While he acknowledges the influence of Queensland’s bipartisan history of populist leaders, the best-known of whom was Joh Bjelke-Petersen, Blaine also suggests that John Howard has particularly influenced Dutton’s socially conservative culture-war focus on issues such as race and immigration. But while Howard used a dog whistle, he writes, Dutton uses a foghorn.

Blaine highlights the most contentious statements that Dutton has made about race and ethnicity, from his claims about African gangs terrorising Melbourne’s would-be diners to his criticism of Liberal prime minister Malcolm Fraser for letting in too many Lebanese. He also analyses Dutton’s most contentious ministerial actions in portfolios ranging from workplace participation and immigration to home affairs. Victims of Dutton’s “bad cop” toughness range from the unemployed and single mothers, who suffered from his demonisation of welfare recipients, to deportees, particularly Māori and Pacific Island New Zealanders, who encountered the sharp end of Dutton’s law and order push.

As a minister Dutton may have been an authoritarian populist, but Blaine reminds us that while he was home affairs minister his department awarded highly questionable and very expensive contracts to the companies chosen to manage offshore detention. Visa abuses involving those who came to Australia by plane — ranging from the exploitation of “modern-day indentured labourers” and “sex slaves” to the entry of “Albanian gangsters” — meanwhile went unheeded.

Dutton’s selective toughness has a clear strategic rationale. On numerous occasions he has set out his plan to win government especially by using culture war tactics to attract working-class voters in outer-suburban seats traditionally held by Labor. He claims that cost-of-living pressures and other challenges faced by workers have been neglected by a Labor government preoccupied with woke “frolics” on issues such as the Voice. He argues that crime (often associated by Dutton with racial or ethnic groups) is out of control, and often a particular threat to women. It is a strategy that draws on John Howard, Tony Abbott and Donald Trump.

Nonetheless, both Liberal and Labor critics believe that Dutton’s strategy is flawed for modern-day Australia. It might be suited to his own seat of Dickson, writes Blaine, where the vast majority of residents are Australian born, “but he has little experience speaking to electorates in Sydney and Melbourne with significant Asian and Middle Eastern diasporas.” Here, Dutton’s bad cop routine can come unstuck, as when his strongman rhetoric on national security issues alienated Chinese-Australian voters.

Nor, Blaine points out, does Australia have the equivalent of Trump’s “heartland states filled with rust belts, nor the political system that makes them disproportionately powerful.” Yet winning back affluent teal seats, whose voters are alienated by Dutton’s rhetoric, may still prove crucial if the Liberals are to win government in their own right.

Blaine is at his best analysing such issues. Nonetheless, some of his insights — particularly regarding Dutton’s strongman persona — could be developed further or in a different direction. He argues that Dutton’s “raison d’être” is to “Make Australia Afraid Again. Then he will offer himself as the lesser of two evils. A serious strongman for the age of anxiety.” Recent events — fears evoked by the Voice referendum, for example, and crime in Alice Springs, and offences committed by immigration detainees released by a High Court decision — have fed into that strategy.

Blaine argues that Dutton is attuned to key voters’ “deepest fears” not because he is “a genius or a psychic, but because he was also afraid of change.” Possibly “because he would have felt emasculated by the truth,” Dutton has never fully explained why he left the police force. Consequently he is “always displaying simplicity and strength. Because he feels so complicated and weak.” Indeed, Blaine depicts Dutton as an inherently fragile human being: “Tall and strong at first glance. But when you watch him for a long time, you can see that the man is small and scared.”

Blaine’s psychological assessment of Dutton is intriguing and possibly insightful. But additional or alternative interpretations would have been worth exploring in more depth. After all, as Blaine himself acknowledges, conservatives’ mobilisation of fear against Labor governments is far from new. Conservative ideology is inherently wary of change, so this doesn’t necessarily reflect Dutton’s own vulnerabilities.

Similarly, the Liberals have a long history of using strongman politics to try to emasculate their Labor opponents, so Dutton’s appearance of strength may not be concealing deeper insecurities about his own masculinity. As Blaine himself notes, Dutton’s comment that Albanese is “a weak and woke prime minister” evokes Howard’s description of Kim Beazley as lacking “ticker.”

The point about strongman politics is precisely that it is a performance of masculinity, and of protective masculinity in particular. Dutton is arguably not so much offering to be the “bad cop” who is the “lesser of two evils,” to use Blaine’s words, as offering to be a strong “good cop” who defends those he perceives as upstanding citizens from the dangers he argues weak Labor politicians are exposing them to. He is offering to be a traditional masculine protector who will keep his favoured voters safe from “woke” identity politics, from the elites, from criminals, from China, from reduced living standards and even from the undermining of gender binaries. He’ll only be the “bad cop” to those his would-be supporters resent and fear.

Dutton’s potential appeal is therefore also broader than Bad Cop credits. Blaine writes, for example, that Dutton is a “practitioner of right-wing identity politics” who highlights difference and has spent his career “persuading Australians to prioritise cultural belonging above egalitarianism.” Dutton does indeed have a narrow view of Australian cultural identity that marginalises some Australians and privileges others. Despite attempts to construct him as a “big gentle giant” who genuinely cares about people, his expressions of empathy are highly selective. Nonetheless, it is a bit more complicated than Blaine suggests.

For example, Dutton’s arguments against the Voice actually constructed him as a champion of egalitarianism, but one who argued that equality means treating all Australians the same regardless of their needs or circumstances. It is a longstanding argument by social conservatives. Dutton highlights difference when it serves his purpose but also denies its salience, arguing that he is defending the vast bulk of Australians from the “divisive” identity politics of the elites. Indeed, this argument lies at the heart of his populism. Dutton’s close association with Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, meanwhile, a National Party senator with a similar conception of equality, helps to defuse accusations of racial bias.

Dutton’s styling of himself as a strong male economic provider who will protect voters from rising living costs is a common political strategy that draws on the traditional role of the male head of household as protector and provider. It too channels Howard, Abbott and Trump. Trump’s campaign in particular has long targeted working-class males.

This is a gender politics that Labor needs to take seriously. Labor won office partly on the argument that the Liberals had a woman problem, as indeed they do. But Dutton wants Labor to have a men problem.

Albanese needs to tread cautiously. His emphasising of the fact that Dutton’s team “is dominated by blokes” and “they keep having preselections and putting up more blokes” will play well with many female voters and socially progressive men. But it could be phrased more strategically. Albanese needs to be careful that he isn’t depicted as being “anti-bloke” as well as woke, especially with the Coalition mobilising old climate wars rhetoric to suggest that real men don’t drive electric vehicles but do embrace nuclear power.

