The government does not need to import divisive leadership strategies from overseas.

Extract from The Guardian

Australian politics

Mathias Cormann’s combative comments about the Black Live Matters protests suggest the pragmatic bipartisanship of the pandemic may be over

Katharine Murphy Political editor

@murpharoo

Mon 8 Jun 2020 03.30 AEST Last modified on Mon 8 Jun 2020 03.31 AEST

‘Mathias Cormann did not have to pit well-meaning Australians against one another, to suggest that some forms of personal anguish were more legitimate than others, but he chose to do that.’ Photograph: Mike Bowers/The Guardian

Scott Morrison last week counselled Australians against importing grievances from other countries as part of his efforts to discourage people from protesting on Saturday in contravention of health advice.
In that same spirit, I’d counsel the government against importing leadership strategies from other places and projecting them here – and by that, I mean pursuing political leadership by stoking division, and pitting groups of Australians against one another.
Since the Coalition in Canberra grasped that Covid-19 was a serious crisis, one that would require every ounce of collective brain power, stamina and policy ingenuity to navigate, the Morrison government has elected to lead by bringing the country together.
The government has dialled down the tribalism, dialled up the pragmatism, and has been rewarded for doing it. In January, voters were ropable with Scott Morrison, and the prime minister has turned that negative sentiment around in under six months, not by being too clever by half, or working out how to triangulate and triumph, but by being competent, and collegiate. By rising to the occasion.

But on Sunday, the finance minister Mathias Cormann, struck a very different note. All of a sudden, the government was back in the combat business.

Now I understand why the government is frustrated that mass gatherings happened in several cities over the weekend. I monitor and heed the public health advice, and I also understand that Australia has flattened the curve of coronavirus infections successfully because our response to date has been evidence based.
I understand the government will be worried that the weekend protests could trigger a new wave of Covid-19 infections, including in vulnerable communities. That concern is entirely legitimate, and the government has every right to express it.
But I also understand that when a senior minister decides to express his displeasure at events in the way Cormann did on Sunday, that’s not a public health strategy – it’s a political choice.
Cormann did not have to pit well-meaning Australians against one another on a Sunday morning political talk show, to suggest that some forms of personal anguish were more legitimate than others, but he chose to do that.
It can’t have been an accident. Cormann, after all, is a politician who weighs his words carefully, and most of the time tries to make an art form of saying nothing at all in as many words as possible. The finance minister could have chosen displeasure, or disappointment, as his response.
But instead, he chose conflict.
Cormann chose to frame the real and sometime really terrible sacrifices many Australians have made during this crisis against the “selfish” expression of protestors raising their voices against institutional racism.

The finance minister on Sunday morning felt the heartbreak of families who haven’t been able to attend funerals for their loved ones “because they were doing the right thing by taking the health advice” and squared that off with what he characterised as the reckless self-indulgence of the people with the placards.
Cormann did not have to do that. He did not have to rile people up. He did not have to virtue signal to the Coalition’s political base on Sky News. But he made a calculation to legitimise some forms of anger in the community, and delegitimise others.
This strategy isn’t innovative. We see another political leader do this every day of the week. His name is Donald Trump. A president prepared to let his country burn, a president of divide and conquer.
Australia does not need to burn. It needs to reconcile, and heal. It needs to listen to the diversity of voices in the citizenry. It needs to pull together, to champion the values of society, because that’s how you navigate a health and economic crisis and emerge stronger at the end of it. We have arrived at the point we are currently at by looking after each other, not turning on one another.
So I have a simple bit of advice for anyone in the government thinking of following in Cormann’s slipstream.
You don’t have to do this.

Don’t do this.