Soaring electricity prices under Labor's green energy agenda, a new attempt to legislate "job-creating" company tax cuts, and new savings to fund more affordable childcare are shaping as key government battlelines in the political contest this year as Malcolm Turnbull prepares to outline his strategy on Wednesday.
The Prime Minister, under growing pressure from voter disaffection and simmering discontent on his right flank, will unveil his objectives for 2017 at the National Press Club in Canberra, hoping to regain the political initiative, silence internal critics, and lay bare the dangers to growth and household budgets of the Labor alternative.
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Malcolm Turnbull and Bill Shorten are heading to the press club to reinvigorate their political stocks - but history provides a salutary warning.
In a keenly anticipated nationally televised speech pitched as "optimistic but realistic" in tone, the embattled Prime Minister plans to pit his recipe for jobs growth, lower business costs, and cheaper energy prices, against Bill Shorten's plan for increased business regulation and an unaffordable 50 per cent renewable energy target by 2030.
"This isn't an abstract issue. Higher electricity prices mean more pressure on household budgets and businesses. That's why energy will be a defining debate in this Parliament. We're determined to help families and businesses by making electricity affordable and reliable; Labor's policies mean higher power prices and energy insecurity," he will say, according to notes provided.
The claim of higher costs under Labor's 50 per cent renewable energy target satisfies the twin objectives of undermining support for Labor - as proved by Tony Abbott's highly effective "python squeeze" campaign against the carbon tax in 2010 - while feeding political "red meat" to the Coalition's anti-green-energy, right-wing base.
An assessment by the Australian Energy Market Regulator of the potential cost of Labor's rapid transition to renewable energy undertaken last year concluded it could reach almost $50 billion.
"Our preliminary estimates are that around 25.4 gigawatts of new large-scale renewables, representing some $A48.2 billion of new investment, would be required to meet a 50 per cent renewable electricity target by 2030," it said.
Labor rejects such claims and argues the green switch will actually new create jobs and that the costs of inaction on climate will be higher.
![Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull will also hint at a breakthrough on more than $3 billion in welfare cuts that have been ...](/web/20170202213059im_/http://www.smh.com.au/content/dam/images/g/u/2/4/h/6/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gu2hhl.png/1485924223858.jpg)
The Coalition campaign risks further damage to Mr Turnbull's battered personal standing because his stellar popularity at the time of his ascendancy in 2015, was comprised substantially from his reputation as a firm believer in driving down carbon emissions.
Also central to his 2017 strategy, according to the extract of his speech provided, is a new commitment to fund childcare through further cuts to welfare, with Mr Turnbull revealing that talks with Senate crossbenchers had been fruitful.
"When Parliament resumes, we will introduce a new bill that combines our childcare reforms with the measures that will pay for them. We have been holding constructive discussions with the Senate crossbench to ensure we can provide a strong safety net, but deliver more affordable, flexible and available childcare."
Mr Turnbull's Press Club speech comes just one day after Mr Shorten used the same platform to set out Labor's 2017 approach, which he had described as having three priorities: "jobs, jobs, and jobs".
That is built around a significant re-commitment to vocational training through such measures as:
- A business-unions-government skills summit if elected.
- A guarantee that all Australians get access to appropriate skills training.
- A mandated quota for apprentices, ensuring they make up 1 in 10 jobs on major public infrastructure and defence projects.
Mr Turnbull, who campaigned under the slogan of "jobs and growth" in last year's election, will acknowledge that has been hard to deliver in the current climate and that economic insecurity is on the rise.
"We have had a good run over the last 25 years of continued economic growth, but the truth is that there are many parts of Australia where times are not so good, where jobs are scarce and prospects look less promising than they were," he will say.
His answer, as it was in the election, is to unburden business through the proposed corporate tax cuts, even though the numbers in the Parliament remain hostile.
"Years of research - much of it commissioned by the previous Labor government - has revealed a less obvious but very important truth: company tax is overwhelmingly a tax on workers and their salaries.That is why, if we had a 25 per cent business tax rate today, full-time workers on average weekly earnings would have an extra $750 in their pockets each and every year."
The speech comes as persistent regional unemployment combines with global uncertainties and an Australian economy in transition, to threaten public confidence, fuelling economic dislocation and political interest in populist alternatives such as Pauline Hanson's One Nation party.
Having already seen the loss of one minister to a travel entitlements scandal, Mr Shorten used his opportunity to advance the so-called integrity agenda, proposing a Senate inquiry into the benefits of a federal anti-corruption watchdog; a reduction in the threshold for public disclosure of political donations from those above $13,200 currently down to just $1000; and a tightening of politicians' expenses rules - the latter of which has already been initiated by Mr Turnbull.
On donations, Mr Turnbull is likely to face fresh questions on Wednesday because his speech coincides with the release of donations data from the 2016 election, in which he made significant personal contributions to the Liberal Party.
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