Despite Dutton’s claims, the Labor government has been making serious efforts to tackle wage stagnation, precarious employment and other working-class issues, often encountering business and Liberal opposition in the process. Many of the social equity reforms the government has pursued, including improving the pay of under-valued female-dominated jobs and lowering childcare expenses, have also had benefits for workers and have reduced living costs. Nonetheless, the government is vulnerable to Dutton’s charges of working-class neglect given that inflation and high interest rates continue to undermine many of its best efforts.

As well as successfully tackling living costs, Albanese will need to win the argument that his form of caring, socially inclusive masculine leadership is not a sign of weakness but is better for Australians in general than Peter Dutton’s alternative. After all, gender politics isn’t an aside in Dutton’s politics, it is central. Democrats successfully targeted Trump’s masculinity during the 2020 presidential election campaign by arguing for the benefits of a different kind of protective male leadership — although their task was made easier then by the politics of the pandemic and is made harder now by Biden’s frailty.

We wait to see how successful Labor will be in countering Dutton’s strongman politics, as well as his attempts to encroach on Labor’s heartland. •

Bad Cop: Peter Dutton’s Strongman Politics
By Lech Blaine | Quarterly Essay | $27.99 | 172 pages

The post Good cop, bad cop appeared first on Inside Story.

Nonetheless, Morrison is hoping the setback will only be temporary and he can soon return to his promise to protect Australians from big government while letting rip “can-do capitalism.” He is courting voters who opposed major public health restrictions during the pandemic by arguing that it is time for government to step out of the way.

Despite a post-Covid spin, that rhetoric isn’t really new. Morrison went to the last election making a populist promise to protect ordinary Australians from a big, intrusive, high-taxing Labor government. His current arguments are largely a post-Covid variation on that old neoliberal, pro-market theme — though, given his criticism of official intrusion, it is ironic that his government has long exhibited an authoritarian tinge, especially when it comes to groups and perspectives it disagrees with.

Those Australians who hoped the Coalition might have learned from the economic stimulus measures it introduced during the pandemic will be sadly disappointed, particularly when it comes to the economic and social benefits that flowed from increasing unemployment benefits. The government even briefly offered free childcare. It was all a long way from the severely restricted role the prime minister sees government playing in helping rebuild the Australian economy after the pandemic, never mind tackling major issues such as climate change.

But the Coalition isn’t alone in turning to the past. Labor has been casting around for previous economic models too. Early in the pandemic Labor shadow treasurer Jim Chalmers evoked the Curtin and Chifley government’s Keynesian postwar reconstruction plans of the early 1940s: a model that sees a greater role for the state in a mixed economy than does Morrison’s can-do capitalism.

More recently, Chalmers has also been evoking British Labour’s Tony Blair by seeking to brand Labor as the “party of aspiration.” Such a flirtation isn’t new, as Labor leaders Simon Crean and Mark Latham demonstrated twenty years ago. But Chalmers should be cautious, given that those previous evocations of Blair didn’t end well for the Australian party.

Nonetheless, following an inspiring video call with Blair, and building on his own arguments, Chalmers has highlighted the role that technology can play in improving the economic wellbeing of citizens. Two decades ago, the Blair government optimistically promised that Britain would once again be a world-leading economy via its technological prowess in the information revolution. Paul Keating had embraced the opportunities of the new information economy years before Blair. New technologies can indeed bring great benefits, but they also risk deepening inequality — a risk that Chalmers, like earlier Labor figures including Keating, may well have underestimated.

It’s back to the future in other ways, too. Chalmers’s electoral focus on the suburbs has echoes of Mark Latham’s period as a Labor politician, when he published a book called From the Suburbs. Like Chalmers, former Labor leader Kim Beazley also pledged to respond to the issues that middle Australians are discussing around their kitchen tables.

With its cautious, small-target strategy, Labor appears to have backed away from Shorten-era hints that it might address some of the industrial relations policy failures of previous Labor governments, including Keating-era enterprise bargaining policies and the Rudd–Gillard government’s outlawing of pattern bargaining on an industry-wide basis. While Labor has been loath to acknowledge the problem explicitly, its own policies actually contributed to the wage stagnation that Labor now pledges to tackle.

So the industrial relations challenge for Labor is not just to deal with Coalition policies but also to tackle its own past. While it has kept the Shorten-era promise to tackle precarious work — an issue that the pandemic has brought into even greater prominence — in other respects it often seems to be returning to an earlier model. In its attempts to repair the damage that Shorten’s attacks on the big end of town inflicted on the party’s relations with business, it has ended up placing less emphasis on issues of economic equality.

For his part, Morrison is threatening to make waterfront industrial relations a major issue, echoing the Howard government’s targeting of the Maritime Union of Australia more than twenty years ago. The government has also been returning to past Coalition election strategies in its suggestions that Labor is soft on China.

Culture-war issues are also being raised, most recently with the introduction of the government’s religious freedom bill. While this legislation is close to Morrison’s heart, he also sees it as an opportunity to wedge Labor. He has incorrectly implied that the lack of protection against religious discrimination — alongside laws against sexual or racial discrimination — represents a failure of the left. But it was conservative Christians who campaigned for years against laws to protect religious freedom, including when the previous Labor government considered introducing such protections. Those Christians were concerned about these protections extending to non-Christian religions and the possible implications for Christian religious instruction and state aid to church schools. The problem for the left lies not in protecting people of faith against religious discrimination but in dealing with arguments that “religious freedom” should enable believers to discriminate against others.

True, predicting the political future is even harder than usual. Time and time again the virus has refused to cooperate with politicians’ best-laid plans. But those who hoped that the post-Covid world would see a radically “better normal” seem destined to be disappointed. In the lead-up to the next election, both Labor and Liberal have so far reverted unimaginatively to previous policy perspectives. Despite the pandemic, much of the next election seems likely to be fought on familiar ideological ground. •

The post Back to the old normal appeared first on Inside Story.

It was not to be. The creation of the AUKUS alliance shows we have been lured back into our old Anglosphere fold, prioritising relations with Britain and the United States.

Electoral considerations undoubtedly played a role. Having failed to protect us from Covid-19, Morrison is now banking on pledging to protect us from China. The Coalition has a long tradition of using fear of China to try to wedge Labor. Indeed, the 2019 election campaign showed signs that it was gearing up for an assault on Labor as too soft on China. As a result, the opposition has been treading very carefully in response to AUKUS, acknowledging legitimate fears about China while questioning aspects of the government’s approach.

The military and trade implications of the AUKUS alliance have been widely canvassed. Australians are rightly concerned about an increasingly authoritarian, assertive and aggressive China. But after the experience of Iraq and Afghanistan, not to mention Vietnam decades earlier, many Australians are also cautious about being too closely aligned with American military strategy. Polling suggests that most Australians want our country’s complex relationship with China to be managed carefully.

The trade implications don’t stop with our worsening relationship with China. They also involve France. Under the Turnbull government, France was to be not just a key defence ally but also a key friend in facilitating relations with the European Union now that a post-Brexit Britain could no longer play that role for us.

