Analysis
Updated
This time six years ago, the Abbott Government (in which Scott Morrison served as immigration minister) was deep in the Budget Lab,
cooking up an infamous and ultimately doomed scheme in which jobless
young Australians under 30 would have to live on nothing for six months
before becoming eligible for unemployment benefits.
This time last
year, we were gearing up for a federal election which Labor leader Bill
Shorten (the favourite so unbackable that Sportsbet paid out on a Labor
win several days before it didn't) designated to be a "referendum on
wages", fuelled by anger about successive cuts to penalty rates for
casual workers in hospitality and retail.I mention these two historical points to aid an understanding of how deeply extraordinary the events of Monday are.
Consider this: Under the $130 billion JobKeeper policy, a 20-something casual waiter who before COVID-19 earned $200 for a couple of shifts a week may now be paid nearly four times as much for doing no work at all.
That waiter will be paid exactly the same as a full-time shop retail worker or labourer or any other worker whose employer has suffered a significant downturn in business, and this new egalitarian model will be how things roll for the next few months.
In campaigning for the last federal election, the Greens proposed trials for a universal basic income, in which people are paid a uniform living income regardless of whether they work or not.
The Coalition barely mentioned the proposal on the campaign trail, so bonkers and beyond the pale was the idea; a fever dream of the International Labour Organisation, a kombucha-fuelled socialist delusion.
And yet, of all the policies on offer from all parties just one year ago, this is the one which most closely approximates the $130 billion package Scott Morrison announced on Monday.
Wrap your head around that for a moment.
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Restraint and support
Understandably, this is an upsetting moment for many holders of entrenched opinion.For some who've spent the past few weeks baying for a living wage, the spectacle of Scott Morrison doing more or less what they asked has left them nowhere to go but "too little, too late".
And for some who would ordinarily lose their freaking minds about poor people getting free money, it's required some … discipline.
Radio announcer Alan Jones summoned Finance Minister Mathias Cormann for an audience early this morning (poor old Senator Cormann; he joined the program from Perth where it was 4am) and prefaced his interview with a declaration that "it's important in these things that we support the Prime Minister".
What followed was a mighty display of restraint as Jones tiptoed through this provoking new landscape while trying not to say anything unsupportive.
"I'm trying to avoid being critical," he gasped, like a dowager clutching a scented hanky while tottering through plague-ridden streets, as he politely asked Cormann why everyone was being paid the same.
One can only imagine (very gingerly, and don't spend too much time doing this as it's very frightening) what would be going on right now if Bill Shorten had won that election and was the prime minister pouring hundreds of billions into a Brontosaurean public giveaway of this kind.
For reasons of self-care at this difficult and challenging time, do not under any circumstances try to imagine what would be going on right now if Malcolm Turnbull was the one announcing this stuff.
Can you believe that — today — we saw a Coalition Minister for Health essentially announcing a temporary nationalisation of the private hospital system?
Every day that passes brings a new wonder.
And one of the most impressive things to watch over these weeks of uncertainty and fear has been the extent to which Australians have been prepared to change the way they live and work — not to mention stare down risk, including unfair risk, in the case of health workers, teachers and retail workers, for example — in a way they wouldn't have dreamed of this time a year ago.
Getting private hospitals to work hand in glove with the public system?
Asking vast chunks of the schools sector to educate children remotely? Publishing newspapers from empty newsrooms? Whole companies working from home? Turning over hotels to homeless people?
All of this would have seemed impossible just weeks ago. (Please, let us never forget how childish our reflexive definitions of the term "impossible" turned out to be).
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Finding the courage to change
Truth is, it matters who does the announcing. And a government that crosses ideological lines to do something big immediately wins — even from the cynical and disengaged — some genuine credit for stepping out of Fight Club for a moment.If we look back upon some great turning points in Australian history, they were often undertaken by governments behaving in a way that didn't necessarily serve their immediate intuitive political constituencies.
Could the Accord — with its commitment from organised labour to wage restraint — have been negotiated by a Liberal government? Hard to see how.
Could the opening of the economy, with its tough outcomes for local manufacturing, have been initiated by a Liberal government?
The fact that these reforms were driven by Labor — that they would be attempted, even though they were painful — delivered at the time a powerful subterranean message that they were important beyond politicking.
The Port Arthur massacre happened six weeks after John Howard defeated Paul Keating in the 1996 election.
Can you imagine the scenes had it been Keating trying to take 650,000 guns away?
Video: Treasurer Josh Frydenberg said the JobKeeper scheme would benefit the hardest-hit sectors. (7.30)
Time and again, at key moments, we are reminded that successful
democratic decision-making always involves someone — sometimes, everyone
— stepping down a bit.
Stepping down from a trenchantly held opinion when circumstances change.
Having the courage to change a political stance in order to secure the public good.
Exposing oneself to the criticism even of those with whom one ordinarily agrees (this can be the hardest of all).
Which has — for reasons of political expediency — avoided consensus even on some occasions when it's actually existed.
The dispiriting and frenzied reversals of direction on climate policy are merely the most obvious and depressing.
Every day as the scale of this present coal-black cloud grows across the globe, it's harder to spot a silver lining, but perhaps in this country it might be this; that in a time of crisis we formed a national decision-making body roughly half of which came from each of our two major parties, and decisions were made that were well outside the orthodox political comfort zone of the people making them, and that some loud voices shut up for a minute, in recognition that the situation was bigger than their own need never to give an inch.
Stepping down from a trenchantly held opinion when circumstances change.
Having the courage to change a political stance in order to secure the public good.
Exposing oneself to the criticism even of those with whom one ordinarily agrees (this can be the hardest of all).
The dirtiest C-word
For the past decade, Australians have become wearily accustomed to a Parliament which has valued disagreement over consensus.Which has — for reasons of political expediency — avoided consensus even on some occasions when it's actually existed.
The dispiriting and frenzied reversals of direction on climate policy are merely the most obvious and depressing.
Every day as the scale of this present coal-black cloud grows across the globe, it's harder to spot a silver lining, but perhaps in this country it might be this; that in a time of crisis we formed a national decision-making body roughly half of which came from each of our two major parties, and decisions were made that were well outside the orthodox political comfort zone of the people making them, and that some loud voices shut up for a minute, in recognition that the situation was bigger than their own need never to give an inch.
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