Malcolm Turnbull is caught in a perfect storm

We’re sorry, this feature is currently unavailable. We’re working to restore it. Please try again later.

Advertisement

This was published 5 years ago

Malcolm Turnbull is caught in a perfect storm

By Michael Gordon
Updated

The long Australian summer is a period of high danger for two demographics in particular: those who reside or holiday in areas prone to natural disasters and prime ministers and their senior colleagues.

For the former, the danger posed by soaring temperatures, high winds and extreme weather events is such that clear mitigation protocols have been established, complete with catchphrases like "watch and act".

For the latter, there is no established playbook on how to minimise potential calamities, although the same commonsense principle applies: hope for the best and prepare for the worst.

Malcolm Turnbull's summer was always going to be a challenge. He ended last year satisfied that he had retained government (by a whisker) and that the legislation he took to the double dissolution had passed.

Illustration: Jim Pavlidis

Illustration: Jim Pavlidis

But there was a hint of frustration, too, that the commentators had not given him due credit and that Bill Shorten, a man Turnbull declares unfit to be prime minister, had got off lightly for making overblown claims, especially on Medicare.

The aim for 2017 was to establish moral ascendancy over Shorten, especially in the area of health, but Turnbull entered the break behind in the polls and with one very clear danger lurking: some 330,000 pensioners were to have their benefit reduced or scrapped altogether on January 1.

The case for this change is compelling on multiple fronts, with 90 per cent of pensioners either unaffected or better off, but there is nothing quite so demanding in politics as taking away a benefit once it has been bestowed.

Prosecuting that case requires Turnbull and his ministers to display the quality most conspicuously absent since he toppled Tony Abbott: empathy.

Advertisement
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull announcing the resignation of Sussan Ley from his frontbench in Sydney.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull announcing the resignation of Sussan Ley from his frontbench in Sydney.Credit:Daniel Munoz

The Coalition's selling task became more complicated when serious flaws were revealed in a separate endeavour to improve the budget bottom line by recouping $4 billion in welfare overpayments and, as a consequence, ease the threat to Australia's AAA credit rating.

The problem is that Centrelink's automated debt recovery scheme is sending letters of demand to many vulnerable people whose payments were entirely above board, causing enormous and unnecessary distress to clients and staff alike.

The obvious course, especially after the Commonwealth Ombudsman launched a wide-ranging investigation, was to minimise the damage by calling a pause on the system until the problem was sorted, while remaining utterly committed to ensuring welfare recipients receive no more, and no less, than they are entitled to.

Yet, when Human Services Minister Alan Tudge returned from leave this week, he insisted the system was working as it was intended to work, and vowed that the letters would continue to be sent.

As Victoria Legal Aid's Dan Nicholson expressed it: "What is clear from what we're hearing from people who call us is that there is a massive disconnect between government claims of a system working well and the real human experience of dealing with Centrelink and the real human consequences of these letters and debts, many of which are simply wrong."

If the disconnect ended there, that would have been bad enough, but it runs far, far deeper and goes to fundamental compact between voters and those they elect.

The compact was described eloquently by the committee set up to review the parliamentary entitlements system after Bronwyn Bishop chartered a helicopter from Melbourne to Geelong in November 2014, at a cost to taxpayers of more than $5000, solely to attend a Liberal Party fundraiser.

Politicians commit themselves to represent their constituents to the best of their ability, the review's report concluded, accepting intrusions into their private lives and placing political service above personal interest.

In return, the electorate agrees to support their representatives by paying them well and covering expenses incurred in the course of the performance of their duties. "An essential element of this compact is trust," it said.

Had Sussan Ley given a full, frank and remorseful account of her purchase of an $795,000 luxury unit in May 2015, while on a taxpayer-funded trip to the Gold Coast, when the story broke on January 6, she might, just might, have survived as health minister.

Instead, her minimalist assertion through a spokeswoman that the purchase was "neither planned nor anticipated" and the travel was "in accordance with the rules" was the beginning of the end for Ley and the catalyst for forensic probing of the claims of Ley and others.

What emerged was evidence in abundance of a gaping chasm between what some politicians, of all persuasions, consider their rightful entitlement and what the voters would accept as reasonable, despite last year's commitment to implement all 36 of the recommendations of the review that reported in February.

With a host of unanswered questions about other Ley trips, Turnbull on Monday asked his department head, Martin Parkinson, to investigate the situation and report back, just as he had when questions were raised about the claims of a junior minister, Stuart Robert, this time last year.

In that case, Parkinson concluded that Robert had acted "inconsistently with the statement of ministerial standards" Turnbull had signed after the Bishop affair, even though Parkinson accepted that Robert may not have intended to do so. Robert's career as a minister was done.

"I expect the highest standards from my ministers in all aspects of their conduct, and especially the expenditure of public money," Turnbull declared in a statement released by his office.

But the Prime Minister left it to another minister returning from leave to face the media, with acting Special Minister of State Kelly O'Dwyer, promising midweek that the system would be changed in the "first half of the year".

That was never going to suffice, and Turnbull recognised as much on Friday by announcing monthly disclosure of MPs' expenses and the setting up of a body independent of government to oversee the revamped system when he confirmed that Ley had resigned.

The political reality, however, is that Turnbull is caught in a perfect storm, his government being assailed for making life harder for the less well off while certain of his ministers are seen to behave like the rich and famous.

Cutting Ley loose and announcing long overdue reforms are just the first, and the easiest, steps in freeing himself from it.

Michael Gordon is political editor of The Age.

Most Viewed in Politics

Loading