Nor should we forget the cultural and intellectual implications of this shift. Australia’s projected role as an intersection society involved a different conception of our national identity. The hope was that we could forge a more independent, multicultural and cosmopolitan identity while still valuing our links with Britain and the United States. It was a vision that seemed to be developing an element of bipartisan support, at least during Malcolm Turnbull’s moderate Liberal prime ministership.

But Scott Morrison (ably assisted by Peter Dutton) is increasingly sounding like John Howard–lite when it comes to issues of cultural and national identity. Howard repeatedly emphasised Australia’s Anglo-Celtic identity and its closeness to Britain and the United States, thereby distancing the Coalition from Labor’s more cosmopolitan and multicultural view under Paul Keating.

It’s true that the government’s defence policy has also embraced the Quad of India, Japan, Australia and the United States. But Morrison’s comments regarding India often depict it as an extension of the Anglosphere with common values, including a commitment to democracy and religious freedom. It’s a view that seems particularly inappropriate given prime minister Narendra Modi’s increasingly authoritarian, Hindu-nationalist India, and has echoes of John Howard’s somewhat banal highlighting of the two countries’ shared love of cricket and experience of British influence. Kevin Rudd, by contrast, had a much more nuanced understanding of India’s postcolonial history.

A shift towards the Anglosphere also has implications for our cultural institutions and academia, and not just because of the increasing scrutiny of university research on security grounds. Many academics hoped that Australia could become an intellectual intersection society — that our universities would draw on all that is best of the knowledge produced in European and North American universities and all that is best from the great universities of Asia. We argued that this would position us well in the changing geopolitics of knowledge that characterised the Asian Century and would position us differently from the European and North American universities with which we compete for international students.

Such a vision would have built on and transformed the initiatives of past governments, Labor as well as Coalition. After all, it was a Liberal foreign minister, Julie Bishop, who oversaw the development of the brilliant New Colombo Plan, whereby Australian students would be encouraged to study in Asia. Such intellectual exchanges seem far from the Morrison government’s priorities. Indeed, the Coalition has been accused of carrying out a culture war against universities, starving them of funding at a time when the pandemic’s impact on international student enrolments is wreaking havoc on their budgets.

For all these reasons, AUKUS signals more than a defence decision about submarines and sharing other technology. It also potentially signals a cultural shift that has major implications for Australia and its role in the world. We have to hope that Paul Keating is wrong when he claims that AUKUS marks the moment when “Australia turns its back on the twenty-first century, the century of Asia, for the jaded and faded Anglosphere.” Because that would not be a good move at all. •

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During the 2019 campaign, the Coalition successfully branded Labor’s franked dividend proposals a “retiree tax” and its negative gearing and capital gains tax proposals a “housing tax.” Labor was even accused of supporting a “death tax.” Leader Bill Shorten’s big-spending plans were badged as “the Bill Australia can’t afford,” and the party was also accused of betraying blue-collar workers in regional mining communities by supporting a Greens agenda.

As a result, Labor has abandoned its negative gearing and capital gains tax policies, having disavowed its franked dividend plan earlier this year. Now it has announced its support for Coalition tax cuts that will benefit higher-income earners, including men over women, and Albanese has assured coalminers of Labor’s support for their jobs and employment rights.

Of course, abandoning taxes and supporting tax cuts means losing the revenue that helps fund government programs. Albanese has tried to neutralise domestic opposition by arguing that additional revenue will be generated by “making sure” multinationals pay their share of tax, though the practicalities of doing that haven’t been made clear.

These reversals have led to disquiet within the party. But Albanese’s rationale, in Michelle Grattan’s words, is that “whatever policies Labor has, they are useless unless it can win power.” Grattan cites Gough Whitlam’s pragmatic argument against the Victorian Labor left of his day: “the impotent are pure,” he declared, but only electable parties can implement policies. It may be no coincidence that Albanese tweeted “We miss you” on the recent 105th anniversary of Whitlam’s birth.

Whitlam was no stranger to fear campaigns. During their long years in opposition, he and his colleagues fell victim to Coalition-fuelled fear campaigns, including the fear of socialism and communism that had been used to defeat the Labor government of Ben Chifley in 1949.

Whitlam also wrote about how the fear of China played a major role in Australian politics. Fifty years on, during the 2019 election, the Coalition charged Labor with being soft on China. Albanese has acted to neutralise such accusations by endorsing US foreign policy approaches under Joe Biden and critiquing China on human rights and the South China Sea, while also arguing for improved Australia–China relations.

Whitlam argued that the role of government should be “to reduce fear, not raise it,” signalling that his party, if elected, would deal with the fear of unemployment, the fear of poverty in old age, the fear of being unable to afford necessary health treatment, and the fear of educational disadvantage for one’s children. In other words, Whitlam pledged, like most social democratic leaders, to make citizens feel secure and protected.

Albanese has been doing his best to hose down potential fear campaigns against Labor. But has he done enough to encourage those positive emotions, to make voters feel that a Labor government will look after them?

Labor has certainly exploited Scott Morrison’s “protective masculinity” fail on Covid by suggesting it would do a better job of managing the pandemic and keeping Australians safe. Labor’s message that Morrison has failed in his two main tasks — quarantine and the vaccine rollout — appears to be cutting through and is reflected in the polls, where it is currently ahead 53–47 on a two-party-preferred basis.

Labor hopes that the blokey image of “Albo” will help to counter the equally blokey one of “ScoMo,” including among male blue-collar voters. It has made a major effort to humanise “Albo” by reminding us how he was raised by a single mother in council housing and arguing that his background drives his commitment to social justice for ordinary Australians.

Albanese pledges to tackle traditional social democratic issues such as infrastructure and education, and ensuring better-paid and more secure employment. He emphasises that “Labor will always fight to protect your job and your rights at work.” Partly to counter business-funded fear campaigns, though, he has also pledged to consult with industry to create the conditions for full and secure employment. As I argued earlier this year, that cooperation may turn out to be more difficult than Albanese suggests, given that Labor wishes to increase wages and improve working conditions.

Despite his efforts, Albanese’s latest Newspoll satisfaction rating was five points lower than in March, and he still trails Morrison as better prime minister 36–49. Australians may be hearing Labor’s critique of the Morrison government’s pandemic performance, but are the positive messages about Anthony Albanese, and what he represents, cutting through?

Neutralising Coalition fear campaigns against Labor is not sufficient. If Labor wants to increase its chances of winning the next election, it needs to make voters feel that it is Labor, rather than the Coalition, that will protect them and create a better future. As Whitlam was aware, that means government action to reduce everyday fears regarding incomes, jobs, health, welfare and equal opportunities. Anthony Albanese needs to be seen as the leader who can deliver that; otherwise, Labor may face yet another “miracle” win by the Coalition. •

The post Whitlam’s message to Labor appeared first on Inside Story.

