but it would have been divisive and to recycle an earlier line of Morrison’s (about another “totemic” Liberal issue, 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act) the “issue doesn’t create one job, doesn’t open one business, doesn’t give anyone one extra hour (of work)”.
So he just binned the plan. Not officially — it’s still technically on the agenda — but it won’t be back.
The Bill to create a fit-and-proper person test for union officials went in the same receptacle.
Instead, working groups of employers and union officials are to come together to try to find a way forward on industrial relations. On the face of it this is so quixotic as to be almost touching. Sitting down with ACTU boss Sally McManus is not going to be popular there. He can live with that because if he does pull it off, it will render Albanese irrelevant.
And if it fails, he can always say he tried. It’s smart politics from a smart politician.
... SCOTT MORRISON IS SHOWING INCREASING SIGNS HE MIGHT BE THE FIRST PROPER, TALENTED, POLITICAL HACK TO GET TO THE TOP SINCE HOWARD. AND THAT HE LEARNS