A new normal? Instead Australia looks like it could return to 'business as usual' after the pandemic
Sadly, there will be no “new normal”. At present we are seeing hundreds of creative ideas spring forth about how Australia – and the world – can be different in the wake of Covid-19. These are important and valuable; long may they continue.
But the likelihood remains that Australia will return to a well-worn “business as usual” as the pandemic recedes. Privileged groups will continue to prosper; little progress will be made on climate change; ordinary citizens will continue to feel they have little say in how the country is really run. While nobody should welcome this, the current state of our democracy – our political economy, if you like – makes it hard to bet on any other outcome.
The telltale signs are there to see.
Despite near-universal support to raise the paltry rate of Newstart, the federal government has so far been unequivocal that it will be reset at its former level after the crisis. There’s the repeated insistence from senior ministers that reducing debt and deficit must be high on the government’s future agenda, despite a unique opportunity to invest in public capacity with borrowing costs at record lows.
Australia has handled the crisis well so far. Our political leaders should be commended, not least for their willingness to heed advice of experts. But once the peak has passed, the incentives politicians face will not have changed. This is because of the way power works in Australia.
Our prime ministers and premiers wield far less power than most people believe. They are not the only, or even the most, powerful actors in Australian policymaking. They’re simply the final link in a chain, albeit the point at which influence is most intensely targeted.
Instead, power is distributed across multiple actors – business leaders, media, unions, peak bodies and political factions in additionto the individual political leaders. Most leaders today operate a never-ending mental calculus of how they accommodate the competing demands of these groups in a way that will extend their period of office. Simple as that.
Unfortunately for Australians, that competition among those demands has not served us well in recent times. The group of actors who have been able to influence political leaders has narrowed dramatically. Those who currently hold most sway over leaders’ behaviour are big business, the media, unions and internal political rivals, with Coalition governments weighting business interests and Labor favouring union ones. Of course, all governments follow opinion polls closely, but these are filtered through the prism of constant media interpretation and factional machination.
This is not to say individual politicians aren’t decent people motivated to serve the citizens they represent – most I’ve met are – but the demands of this power logic are inescapable.
To see these power dynamics up close, consider a few recent events.
Qantas CEO Alan Joyce actively lobbied the Morrison government not to support his stricken rival Virgin, despite experts warning that maintaining two functional airlines is clearly in the national interest. Days later Virgin collapses, giving Qantas an effective monopoly.
Andrew Forrest, the mining billionaire, brought a top Chinese diplomat to gatecrash a ministerial press conference to express his dismay at the government’s behaviour towards China. His fellow billionaire Kerry Stokes chimed in with his approval.
Politicians are expected to heed these interventions. Donations and media support depend on it. Former PMs Kevin Rudd and Malcolm Turnbull have both recounted how Rupert Murdoch’s media works to undermine leaders who do not align with Murdoch positions.
With these incentives in place, a return to business as usual is Australia’s most likely outcome. But how can we change this? How can we engage our casualised workers and long-term unemployed with productive, secure work? How can we lift the living standards of the nurses, teachers and carers who’ve shepherded us through the crisis? How can we rebuild our manufacturing sector and Tafe system? How on earth do we get our emissions falling?
There are two ways how might we might change direction. The populist media won’t change its business model, but it can be circumvented.
One way is for Scott Morrison to reject the calculus that enabled his ascent and burn his political capital on a gamble in the national interest. Whitlam did this in recognising China (and much more), Hawke and Keating did it with the float and cutting tariffs, and Howard did it with the gun buyback.
Granted, all had just won office, but Morrison’s management during the pandemic offers him a fresh start with the Australian people. More importantly, all had to take on powerful vested interests, within their party and beyond.
Imagine a legacy that involved a permanent rise in Newstart, free childcare, creative use of debt to rebuild industries, and a rapid reduction in Australia’s emissions. He’d have to stare down his own backbench, threatening an election if they didn’t play ball, and it might mean a final term in office, but it’s a far superior legacy than just another chapter of revolving-door prime ministership.
The second path to a brighter future is through the interest groups. Most are member organisations and in these memberships resides latent power.
Sally McManus at the ACTU has deployed this effectively, but as the last election showed, the unions can’t do it alone. In addition, the companies that comprise the Business Council of Australia, the Australian Industry Group and the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry must also demand change. So must the institutional investors that sit behind them, including industry super funds. And all need to do so in concert.
The accords that unified government, unions and business in the 1980s gave the Hawke and Keating governments the political cover they needed to deliver change. A similar accord today (albeit with a different name) would give Morrison the same impetus.
The PM has signalled his openness to such an idea, although he suggests it should be less “rigid” than the accords. The challenge with such compacts, though, is that all sides must be willing to bind themselves – they are necessarily rigid, to a degree.
Morrison flags the big goal of boosting employment in the wake of Covid-19, but it must achieve more than that – it must strive for employment that is more equitable and secure. If Morrison fails to embrace such an approach, then Anthony Albanese will be ready and waiting to grab it with both hands before the next election.
There are small, promising signs on this front. Institutional investors have forced three of the four big banks to pledge to stop lending to thermal coal projects. Acoss, the Australian Industry Group and the Investor Group on Climate Change have partnered to call for climate action. The chorus of voices to retain a higher jobseeker grows louder.
Let’s hope Morrison listens. For if he doesn’t, our “new normal” will look frighteningly like business as usual.