In response, the prime minister seems to have been casting around for alternative images. He began by drawing on his past portfolios, giving us flashes of his time as immigration minister by sidestepping questions about the government’s management of the pandemic, just as he once avoided discussing “on-water matters.” His tough persona as social services minister and then as treasurer was on display when he refused to reinstate JobKeeper, which tied employees to employers, and instead treated workers affected by the latest lockdowns more like welfare recipients. Existing welfare recipients who supplement their meagre incomes by working were meanwhile declared ineligible for the new Covid disaster payments.

He also tried channelling John Howard’s refusal to say “sorry” to the stolen generations when he refused for weeks to apologise for the vaccine debacle. Eventually “contrite ScoMo” appeared, but his grudging apology sounded more like John Howard’s expression of “regret” than a whole-hearted apology. Overall, he has come across as churlish, bad-tempered and off his game.

A major health crisis, with its serious implications for lives and livelihoods, can’t be spun away. What the prime minister actually achieves in the next few months will be far more important for Australians than how he appears.

Nonetheless, image does matter in politics: after all, it was one of several factors that helped Morrison win the 2019 election. Labor’s election campaign had originally targeted Malcolm Turnbull as prime minister, depicting the Coalition government as elitist, out of touch and in thrall to the “big end of town.” Astonishingly, Labor didn’t recalibrate its campaign after Morrison took over as leader. His cultivated image as a likeable daggy dad from the suburbs who enjoys a beer and loves his footy team brilliantly undercut Labor’s election narrative, albeit assisted by the public’s distrust of Bill Shorten and Clive Palmer’s multimillion-dollar “Shifty” Shorten campaign.

As I suggested in a previous Inside Story piece, Morrison’s daggy dad image drew on the traditional conception of the male head of household as protector and provider. Last year, he seemed to be protecting us from Covid-19 as most of the world succumbed, though there was evidence even then that the government’s pandemic strategies were seriously flawed well before the rise of the Delta variant. This year, the government’s poor record on quarantine measures and its delayed vaccine rollout have hit the poll ratings of both Morrison and the Coalition. And the “gold standard” measures of the PM’s favourite premier haven’t saved New South Wales from a major outbreak that has put the rest of the country at risk.

Labor’s badging of Morrison as having failed in his two jobs of quarantine and the vaccine rollout is thus cutting through. Even a NSW government minister was reported as saying that “the main job of the prime minister is to protect the community. And clearly he failed.”

Nor is the pandemic the only issue where the daggy dad image is no longer working. Morrison tried to deal with his women problem by emphasising his role as the father of young daughters for whom he wished the best. It backfired, and his failure to win over women was reflected in the polls. As the ABC’s Ms Represented and statements by politicians at a recent ANU workshop illustrate, complaints of sexism in politics aren’t going away.

On top of all that, repeated revelations about the misuse of taxpayer funds to bolster the Coalition’s election chances are making Morrison the one who looks “shifty.”

Morrison planned to go to the next election as the prime minister who had protected Australia from Covid while keeping the economy strong. He may still be hoping that Australians will have forgotten the debacles of 2021 by the time he calls an election.

But there is a more plausible scenario. Australians may watch people in other, better-vaccinated countries living relatively normal lives and opening up to the world. They will remember setbacks in vaccinating aged and disability care staff and clients. If they’re over sixty they will remember three-month delays in getting fully vaccinated with AstraZeneca (or having their second shots brought forward prematurely, leaving them less protected). They may know people in their forties who were fully vaccinated with Pfizer long before vulnerable older Australians. If they’re younger, they may remember the long delays in access to any vaccine at all. And if they’re businesspeople or employees, they won’t easily forget the damage wreaked on their businesses and livelihoods.

If Morrison wants to reinvent himself as Australia’s protector rather than a somewhat surly failure, he has a lot of work to do. And his greatest enemy isn’t the Labor Party, despite its resurgence in the polls, but a virus that he seems to have repeatedly underestimated during 2021. To tweak both US campaign advice and Morrison’s own words, “It’s the virus, stupid!” •

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Nor did last year’s budget fix the gender problems created by the government’s Covid-19 stimulus policies: the JobKeeper guidelines that excluded many women in low-paid casual work, for instance, and the emergency access to superannuation that substantially reduced or wiped out some women’s superannuation accounts. While the government claimed that  women’s employment  was recovering more quickly than men’s, in fact women’s jobs and work hours had been hit particularly hard by the Covid recession.

The government reacted angrily to feminist critiques of its budget strategy. In one case, the prime minister’s department reportedly contacted a high-profile critic to argue that there was nothing gendered in the budget.

What a difference a year makes! With Brittany Higgins’s revelations, the allegations against Christian Porter, a series of prime ministerial missteps and widespread reports of sexism in Coalition ranks, polls have shown the government’s support among women dropping significantly. In response, Scott Morrison announced ministerial changes designed to bring “a fresh lens, in particular to achieving the outcomes, the results that we all want for Australian women across the country.” This year’s budget needed to tackle women’s issues explicitly.

Overall, the government pledged around $3.4 billion for women’s economic security, safety and health. The aged care royal commission’s call for an increase in the aged care workforce gave the government the opportunity to increase employment and training in a female-dominated industry, although it still doesn’t seem to fully recognise the economic benefits of funding more jobs in care services. The budget still favours some male-dominated industries that yield relatively few new jobs.

Extra funding for social housing was a step too far for a Coalition government, despite high levels of homelessness among older women. Instead, the government is going to make it easier for single parents, predominantly women, to take out mortgages, a policy consistent with the Liberals’ emphasis on property ownership. While that move will benefit some women, it risks encouraging those who are less well-off to take out mortgages, with as little as a 2 per cent deposit, that they may eventually be unable to pay. And with just 10,000 places  spread out over four years, the scheme has been criticised for its limited scope.

Increased funding for childcare is always welcome, even though it can be argued that the budget allocation is still insufficient. The budget also funds training programs to encourage women into non-traditional trades but will cover only 5000 places, as well as financing STEM scholarships for women. The government’s policies to support “sovereign” manufacturing could have put more emphasis on supporting those businesses that pursue gender-equity measures.

In keeping with its theme of security in uncertain times, the budget increases funding to counter domestic violence, a welcome outcome at any time but particularly now, with the pandemic having brought an increase in family violence.

Measures to prevent domestic violence can be ideologically acceptable to conservative governments because they don’t involve economic redistribution and are compatible with the view that it is men’s traditional role to protect women. But the government has gone a little further by suggesting it may reconsider the Coalition’s  preference for unpaid rather than paid domestic violence leave. It hasn’t committed to recommending paid leave to the pending Fair Work Commission review of the issue, however, let alone pre-emptively legislating for it.

