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Malcolm Turnbull is drowning in a sea of indecision and ambivalence

Malcolm Turnbull's government is now in so much trouble on so many fronts that some in its ranks are beginning to wonder if it is approaching the point of no return.

This might seem mightily premature with the next election more than two years away, but the events of the last week suggest it has neither the wit nor the will to regain the confidence of the electorate.

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PM's penalty rates problem

Malcolm Turnbull skirts the question over whether decreasing Sunday penalty rates will lead to more jobs but Bill Shorten is having none of it. Courtesy ABC News 24.

It began with the Prime Minister breaking one of politics' more basic rules and not only commenting on a damning Newspoll, but asserting it was all the result of Tony Abbott's treachery. It ended with a case study in damage maximisation on the issue of penalty rates.

Not only did the Coalition demonstrate how to lose a political debate when it had the arguments to, at the very least, neutralise it; it gifted Labor a campaign capable of paying dividends all the way to polling day.

In between, there was good news on the state of the economy and an opportunity that went begging for Turnbull to rule a line under the destructive hate speech debate that has simmered in his ranks for years.

The common denominator in the penalty rates debate and the response to the findings of a parliamentary inquiry into freedom of speech is prevarication.

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If Abbott's prime ministership was defined by too many strategic blunders and indulgent captain's calls, the Turnbull prime ministership is drowning in a sea of indecision and ambivalence.

The problem many voters had with Abbott was that they knew where he wanted to take the country and didn't like the destination. The frustration with Turnbull is doubt about whether there is one.

This column opened last week with an observation on the government's response to the landmark decision by the Fair Work Commission to cut Sunday and public holiday penalty rates for workers covered by six awards in the hospitality and retail industries.

What was missing, I suggested, was an answer to the threshold question: did the government agree or disagree with the decision? Did it think it was good or bad?

One week on, we are still no closer to knowing the answer. Rather than back the decision as one that will create jobs and outline a comprehensive plan to protect affected workers from pay cuts, ministers have responded like Alfred Bello, one of the characters in Bob Dylan's story of Hurricane Carter.

I didn't do it, he says, and he throws up his hands

I was only robbin' the register, I hope you understand

The government knew the decision was coming and should have anticipated the conclusion that Sunday is no longer regarded as much more special than Saturday.

It should have been ready to offer an empathic view on the likely economic benefits and a detailed plan to protect the pay packets of some of the country's lowest paid workers during a transition period.

Yet all we have seen is an ill-prepared bureaucracy and an assault on Bill Shorten's rank hypocrisy for rejecting a decision of the independent umpire after appointing that umpire and giving the commission the brief to include penalty rates in its four-yearly review of modern awards.

When, for instance, Treasury secretary John Fraser was asked how many jobs would be created by the decision, he replied: "I don't have an opinion on it." Unbelievable!

It was not until Thursday, a full week after the decision, that the Prime Minister suggested his government would urge the Fair Work Commission to avoid reducing take-home pay by phasing in the cuts over a number of years.

"The important thing is that they have both the intent and the tools to ensure that the changes are phased in so that workers are not – as far as possible – not worse off in terms of this transition."

But here's the rub. The commission's decision makes it very plain that it may not have the tools to do the job and that some legislative change might be needed to rectify this.

There is doubt about whether it has the legislative power to issue the kind of take home pay orders that were deployed to protect workers when the number of awards was crunched down from more than 1500 to 122 in 2009.

A combination of these orders and a phased-in introduction offer the best prospect for workers, which is why the Commission asked the government to make a submission on this question by March 24.

But rather than be proactive, upfront and clear about its objective, Employment Minister Michaelia Cash tells me through her spokesman: "The government will be providing an appropriate submission in accordance with the wishes of the Commission and will engage constructively in this process."

Rather than expand on how he intends to protect workers when Shorten moved a motion attacking him for backing tax cuts for big banks while "nearly 700,000 Australians receive pay cuts", Turnbull delivered a shallow speech that left many on his backbench staring blankly at their laptops.

The same day, Turnbull was asked by the ABC's Sabra Lane what he intended to do about section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act (which makes it an offence to "offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate" someone because of their race) after receiving a report from the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights.

It was an opportunity to applaud the committee for concluding that the complaints process, not section 18C, has made it possible for complaints without merit to proceed and for proposing sweeping reforms to solve this problem.

As committee member Julian Leeser remarked, the reforms represent an "historic breakthrough" and will return section 18C to its intended function as "an important but limited protection against the worst kind of racial hate speech".

But with hardliners in his ranks still pressing for the repeal of the protection, Turnbull could only talk in the abstract about getting the balance right and it being up to the cabinet and, ultimately, the party room to consider the report, leaving us, once again, in the dark on what he really thinks.

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