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Malcolm Turnbull and Bill Shorten are locked in a race to the bottom

Michael Gordon

Something was missing from the Turnbull government's response to the landmark decision by the country's workplace umpire to slash Sunday penalty rates for workers employed in the hospitality, fast food, pharmacy and retail industries this week.

The statement from employment minister Michaelia Cash ran for more than 400 words, but neglected to address the threshold question: did the government agree or disagree with the decision? Was it good or was it bad? Would it create jobs and growth?

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Instead, the minister was at pains to distance the Coalition from the decision and present it as the direct result of a process put in train by Bill Shorten in 2013.

"It is an inconvenient truth for the Labor Party that in 2013 Bill Shorten as Workplace Relations Minister amended the Fair Work Act to specifically require the Fair Work Commission to review penalty rates as part of the four-yearly review process," Cash said.

Malcolm Turnbull said the same thing in a neater sound bite: "This is Bill Shorten's decision: he initiated it, he backed it, he owns it. That's why he's now desperate to blame anyone other than himself." Implicit is the assumption that this is a bad decision or, at the very least, an unpopular one.

Interviewed by Neil Mitchell, Turnbull agreed that low-income workers would suffer and challenged the broadcaster to go after Shorten, who last year had vowed on air to accept the independent umpire's decision. "Neil, don't let him off the hook!" he implored.

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One Liberal MP was aghast. Rural politicians, he told me, have been under pressure from small business owners for years who insist Sunday penalty rates are the single reason they are not able to open on weekends. Why wasn't Turnbull spruiking the economic upside of curtailing an anachronism?

The response from Shorten was similarly selective, with the Labor leader making the outrageous claim that it was Turnbull who had given Australian workers a "kick in the guts", despite the fact that the Coalition made no submission to the review.

"It was the Turnbull government who has commissioned the Productivity Commission to investigate the case for cutting penalty rates, and it is the Productivity Commission's evidence which has formed the basis in large part for the Fair Work Commission's decision which has been handed down today," he said.

Not true. The Abbott government gave the Productivity Commission the brief to examine the performance of Australia's workplace relations framework and to identify improvements, and it was the commission report that recommended bringing Sunday rates into line with Saturday rates in the entertainment, hospitality and retail industries.

For one simple reason, neither Abbott nor Turnbull has formally responded to the report the commission handed to government in November of 2015 (which made 70 recommendations unrelated to penalty rates): fear that Labor would run the kind of WorkChoices campaign that helped end John Howard's prime ministership.

So, having pledged to put people first and politics last to address the sense of alienation and betrayal among voters, Shorten is gearing up for a campaign to protect wage levels, vowing to change the law under which the Fair Work Commission operates if the decision results in pay cuts for affected workers.

There is, to be sure, an important discussion to be had about the decision, but our politicians appear incapable of engaging in it, much less leading it.

How should the decision be implemented to minimise harm? Should, for instance, those hired before the decision be exempt from the change? How does it sit with wages growth being at historically low levels? How it will create jobs in country towns? Should be extended to other areas?

Instead, what we have witnessed is an example of the "he said-she said" politics Ken Henry was talking about when the NAB chairman addressed a conference on the economic and political outlook the day the decision was handed down.

"Our politicians have dug themselves into deep trenches from which they fire insults designed merely to cause political embarrassment," Henry said. "Populism supplies the munitions and the whole spectacle is broadcast live via multimedia, 24/7. The country that Australians want cannot even be imagined from these trenches."

This week's Q&A; provided another example, where the studio resembled a coliseum and the hapless George Brandis was mauled by the other panellists and derided by the audience, but to what end? It may have entertained some, but it sure did not enlighten.

It was pollster Michele Levine, the chief executive of Roy Morgan Research, who belled the cat. "I think what we will have to have is some really sensible conversation which doesn't begin with politics," she said. "It actually begins with the problem, and it begins with seriously looking what needs to be done and then having people get their head around that instead of this."

Henry isn't the first to identify this malaise, but he is almost singularly well-placed to proffer a view on where it might lead, having advised Paul Keating when he was treasurer and been head of the Treasury for a decade.

"The reform narrative of an earlier period has been buried by the language of fear and anger. It doesn't seek to explain; rather, it seeks to confuse and frighten," he said. Spot on.

To support his thesis, Henry referred to a survey of 2300 Australians for NAB by six economists that underscored the consequence of the way politics is being conducted: a creeping pessimism about the future.

Almost 90 per cent of those surveyed said they considered Australia a great place to live, yet only 54 per cent believed this would still be the case a decade from now. Pessimism was most marked among those earning less than $35,000 and focused on fear about access to welfare, housing affordability and the cost of living. Only one in five Australians believed the country has a clear, shared vision of our future.

This is not what Turnbull had in mind when he challenged Abbott in September of 2015 and spoke endlessly about optimism and agility, respecting the intelligence of voters and this being the most exciting time to be alive.

It is what Shorten vowed to address when he gave his first speech of the year and noted that Australians are done with "the smallness of so much of the national political conversation".

But, with Abbott destabilising and rivals circling, Turnbull is hardly likely to opt for the high ground any time soon, and, with the government seemingly self-destructing before his eyes, neither is Shorten. Things, I suspect, will get worse before they get better.

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