Other Coalition positions seem unlikely to be reviewed. Although the Women’s Budget Statement mentions that women’s work is frequently undervalued, the government seems not to have taken a fresh look at the Abbott government’s decision to oppose Labor-inspired pay-equity measures that could have facilitated a revaluation of women’s work. Nor does it appear to have repented of its undermining of Labor legislation designed to strengthen equal-pay reporting requirements in the private sector.

Women who are lucky enough to return to work will often find themselves back in the same low-paid, often precarious jobs they had before the pandemic. While the government claims its industrial relations legislation will reduce the precariousness of women’s work, the ACTU has argued that the legislation will actually increase it.

This raises the question of how fundamental the government’s change of heart, and more importantly mind, really is. When it comes to gender and economic policy, Coalition governments have long operated on the assumption that the market is gender-neutral. All too often, Coalition governments seem to believe that simply making the business case that gender equity will benefit the bottom line will be sufficient to convince private enterprise to stop discriminating against women.

The government’s rejection of “identity politics” stops it from recognising the existence of socially disadvantaged groups. It also stops it from acknowledging those constructions of masculinity and femininity that may disadvantage women, including by undervaluing their work.

Nonetheless — as Annabel Crabb, among others, has pointed out — this budget is a major improvement on last year’s. Funding has been increased not only in the spheres I’ve already mentioned but also in women’s health and other areas. More women will be eligible for superannuation. A detailed Women’s Budget Statement has returned, even though it doesn’t provide the full gender analysis of the government’s budget settings that it used to offer.

But while the government is getting better at providing financial incentives to improve women’s position, it is still loath to use more regulatory, interventionist and redistributive measures to tackle structural gender inequality in the labour market. And while the Women’s Budget Statement talks vaguely about the need to change the culture, and the budget funds worthwhile measures against domestic violence and sexual harassment, the government is still unwilling to acknowledge a major cultural problem, namely that more traditional forms of gendered identity politics reinforce women’s disadvantaged position in Australian society. Consequently, the gender lens brought to the budget is welcome but still not wide enough. •

The post The budget’s still-narrow gender lens appeared first on Inside Story.

That damage was made more likely by last Thursday’s announcement that the rollout of the AstraZeneca vaccine would largely be restricted to people over fifty because of the risk of a (very) rare blood-clot condition. Major delays to the vaccine program seem inevitable now that the government is more reliant on Pfizer’s overseas-produced vaccine (and possibly the Novavax vaccine, if it is approved) for the under-fifties, rather than the locally produced AstraZeneca. Tellingly, Morrison has abandoned the target date for vaccinating all Australians, which may now extend well into next year.

The damage to Morrison’s standing may be even more serious, as the AstraZeneca debacle raises broader issues about the federal government’s management of the pandemic.

Most Australians (other than those still stuck overseas) will be incredibly grateful that the federal government closed Australia’s borders to non-residents at a time when the World Health Organization was arguing against such an action. Most will also be grateful that the federal government funded JobKeeper and increased payments for JobSeeker (even if JobKeeper has now ended and JobSeeker has been reduced).

Those measures played an essential role in protecting Australians’ health and livelihoods. Decisions by state premiers were crucial, too, not least when they shut their borders after Morrison had urged them otherwise. Australians were left in a much better position than residents of most other countries.

Nonetheless, a number of questions hang over the federal government’s handling of the pandemic.

One relates to the adequacy of stocks of personal protective equipment, or PPE, in the national medical stockpile prior to the pandemic. We now know that those supplies — particularly of the N95 respirator masks that provide greater protection from airborne transmission — were insufficient. This was despite the fact that N95 masks (and eye protection) had played a vital protective role in previous outbreaks, notably with SARS in 2003.

I can testify that Australian travellers to SARS-affected locations overseas at the time were advised to wear N95 masks, although they soon proved hard to obtain, even in countries that were not directly affected by the virus. The Korean MERS outbreak in 2015 provided further evidence that coronaviruses could be airborne. Given that experience, the national medical stockpile should have held a plentiful supply of N95 respirator masks and indeed of any other PPE required.

The federal government deserves praise for following the advice of medical experts from the beginning of the pandemic. But the N95 mask shortage raises the question of whether it was getting advice from a wide enough range of experts, including epidemiologists, ventilation experts and occupational health and safety specialists, regarding whether Covid-19 could be spread by airborne transmission.

After all, Chinese officials had stated as early as February 2020 that the coronavirus could be spread by air. Australian medical experts had become increasingly concerned about the possibility, and about the implications for adequate PPE and infection control. Yet images of staff dealing with potential and actual Covid-19 cases in aged care, hospitals and quarantine hotels while wearing ordinary surgical, rather than the more protective N95, masks were common through too much of last year.

Arguably the spread of Covid-19 in aged care, hospitals and quarantine hotels would have been greatly lessened if the federal government had recognised the possibility of airborne transmission earlier and issued recommendations regarding ventilation, PPE and regular testing of staff accordingly. Aged care and quarantine are a federal government responsibility, and fewer infections, deaths and lockdowns might have resulted. The problems with infection spread were clearly not confined to the actions of poorly trained and precariously employed private security guards. It’s true that the World Health Organization was also slow to recognise the possibility of airborne transmission, but the Morrison government had ignored them on border closures, so why not on this?

Australia would also have been in a stronger position if the government had made more efforts prior to the pandemic to ensure adequate domestic production of both surgical and N95 masks rather than rely on international supply chains, particularly from China. Indeed, a recent Productivity Commission report has identified numerous potential weaknesses in Australian supply chains for essential goods.

The problem with the AstraZeneca vaccine raises issues about why the government didn’t secure deals much earlier with a larger number of potential suppliers, including Moderna, whose vaccine is being successfully rolled out overseas. With countries inevitably competing for limited doses, just as they had for PPE, supply issues were entirely predictable.

Domestic production questions arise here too. The government was right to help fund local AstraZeneca production by CSL (albeit reportedly initiated by CSL after AstraZeneca approached them). But Australia is unable to produce cutting-edge mRNA vaccines such as Pfizer and Moderna, despite experts having urged the government to invest in capacity.

This means that many older Australians who are most vulnerable to Covid-19 are likely to be vaccinated with the AstraZeneca vaccine, with the exception of those aged care residents who were lucky enough to get a Pfizer dose in the 1a rollout. This vulnerable cohort includes many frail elderly people living in retirement villages or in their own homes who weren’t eligible under 1a, as well as other over-seventies who have recently become eligible under section 1b of the rollout.

The fifty-to-seventy age group is also at increased risk of Covid-19’s worst effects, with members of the Indigenous community aged fifty and over at particular risk. Yet the AstraZeneca vaccine may provide significantly less protection against the South African variant of Covid-19 than the Pfizer vaccine that will be given to the less vulnerable under-fifty group, although even Pfizer is not quite as effective against the South African variant as it is against some other strains. Novavax, the third (but yet-to-be-approved) vaccine on order, which may be given to the under-fifties, has claimed efficacy against the South African variant. The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines may well provide more protection generally against the virus.

