Analysis
Analysis
Morrison government is facing a threat from a new direction
Updated
It's a question that has come up repeatedly in the past few days: have you ever seen politics quite so dysfunctional?
It is hardly the first time the question has come up of course.
There have been plenty of periods of chaos and weirdness in Canberra, particularly in the past 10 years.
But the past week really has entrenched the sense of a new low being reached.
For
people outside of Canberra, it is so often the images that are the
powerful things in a week like this: the Prime Minister having a press
conference in one part of the building, trying to get the agenda back on
track, while one of his backbenchers a few hundred metres away in the
House of Representatives is announcing she is going to the crossbench.
There
are the images of all the Coalition blokes, except one, walking out on
the MP, Julia Banks, while she speaks about a decision partly prompted
by her observations of the male bully culture in the Liberal Party.
Julia Banks is joined by the crossbenchers after standing in the House of Representatives to resign from the Liberal party because of the treatment of women and disunity over energy and climate change
And
there's the image of the Prime Minister walking out — breaking one of
the few remaining protocols in the Parliament — as a new independent MP,
Kerryn Phelps, gets to her feet to give her maiden speech.
Updated
It's a question that has come up repeatedly in the past few days: have you ever seen politics quite so dysfunctional?
It is hardly the first time the question has come up of course.There have been plenty of periods of chaos and weirdness in Canberra, particularly in the past 10 years.
But the past week really has entrenched the sense of a new low being reached.
For people outside of Canberra, it is so often the images that are the powerful things in a week like this: the Prime Minister having a press conference in one part of the building, trying to get the agenda back on track, while one of his backbenchers a few hundred metres away in the House of Representatives is announcing she is going to the crossbench.
There are the images of all the Coalition blokes, except one, walking out on the MP, Julia Banks, while she speaks about a decision partly prompted by her observations of the male bully culture in the Liberal Party.
Julia Banks is joined by the crossbenchers after standing in the House of Representatives to resign from the Liberal party because of the treatment of women and disunity over energy and climate change
And there's the image of the Prime Minister walking out — breaking one of the few remaining protocols in the Parliament — as a new independent MP, Kerryn Phelps, gets to her feet to give her maiden speech.
PM Scott Morrison exits the House of Representatives as Dr Kerryn Phelps gets ready to deliver her first speech
PM Scott Morrison exits the House of Representatives as Dr Kerryn Phelps gets ready to deliver her first speech
And what about the country?
None of those things are particularly good for the government's political fortunes.But dare one say, what about the fortunes of the country?
There aren't many occasions in the past 30 years when a government has so comprehensively lost its political and administrative bundle.
Proper processes have broken down — as thoroughly documented during Senate estimates in the case of the decision to announce a possible move of the Australian embassy to Jerusalem during the Wentworth by-election. That was a decision taken without consulting the foreign affairs and security bureaucracy. Just a craven bit of political opportunism.
Senior public servants are scathing about the lack of proper process more broadly, and for that matter, the lack of being given anything to do.
Not on their best behaviour
In the Parliament, the government lost its majority in the House of Representatives with the election of Dr Phelps. And you might think that would make it a little more cautious and careful about how it runs the Parliament, and behaves in it.But this week, during Question Time, Liberal MP Tony Pasin — who happens to be the chair of the Procedures Committee — got himself thrown out.
That gave Labor an opportunity to give the Coalition a nasty fright when it moved a suspension of standing orders, protesting what it (quite reasonably) described as the "part-time" parliament, in the wake of the tabling of the government's proposed sitting plans for next year.
The Coalition was only saved a humiliating lost vote by the abstention of cross bench MPs who didn't want to get engaged in political games in the chamber.
Have government MPs given up?
But the problem for the Coalition goes beyond tactics and appearances.There has been legislation debated in the House this week. But it appears that the government has had trouble getting its own members to turn up to speak.
For example, government legislation on the domestic violence leave was debated on Thursday. There were 11 speakers from Labor, one from the Greens and just one Coalition MP.
It was a similar story with a lot of other pieces of legislation.
It's as if government MPs have given up and gone home. Except we, the taxpayers, are still paying for them to run the country.
Shorten slams the 'part-time Parliament'
It is true people don't pay so much attention to what happens in the Parliament these days as they once did.But Opposition Leader Bill Shorten and Manager of Opposition Business Tony Burke both gave great speeches, when pressing the government on Thursday afternoon.
Shorten began:
"Australians are outraged that this government is too scared to turn up to Parliament, with the Parliament just sitting — after it rises next week — for 10 days in the next eight months. The rest of Australia doesn't get to take months and months off work when it feels scared about coming to work, so why is the Prime Minister insisting on a part-time Parliament?Meanwhile, Burke observed:
"I have wondered what would happen to members of the CFMEU if they ran an industrial action campaign and proposed this in the lunch shed one morning: 'I have a great idea. Let's only go to work for 10 days in the next eight months.' They would probably be sacked. Indeed, this government would like to put them in jail. But it's one standard for the Morrison ministry and another standard for the workers of Australia.
"The part-time parliament, however, points to a bigger issue. This is a government that has simply ceased to govern. Not only have they given up governing but they have given up pretending to govern. They have no agenda and no legislation. They are just being swept along by the currents of hate and division in the river that is the government coalition ranks."
"For the first time since 1901, the Parliament is planning to sit for only 10 days in an eight-month period. A lot of the debate has been, 'Maybe that's because they're scared of the numbers on the floor of the parliament,' but we're missing the other point: every time the parliament meets, the party room meets ...
"I can understand why they want to reduce the number of party room meetings between now and the election."
Morrison attacks Labor in return
The Prime Minister, as he keeps doing, responded by attacking Labor for being cocky — as if it was all Labor's doing that the government is in such trouble — and stretched his talking points out for the allotted time to attack Labor, and talk about unemployment … which may well be on his mind.Keep in mind that this is the same Coalition which brought cardboard cut-outs of then prime minister Kevin Rudd into the House in February 2008, expressing outrage about his absence from the House. But also keep in mind the circumstances of this incident: Rudd had moved to have the House sit an extra day each sitting week — on Fridays — to get through more work.
The threat is now coming from a new direction
Something feels like it has snapped in Canberra this week. Years of sometimes bizarre rhetoric from the right of the Coalition — arguments about how it was going to lose because of the threat from the right and One Nation, about how it was in trouble because it had moved too far to the "left" — have fallen silent.No-one is talking about the threat from the right and One Nation just now.
While the government insists there are no lessons from the repeated wallopings it has been receiving in federal and state elections and by-elections, the threat is from the centre ground of politics, a place to which the Coalition appears to have lost the coordinates.
Laura Tingle is 7.30's chief political correspondent.
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