Extract from ABC News
Analysis
There used to be a rather grim joke in the campaign media pack about (what used to be) inevitable visits to aged care homes, which went to the theme of the things a political leader has to do to get a captive audience.
All those old people, minding their own business, not able to move very fast, suddenly finding themselves engulfed in a media scrum for a photo opportunity. Childcare centres have also been a regular target.
If COVID changes anything about the 2022 campaign, it will be the options for daily photo opportunities in places where no politician would want to introduce infection.
Not that these constraints will necessarily affect Prime Minister Scott Morrison. The images he chooses to convey are from a completely different world.
Study all his "doorstops" and "photo opportunities" (outside dealing with Ukraine and natural disasters) so far this year, you rarely see anything to do with hospitals, schools, childcare or aged care.
It's medical technology and research, dams, tourism, infrastructure, and defence manufacturing industries. With the odd koala or environment announcement thrown in here and there.
Overwhelmingly, it's about the economy — so hard hats and high-vis vests. It makes strategic sense: the economy is what the Prime Minister wants to talk about, and wants the election to be about.
"The key decisions are around economic security and national security," Morrison told reporters on Friday.
Who could demonstrate that they can keep Australians safe, and the economy strong? he asked. And who has a plan for the future?
Sticking to the plan
Of course, there wasn't actually a lot of plan for the future in Tuesday night's budget, other than a lot of the (previously mentioned) infrastructure: dams and roads and ports.
There was no indication of how the Coalition actively planned to close the yawning gap between government spending of over 26 per cent of GDP in 2032-33 versus revenue of under 24 per cent, other than sitting back and hoping "growth" would do it for them.
It would have been hard for the PM to go to the polls this weekend given that factional brawls in NSW, in which he has played a crucial part, mean that the Liberal Party still hasn't pre-selected candidates in a number of crucial seats.
There is also the benefit to be had of using taxpayer-funded advertising to spruik your budget message the longer you wait.
The danger is that any boost you received from the budget's multiple short-term handouts fade the longer you leave the gap between budget night and polling day.
But Morrison has his "plan for the future". And he is sticking firmly to it, confident that economic management remains a trump card that will always get the Coalition home, despite everything. And that it will hopefully counter the very baked-in, and negative, perceptions of his government's competence at managing COVID and disasters.
Anthony Albanese, he said, does not have a plan. "So that's the choice."
And that brings us to the Opposition Leader. Much has been made for the past three years of the fact that the Opposition has stuck so closely to the government on policy — from national security to petrol excise cuts — and that it wants to make itself a small target.
But that was what made Albanese's budget reply on Thursday night rather interesting.
Albanese appeals to a very different audience
His big announcement was aged care. Albanese's speech was appealing to a very different political audience, and was based on a series of different issues — and for that matter, campaign photo opportunities — to those of the Prime Minister.
As a former infrastructure minister — indeed Australia's first infrastructure minister — Albanese can do hard hats with the best of them.
But the focus on aged care reflects a broader appeal to those in, and concerned with, what is known as the "care" economy: that's everything from education to aged care, childcare, the National Disability Insurance Scheme and much more.
These areas should all be great vulnerabilities for the Coalition.
The hospital and aged care systems, in particular, have been under intense strain in the pandemic, yet they received virtually no special mention in Tuesday's budget, beyond a generic reference to funding for essential services.
On Thursday night Albanese outlined a range of aged care commitments: a registered nurse on site 24/7 in residential care; increasing the requirement for direct care per resident per day to 215 minutes; requiring better food for residents; more transparency in the spending of government subsidies; and, finally, formally supporting a pay rise for aged care workers.
These commitments were all based on recommendations of the Aged Care Royal Commission.
The government seemed a bit confused on Friday about whether it was arguing it had already done these things, or wanted to question how they would be paid for.
In last year's budget, the government committed to spend $17.7 billion on aged care. But it only committed to on-site registered nurses for 16 hours a day, and for 200 minutes of direct care.
There was a swathe of new websites and panels in that spend. The biggest spend was $3.2 billion to increase the subsidy paid to aged care providers by $10 per day, per resident. The suggestion was that this would at least help improve food standards. Research released this week shows it hasn't.
Given how stretched providers are, this $10 barely touched the sides to keep many of them solvent.
Albanese's plan — wage rise aside — will cost $2.5 billion over four years, he says.
Why aged care workers are a symbol of Labor's economic argument
But the really big-ticket item is the question of wages.
The crisis in aged care has ultimately become one about an overstretched and rapidly diminishing workforce — because the workforce is so badly paid.
It's a question that is beyond the control of either side of politics because the Fair Work Commission is about to conduct a Work Value case to examine why aged care workers and nurses are paid between 25 per cent and 48 per cent less than others in similar fields.
Whoever wins government will ultimately foot the bill for what the Commission finds, via the subsidies they pay per resident. The only question will be how quickly the wage increases are passed on and how.
That's what makes aged care workers such a symbol of Labor's central economic argument, which is about the fact wages for everyone have been going backwards in real terms.
It's an argument that resonates powerfully with most groups, and is the reverse side of the cost of living.
Albanese is focusing on fixing wages for low income earners in sectors predominantly staffed by women.
They never seem to grab the attention of the Prime Minister, beyond broad statements about what heroes teachers, nurses and aged care workers have been through the pandemic.
That's despite the fact they are actually in the fastest growing areas of the economy and — you would think — one of the fastest growing groups of voters.
This election campaign and its messaging will be regularly thrown off course — as they always are — by day to day skirmishes like the character assessment of the PM by outgoing Liberal Senator Concetta Fierravanti-Wells this week.
But budget week has crystallised that there are going to be very different agendas rippling along underneath all that noise, and all the photo opportunities: the trick will be finding the captive audience to hear the message.
Laura Tingle is 7.30's chief political correspondent.
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