The government has assured us that currently eligible under-fifties will still be able to choose the AstraZeneca vaccine if they wish, rather than waiting for sufficient Pfizer (or possibly Novavax) doses to arrive. But the vulnerable Australians over seventy, and Indigenous Australians over fifty-five, who are now eligible for the 1b rollout, can’t currently opt for a dose of the Pfizer vaccine, despite it potentially offering more protection. It isn’t clear when, if at all, possible booster shots against Covid variants will be available.

The Morrison government managed to survive deficiencies in its pandemic management last year because Australia has been so successful in suppressing Covid-19. Whether it can survive falling behind in vaccinating the population, with all the economic and health consequences, remains to be seen. At the very least, the government risks alienating two crucial elements of its support base, elderly Australians and business. But many other Australians will be affected too, especially if there is a major Covid-19 outbreak before a successful national vaccination program concludes. •

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A successful performance of masculinity has always been an important part of the image of Australia’s male prime ministers. They have often made their appeal to voters by drawing on traditional gender roles in which male heads of households are protectors of their families as well as economic providers. These traditional attributes are then transferred to the nation at large, with male prime ministers arguing they will shield their nation from harm and ensure economic security. Labor and Liberal leaders may differ in how they propose to do these things, but protective masculinity has been common to both. On this measure, Scott Morrison’s image has taken a major hit in recent weeks.

Many feminists were irritated when Morrison revealed that his views on the Brittany Higgins case had shifted when his wife, Jenny Morrison, told him, “You have to think about this as a father first. What would you want to happen if it were our girls?” What about men who don’t have wives and female children, one female journalist asked him: “Shouldn’t you have thought about it as a human being?”

But many women and men with conservative views would also have been irritated that Morrison’s wife needed to remind him of the traditional male role of protecting women. Even the Australian’s conservative columnist Janet Albrechtsen, argued that Morrison’s “woeful” performance in the Brittany Higgins case means that he “faces an uphill battle to convince Australian women that he is the man to make Canberra a safer place for them.”

Morrison has decried violence and harassment against women, and has announced several inquiries into Brittany Higgins’s case and its implications. Morrison was clearly “shocked” and “disgusted” by the latest revelations of bad behaviour by staffers. He tried to introduce a more empathetic and conciliatory tone in his press conference yesterday, but went off-script to make an inaccurate allegation about a sexual harassment case at NewsCorp. He indicated that he was open to considering quotas for female Liberal MPs as one way of changing the parliamentary culture, while emphasising that the poor treatment of women was a societal problem and attempting to implicate other parties.

All too often the government has misread the criticism of its handling of the recent allegations as a Canberra-bubble, anti-male, culture-wars issue. This fits with Morrison’s previously expressed view that women’s rights should not be raised in a divisive way that disadvantages men. According to the Australian’s Paul Kelly, the government believes that the parents among Morrison’s “quiet Australians” will sympathise with his handling of the allegations against Christian Porter because they have “both sons and daughters,” and the former may need protecting from such allegations.

Most Australians would indeed want the attorney-general to be treated fairly when he contests the allegations against him. Nonetheless, many on both sides of politics may feel the prime minister hasn’t done enough to listen to, or protect, women, particularly in the context of the Brittany Higgins allegations and the outpouring of complaints about Parliament House’s toxic culture by women on all sides of politics. Yesterday’s press conference may well be dismissed as too little, too late, and still indicative of an inadequate understanding of what women face, including within his own government.

Morrison’s failure to talk to the protesters massed outside parliament may also have alienated both progressives and conservatives. After all, “real men” face protesters — as John Howard did when he courageously fronted up at a rally opposing his protective gun control laws in the wake of the Port Arthur massacre. Howard’s only regret was that he was talked into wearing an obvious bulletproof vest because death threats had been made against him. By contrast, Morrison made the tone-deaf comment that it was a great testament to Australian democracy that women could protest without being shot (as was happening to protesters in Myanmar). That extraordinarily inept remark once again brought his protective masculinity into question.

Morrison doesn’t hesitate to support conventional forms of masculinity and femininity when it comes to classrooms and toilet doors, but he doesn’t appear to have thought through the implications for his own image. The daggy-dad-from-the-suburbs persona served him well against Bill Shorten in the 2019 election campaign but comes with other gendered obligations he has been less able to live up to.

This is not the first time Scott Morrison has had a serious fail in this respect. His first occurred over the Sydney bushfires, when he was off holidaying in Hawaii while some other daggy dads were evacuating their families and trying to protect their homes. As the volunteer firefighter Paul Parker, who yelled expletive-laden abuse at the prime minister from his fire truck, said later, “a real man would not have left his country when it was in turmoil,” adding that “Bob Hawke wouldn’t have left… and John Howard wouldn’t have left, either.”

Morrison recovered by being seen to play a major role in keeping the country safe from Covid-19 (even if the premiers did a lot of the practical heavy lifting). His government’s massive economic stimulus package also helped protect many employees and businesses from economic disaster.

But new challenges lie ahead for Morrison in relation to protective masculinity, and not just in the minefield of “women’s” issues. Part of the reason Joe Biden won the US election was that he convinced enough voters that he would be much better at protecting them from Covid-19 than Donald Trump had been. British prime minister Boris Johnson has partly recovered from his government’s shambolic handling of the pandemic by ensuring an amazingly speedy vaccine rollout.

Morrison has so far survived potential disasters in federally regulated areas such as aged care and quarantine. But he may still face difficulties if the Australian vaccine rollout continues to encounter major problems and delays. ScoMo can’t afford to be renamed SloMo or lampooned over JabSeeker deficiencies. The slow rollout could also delay rebuilding the economy, yet the government is ending JobKeeper and further reducing JobSeeker payments from next Thursday. His image as a protector from Covid-19 and economic insecurity is potentially under threat.

In other words, Scott Morrison doesn’t just need to address his woman problem, he also needs to deal with his protective masculinity problem. •

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Morrison is sometimes depicted as a more transactional, flexible and opportunistic leader, reflecting his background in marketing, whereas Howard was generally seen as remarkably consistent in his views. Yet many of Morrison’s and Howard’s positions are surprisingly similar. As immigration minister, Morrison built on Howard’s resistance to asylum seekers arriving by boat. Howard had his “mainstream” Australians (often code for Anglo-Celts in traditional gender relationships); Morrison has his “quiet Australians,” the people who are not “shouty voices on the fringes telling us what we’re supposed to be angry and outraged about” but get on with working hard to support their families. Both Howard and Morrison attempted to appeal to a wide range of Australians, including traditional Labor voters.

The pair also share socially conservative beliefs. They both opposed marriage equality, with Morrison being one of the few parliamentarians who absented themselves from parliament when the legislation was passed following the postal vote survey. Howard’s Methodist background may seem more conventional than Morrison’s Pentecostal one, but both have been influenced by American conservative religious values rather than forms of Christianity that place more emphasis on “social justice” concerns.

