Analysis
Updated
It was billed as an opportunity for Scott Morrison to "reset" after a disastrous start to the political year.
Instead, the Prime Minister's address to the National Press Club was more of a "double-down". This was a leader on the defensive and unwilling to cede any ground to his critics.He is, however, aware of his vulnerabilities and dropped some hints as to how he intends to "fix" his political problems.
On the bushfires, Scott Morrison wouldn't express any regrets. He did a few weeks ago, notably acknowledging his holiday in Hawaii was a mistake. But the time for self-reflection, it seems, is over.
Now, it's all about practical action to prepare for the next such disaster and shifting the blame to where the Prime Minister clearly thinks it should more reasonably lie: with the states.
He wants the states to carry out more hazard reduction burning, lift their game on fire-resistant building materials and defer powers to the Commonwealth to deploy Defence resources during an emergency.
Most of this, which falls into the category of climate "adaptation and resilience", will require cooperation and concessions from the states. There is no certainty they will be of a mind to give Scott Morrison all he wants.
A convenient equation
The Prime Minister insists these practical steps (tackling the symptoms) are just as important as tackling emissions (the cause) when it comes to climate change. This is a convenient equation, given the great political difficulty he faces when it comes to emissions.The Government is not about to increase Australia's emissions reduction target. That is clear.
But it clearly understands the need to come up with a more credible path to show how it will "meet and beat" the target. Now, the Prime Minister flagged a potential new approach.
He revealed new "bilateral agreements on energy and emissions reductions with each state and territory" will soon be unveiled, starting with NSW.
While the details are yet to emerge, bilateral agreements with the states that focus on "keeping energy prices affordable, improving the reliability of the electricity grid and driving down emissions" sounds an awful lot like an ad-hoc version of the National Energy Guarantee.
There's no chance the NEG will be miraculously revived, but this could perhaps be a mechanism to give industry the certainty it craves and at least get federal and state governments working more closely together to fix the nation's energy policy mess.
Voters see through the spin
This debate will be one to watch over the months ahead. Right now, the Government is bleeding badly over the sports rorts saga.Here too, there was a hint of some political fix, but no concession of any wrongdoing.
The Prime Minister is still waiting for the head of his Department to report back on whether Bridget McKenzie has breached the ministerial code. Few expect she will survive the week.
Regardless, the Government still won't admit the then-sports minister did anything wrong in the way she dished out grants to marginal seats. Morrison trotted out the same talking points used since this scandal first broke nearly two weeks ago. "All projects were eligible", "girls getting changed behind the sheds" and so on.
There seems to be little realisation these lines haven't worked. Voters see through the spin and are still angry at what's happened here. Projects worthy of funding, as determined by the experts, missed out in favour of political pork-barrelling.
Morrison knows his weaknesses
The political patch-up being hinted at could be another round of funding aimed at all those clubs who were found to be deserving but missed out."There are many, many more worthy projects in this area", the Prime Minister acknowledged. "I will work with the Treasurer to see how we can better support even more projects in the future."
If more money is found for these clubs, that might go some way to silencing their criticism, but it still doesn't excuse what happened here.
The Prime Minister's speech will do little to silence his critics over the sports rorts affair or climate change, but it does reveal how he intends to tackle these vulnerabilities ahead of Parliament returning next week.
Scott Morrison knows where his weaknesses lie and wants to fix them. But he won't give any ground.
David Speers is the host of Insiders, which airs on ABC TV at 9am on Sunday or on iView.
No comments:
Post a Comment