Extract from The Guardian
The Coalition’s anxiety about the Wentworth byelection has escalated and the PM is governing only from minute to minute
Scott Morrison
hasn’t stopped moving since taking the prime ministership from Malcolm
Turnbull seven weeks ago. Perhaps it’s time he did for just a minute.
Stop, and think.
The government’s anxiety levels about the looming Wentworth byelection have been escalating over the past week or so, and understandably so, given there’s a lot on the line.
A loss this coming weekend would mean the end of the Coalition’s one-seat majority in the House of Representatives – an event that would only serve to underline the huge transaction costs of a leadership change that has unsettled Australian voters, and has thus far delivered zero political benefit to the government.
So if you are Morrison, and you are trying to hold your own show together, trying to defend the ship of state by forcing it into hyper-thrust, you might contemplate shock-and-awe measures, like floating a major foreign policy shift in order to boost the Liberal party’s position in a single-seat byelection, with the objective of clinging on to power in your own right.
This might seem like a good idea to a person who has everything on the line, who hasn’t stopped moving for seven weeks, and is probably only averaging a few hours sleep a night.
But, in the real world, it isn’t a good idea.
It’s a silly idea.
It’s silly because the reason Australia hasn’t followed Donald Trump down this incendiary path is it would upset our relationship with Indonesia, and Indonesia is our most important near neighbour, ally and friend.
When the idea of moving the embassy was assessed by Turnbull and Julie Bishop, given Trump’s position, it was dismissed on the basis that going full Trump would be counterproductive to Australia’s national interest.
Even if you thought, as a new prime minister, that you were perfectly entitled to take a different view on a foreign policy question (and of course you are), there’s just a simple point of pragmatism articulated elegantly by Labor’s former foreign affairs minister Gareth Evans.
Evans notes that, in a process this vexed, you never offer something for nothing.
If progress was made on a Middle East peace settlement, you might get to a position recognising Jerusalem as the capital of both states “but you never, ever give something this big for nothing, and Benjamin Netanyahu has given less than nothing to any peace process”.
Of course we need to be clear that Morrison isn’t really offering anything concrete, despite revealing his inclination to Netanyahu while sending a frantic heads-up to Jakarta.
Australia’s prime minister is just spitballing, which is a novel way to conduct yourself on the international stage, with policy previously thought to be bipartisan.
Morrison is not only spitballing, he’s narrowcasting.
By bowling up a policy that might resonate in Wentworth (if you take the view that the Jewish community in Sydney’s eastern suburbs is exclusively conservative, entirely homogenous, is not already voting for Dave Sharma, and hasn’t already cast a pre-poll vote to avoid coming out on the sabbath) – you have to deal with the impact of that policy elsewhere.
The risk is creating problems for yourself with other faith and ethnic communities, who also vote at general elections.
Morrison says the timing of his putative shift is about a looming vote in the United Nations, it’s not about this Saturday’s political contest in the eastern suburbs of Sydney which, by some strange coincidence, happens to include a substantial Jewish population.
But if you believe that, I’ve got a bridge I’d like to sell you.
This is what it is, and gestures like it only encourage already disillusioned voters to look at their politics and conclude that this is a government intent on no more than governing from minute to minute, endlessly mortgaging our collective future for the present.
The government’s anxiety levels about the looming Wentworth byelection have been escalating over the past week or so, and understandably so, given there’s a lot on the line.
A loss this coming weekend would mean the end of the Coalition’s one-seat majority in the House of Representatives – an event that would only serve to underline the huge transaction costs of a leadership change that has unsettled Australian voters, and has thus far delivered zero political benefit to the government.
So if you are Morrison, and you are trying to hold your own show together, trying to defend the ship of state by forcing it into hyper-thrust, you might contemplate shock-and-awe measures, like floating a major foreign policy shift in order to boost the Liberal party’s position in a single-seat byelection, with the objective of clinging on to power in your own right.
This might seem like a good idea to a person who has everything on the line, who hasn’t stopped moving for seven weeks, and is probably only averaging a few hours sleep a night.
But, in the real world, it isn’t a good idea.
It’s a silly idea.
It’s silly because the reason Australia hasn’t followed Donald Trump down this incendiary path is it would upset our relationship with Indonesia, and Indonesia is our most important near neighbour, ally and friend.
When the idea of moving the embassy was assessed by Turnbull and Julie Bishop, given Trump’s position, it was dismissed on the basis that going full Trump would be counterproductive to Australia’s national interest.
Even if you thought, as a new prime minister, that you were perfectly entitled to take a different view on a foreign policy question (and of course you are), there’s just a simple point of pragmatism articulated elegantly by Labor’s former foreign affairs minister Gareth Evans.
Evans notes that, in a process this vexed, you never offer something for nothing.
If progress was made on a Middle East peace settlement, you might get to a position recognising Jerusalem as the capital of both states “but you never, ever give something this big for nothing, and Benjamin Netanyahu has given less than nothing to any peace process”.
Of course we need to be clear that Morrison isn’t really offering anything concrete, despite revealing his inclination to Netanyahu while sending a frantic heads-up to Jakarta.
Australia’s prime minister is just spitballing, which is a novel way to conduct yourself on the international stage, with policy previously thought to be bipartisan.
Morrison is not only spitballing, he’s narrowcasting.
By bowling up a policy that might resonate in Wentworth (if you take the view that the Jewish community in Sydney’s eastern suburbs is exclusively conservative, entirely homogenous, is not already voting for Dave Sharma, and hasn’t already cast a pre-poll vote to avoid coming out on the sabbath) – you have to deal with the impact of that policy elsewhere.
The risk is creating problems for yourself with other faith and ethnic communities, who also vote at general elections.
Morrison says the timing of his putative shift is about a looming vote in the United Nations, it’s not about this Saturday’s political contest in the eastern suburbs of Sydney which, by some strange coincidence, happens to include a substantial Jewish population.
But if you believe that, I’ve got a bridge I’d like to sell you.
This is what it is, and gestures like it only encourage already disillusioned voters to look at their politics and conclude that this is a government intent on no more than governing from minute to minute, endlessly mortgaging our collective future for the present.
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