But Morrison’s religious views often reflect more recent debates than those prevalent during the Howard era. Morrison has railed against “gender whisperers” seeking to raise transgender issues in schools. He has denounced gender-inclusive notices on toilet doors in the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet as “ridiculous” “political correctness.” The Morrison government might have been more supportive of facilitating equality for women than the Howard government but, like Howard, Morrison dismisses feminist critiques of government economic policy as divisive.

Morrison’s attitudes also reflect the apparent influence of the “prosperity gospel,” an American version of Christianity that sees wealth as a God-given reward and poverty as a penalty for the less deserving. Under Morrison, Howard’s mutual obligation requirements for unemployment benefit recipients have been reinforced by a “fair go for those who have a go” mantra. Morrison’s relatively early winding back of more generous Covid-19 related JobKeeper and JobSeeker benefits, along with the small size of the permanent increase to JobSeeker and its strict job search requirements, suggests that he retains his previous views.

Morrison’s attitude to welfare payments gel with his general economic views. Prior to the pandemic, his economic policy reflected a neoliberal, free market approach that was similar to John Howard’s. Both men see tax cuts for business as a way of stimulating economic growth, although Morrison advocates even greater challenges to Australia’s progressive income tax system (which requires those on higher incomes to pay a higher percentage of tax).

Nonetheless, there are significant differences between Morrison and Howard’s views as prime ministers, as well as between the challenges they face.

Clearly Covid-19 has contributed to major, though possibly temporary, shifts in Liberal Party economic orthodoxy. The role of government has grown, and so have budget deficits. But it is a sign of Howard’s stature within the party that Morrison consulted him about going massively into debt to tackle the economic impact of the pandemic. Both he and treasurer Josh Frydenberg were reassured by Howard’s agreement that “no ideological constraints” should be applied at such an unprecedented and dangerous time.

Some social attitudes have also changed since Howard’s day. Howard famously refused to apologise to the stolen generations of Indigenous children, for example, whereas Morrison recently gave an ungrudging apology that built on Kevin Rudd’s apology of thirteen years ago. But it remains to be seen how far the Morrison government will go towards reconciliation, with a clearer government position on Indigenous Voice proposals expected towards the middle of 2021, after the current consultation process.

It is often forgotten that differences also exist in relation to climate change. Despite his reservations about the arguments, Howard went to the 2007 election pledging to introduce an emissions trading scheme and thereby a price on carbon. By contrast, the Morrison government has been happy to suggest that Labor’s relatively modest climate change policies will destroy the economy and cost working-class jobs.

Howard and Morrison also face a very different era in international relations. Howard repeatedly argued that Australia could retain a predominantly Anglo-Celtic identity and values while maintaining good relations with its Asian trading partners. He also suggested that Australia would play a major role in facilitating good relations between China and the United States. A combination of Western-centrism and economic reductionism led to the widespread assumption that the West would remain economically dominant and that China would increasingly liberalise as its economy developed.

Instead we face major challenges to Western economies from Asian competition and an increasingly authoritarian and assertive China under president Xi Jinping. US tensions with China continue to rise. Australia–China trade, security and diplomatic relations are at a many-decades low, with major implications for the Australian economy.

The pandemic has also revealed serious problems in international supply chains and Australia’s manufacturing capacity, especially an overreliance on Chinese manufacturing and a lack of government support for Australian industry. Morrison has acknowledged a “sovereign capability” crisis and pledged to tackle it. But it isn’t clear how well his government will be able to do this, particularly given the Liberal Party’s traditional reservations regarding government intervention in the economy. Pro-business industrial relations reform is part of the package but Morrison is being more cautious than Howard was when he introduced his electorally costly WorkChoices legislation.

Even if managing the pandemic goes smoothly and vaccinations help bring Covid-19 under control, Morrison faces major challenges. Many workers and businesses will continue to feel the impact of the pandemic and will oppose moves to reduce government support in order to rein in government debt. Rebuilding a strong Australian economy will not be as simple as sometimes suggested. By contrast, the Howard government had the benefit of a major mining boom and a massive increase in government revenues.

So, despite some key similarities, Scott Morrison faces very different circumstances from those John Howard faced. Howard famously asserted that “the times will suit me,” and in many ways they did. Morrison is riding high in the polls and, despite the various scandals, is still the favourite to win the next election. But there’s no guarantee the times will continue to suit him. •

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Workers in insecure employment were often the first to lose their jobs. Low-paid, precarious work has helped spread Covid-19, with poorly paid hotel security guards forced to work second jobs and other struggling workers finding it difficult to take time off even if they may have been exposed to the virus or have minor possible symptoms. All of this has served to highlight the prevalence of low-paid and precarious work in the Australian economy

Meanwhile, despite the government’s earlier promises of setting aside ideology and working cooperatively with unions, the ACTU argues that the Coalition’s proposed industrial relations legislation will actually increase insecure work and facilitate wage cuts.

It all seems fertile ground for a party that last defeated a sitting Coalition government at least partly by campaigning against John Howard’s WorkChoices legislation. Albanese no doubt hopes that a focus on industrial relations will also shore up his leadership and reduce dissension among Labor party members and MPs who claim Labor has been neglecting its working-class base. His focus will be on creating more better-paid, secure jobs while expanding access to employee entitlements and ensuring those entitlements are portable in insecure industries.

To this end, the Labor leader proposes a Hawke and Keating–style compact between business and labour, arguing that “the best governments in our history have understood the need for a compact between capital and labour to advance their mutual interests.” The argument aligns with Albanese’s view that Labor’s populist rhetoric against the “big end of town” was one of the reasons it lost the 2019 election. “The language used was terrible,” he argued at the time. “Unions and employers have a common interest. Successful businesses are a precondition for employing more workers.” As I argued before the election, widespread business opposition will hurt Labor if voters become concerned that private sector investment, and consequently jobs, will be at risk.

But Albanese faces a number of obstacles. To begin with, the Hawke-era consensus between business and unions rested on an Accord process that traded wage restraint, and increasingly real wage cuts, for a compensatory “social wage” in the form of increased government services and benefits. In other words, it was based on businesses paying lower wages than they otherwise would. The introduction of enterprise bargaining also saw reductions in workers’ conditions. No wonder many businesses were favourably disposed.

By contrast, Albanese will be attempting to develop a compact between business and labour based on higher wages and better conditions. Some far-sighted businesspeople, especially in highly profitable industries, may see the advantage that higher wages and more secure employment will have in increasing consumption. After all, the Reserve Bank has long argued that the fall in consumption due to wage stagnation is a significant problem for the Australian economy. But other sections of industry might not wish to increase the wages and conditions of their own workers in difficult economic times.

