💧DUKE Clyde (HANSARD)CFW9 (Biden-Harris ELECT)💧 · @nobby15
9th Apr 2016 from TwitLonger
Laurie Oakes - Scott Morrison take note.
A FEW weeks ago, Britain’s Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron — under pressure over health policy — launched a juvenile attack on his opposite number in the House of Commons.
“Put on a proper suit,” he told Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn. “Do up your tie.” Tory MPs brayed and jeered and guffawed with amusement, but it did not play well in the wider community, especially after Corbyn posted a quote from Albert Einstein on his official Twitter account.
The great scientist said: “If most of us are ashamed of shabby clothes and shoddy furniture, let us be more ashamed of shabby ideas and shoddy philosophies.”
Scott Morrison take note.
It is one thing for an upper-crust Eton old boy, a former member of an Oxford University secret society notorious for obscene initiation rituals and son of a multi-millionaire named in the Panama Papers tax avoidance scandal to behave like a snobby bastard.
But it is not clear why the Australian Treasurer, the state school-educated son of a NSW cop, would seek to emulate him.
Yet there was Morrison on radio yesterday, questioned over Labor’s potentially popular call for a royal commission into bank scandals, referring pompously to Bill Shorten “up there in his ill-fitting suit”.
The Coalition has just fallen behind in Newspoll for the first time since dumping Tony Abbott as prime minister in favour of Malcolm Turnbull.
Liberal strategists concede the looming election will be tight. Their Labor counterparts, pictures of pessimism until very recently, now dare to think they could be in with a chance.
The government keeps bungling, as it did most recently over state income tax powers.
Turnbull’s loose talk about the possibility of Canberra withdrawing from funding public schools has handed Labor another ready-made scare campaign.
Tension between the Prime Minister and the Treasurer has become palpable.
Yet Morrison seems to think Shorten’s tailoring standards matter to voters. Can he really be such a dill? Or is it a case of the pressure getting to him?
Morrison, along with the Prime Minister and the rest of the Coalition frontbench, should forget the petty personal stuff and concentrate on the substance of politics. That is, policies and their presentation. Areas where the government has been failing dismally.
The big test here, of course, will be the Budget on May 3. It is being framed as a virtual manifesto for the expected July 2 double-dissolution poll.
Amid the headlines about corporate tax evasion and avoidance, for example, Morrison and Turnbull will need all their persuasive powers and more to justify giving priority to company tax cuts over income tax relief.
And if the Budget is seen to favour the big end of town, Morrison could even find his interest in expensive well-tailored suits compared with his predecessor Joe Hockey’s love of a good cigar.
But before that, the government needs to make sure it does not mishandle the special sitting of parliament called to reconsider two pieces of legislation the Senate has already blocked.
If, as looks almost certain, the Upper House again fails to pass the Bills — one establishing a watchdog commission for the construction industry, the other dealing with union governance — the election will be on.
MPs and senators will assemble on April 18 with all the pomp and ceremony of the opening of a new parliament.
The Governor-General, Sir Peter Cosgrove, will summon members of both Houses to the Senate chamber to hear him deliver a speech on the reasons they have been called back to Canberra. Written in the Prime Minister’s office but with the authority of the Queen’s representative behind it, the speech will lay out the case for action against union corruption and thuggery in light of findings by the Dyson Heydon royal commission.
THAT is all well and good, but it could be an opportunity wasted if government members fall back on insult and aggro in the ensuing debate instead of engaging in serious, reasoned argument.
The banking and financial industry scandals, recent exposes of corporate bribery allegedly involving Australian companies, the spate of revelations about tax evasion and avoidance and so on give relevance to claims by Labor and independent senators that unions and the construction industry should not be dealt with in isolation.
At the very least, those issues will muddy the waters.
To get the electoral boost it hopes for from the three-week session, the government needs to lift its game — with Turnbull and Morrison setting an example.
Laurie Oakes is the Nine Network political editor