Despite Albanese’s criticisms, Bill Shorten also argued that wage increases would be a “win-win” for business, workers and the economy in general. But he still faced significant resistance from business. Predictably, Albanese’s IR plans have already elicited major business opposition. For its part, the government claims that Labor’s policy would cost business $20 billion, extinguishing many firms and jobs in the process.

Labor has a history of critiquing some sections of capital while supporting others. Prime minister Ben Chifley demonised the banks and prime minister Gough Whitlam the multinationals, but both supported Australian manufacturing. Albanese seems to be focusing on critiquing the gig economy while hoping to win over other businesses by supporting industries that offer better pay and more secure conditions and offering them preference in government contracts.

Even this could backfire. Rideshare drivers and food deliverers currently suffer the most obvious effects of “Uberisation,” but many other industries could introduce precarious app-based employment. Numerous tasks could also be competitively outsourced via platforms such as Airtasker, including to workers in lower-wage countries. And a range of industries already use the labour-hire measures that Labor is also targeting.

Albanese therefore faces two major challenges in turning Labor’s IR policies into a successful electoral strategy. First, he needs to convince business that this is another occasion on which social democracy needs to save capitalism from itself, as Kevin Rudd argued was the case during the global financial crisis. In this instance, neoliberal attacks on unions and workers, along with cuts to government benefits, have resulted in a crisis of consumption by reducing incomes and deepening inequality.

Second, Labor needs to convince workers that industrial relations reform is the best way to increase living standards. Labor attempted to do this during the 2019 election campaign, but many voters, unconvinced that Labor in government would be able to ensure higher incomes and jobs growth, opted for Morrison’s promises of lower taxes instead.

The ACTU’s Change the Rules campaign, which should have helped Labor win the election, also faced a dilemma. Some of the industrial relations rules in need of changing had been introduced not by the Coalition but by previous Labor governments. In other words, past Labor government policies have contributed to a lack of confidence in the ability of governments to improve wages and conditions. That — rather than climate change or so-called “identity politics” — was one of the major difficulties Labor faced at the 2019 election.

Whether Anthony Albanese can overcome these problems, or even save his own leadership, remains to be seen. In the meantime he hopes to make the next election “a battle for the things which matter most to Labor” and “a contest between two very different visions for the future of Australia.” In one sense he is undoubtedly correct. As a social democratic party, Labor has no choice but to try to tackle Australia’s rising inequality and the growth of precarious work. The issue is whether Labor will be able to turn that into a successful electoral strategy. •

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No doubt the agents will argue that they are merely providing their customers with important market information. But when companies start using their extensive holdings of private data to serve their own interests during an election campaign, we should take notice. Who needs Cambridge Analytica when an industry’s own databases can be weaponised in this way?

Admittedly, there are precedents. In the 1940s, for instance, banks campaigning against the Chifley Labor government’s nationalisation plans used their employees in marginal seat campaigns, lobbied customers by mail and encouraged tellers to pass information across the counter to voters using their services. This time, though, sophisticated data-management capabilities can be used to target information to specific seats and even individuals.

The real estate agents aren’t alone. Master Builders Australia reportedly plans to campaign against Labor’s negative gearing and capital gains tax policies in those marginal seats that are home to significant numbers of construction workers. (It isn’t clear how targeting building workers in this way will gel with its campaign for Labor to retain the Australian Building and Construction Commission.) Master Builders no doubt hopes it can mirror the success of the Housing Industry Association, which claimed that its campaigns in the early 1990s forced the Hawke–Keating government to reverse its abolition of negative gearing. (The HIA, too, had campaigned to reduce union power in the building industry).

These campaigns by real estate agencies and building companies don’t simply reflect pressures within the banking or property industries; they also have a deeper economic significance. They reflect the difficulty Labor faces in attempting to raise extra tax revenue to reduce debt and put extra funds into health, education and other government services.

A key example is the estimated $22 million campaign by mining companies against the Rudd government’s mining super profits tax, which contributed to Kevin Rudd’s replacement as prime minister by Julia Gillard. Spooked by the mining industry’s campaign, Labor made hasty concessions that massively reduced the projected revenue. As a consequence, it missed out on an opportunity to use the wealth generated during the mining boom to help repair government finances after the global financial crisis. Such a windfall would have helped compensate for the substantial falls in government revenue that were making it so much harder for Labor to return the budget to surplus.

More centrally, business campaigns against Labor play into the key election issue of who can be trusted to manage the economy. Business opposition to Labor can not only scare voters about specific policies, it can also scare voters more generally by suggesting that Labor won’t be able to run the economy effectively. After all, many ordinary voters’ jobs and incomes depend on investment in the private sector, and these campaigns suggest that Labor is ill-equipped to manage an economy in which businesses play a crucial role. Opposition from business can therefore have a very significant impact on voters’ decisions.

Labor seems to be more aware of the risks involved in being perceived as anti-business than it was during the 2016 election campaign. Indeed, Bill Shorten has been making significant efforts to reassure and court business leaders. He has also toned down his rhetoric, though he is still arguing that the Liberals look after the “big end of town” while Labor is trying to make the economy work for everyone but especially the working and middle classes. In particular, Labor is placing more emphasis on its argument that improving wage outcomes will also benefit business. As Shorten said in his budget reply speech, “We need to get wages growth going again — for workers, for the economy, for confidence and consumption. Because when we boost the spending power of working people, that money flows back into the tills of small businesses.”

Labor may also believe that its previously stronger rhetoric is no longer necessary given how the banking royal commission has contributed to negative attitudes towards at least some sections of big business. After all, even Scott Morrison conceded that the Liberals would not be taking their tax cuts for big business to the electorate this time round because business needed to do more to earn the public’s trust and build support for change.

At a time when even the Reserve Bank governor is advocating wage increases in order to lift consumption and trust in the economy, Labor’s position is not radical. As I argue in a new book, it reflects Labor’s attempt to develop a social democratic strategy for current economic conditions and it indicates a partial shift away from the neoliberal policies of the Hawke and Keating years, including in industrial relations policy. It is a shift that risks provoking business opposition, however, and not just because of Labor’s tax policies. Sectors such as the restaurant and cafe industry, for example, are strongly opposed to increases in the minimum wage. After all, businesses may be happy for other employers’ workers to have higher wages to spend but not want to pay their own employees more.

The Coalition is not having it all its own way in terms of business opposition. The government’s attempted scare campaign over Labor’s electric vehicles policy received a negative response from Toyota and Hyundai, given the automotive giants’ own plans to increase electric car production. Indeed, many sectors of business may be well ahead of the Coalition when it comes to climate change and energy policy.

Despite being ahead in the polls, Labor still has reason to be concerned about these campaigns. After all, businesses helped defeat the Chifley and Whitlam governments and have played a role in preventing Labor gaining office. Business opposition was only one of many factors contributing to Labor’s defeats, of course, but it was a significant factor nonetheless, and one that commentators need to watch during the 2019 campaign. •

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