Joe Hockey needs to change tack in budget offensive Date July 18, 2014 - 4:18PM Opinion Mark Kenny Chief political correspondent Government to fight Senate on mining tax repeal measures Talk to backbenchers on either side of the house right now and the story is uncannily similar. Voters are unmoved by the governments budget crisis message and, thanks to broken promises and elements seen as unfair - GP co-payment, pension cuts, and harsh earn-or-learn changes for the jobless - they no longer trust the budget messenger. Polls consistently reflect this hostility with the government trailing Labor by double digits and Prime Minister Tony Abbott also lagging well behind on personal approval. The twin effect has been to embolden the hawks within Labor to oppose everything and to convince the new crossbenchers in the upper house to do likewise. It all makes for a diabolical political equation: a rejuvenated opposition and the most openly populist Senate in history, arraigned against a weakened government attempting structural reforms for which it has little or no mandate. If Tony Abbott wasnt hearing it directly via talkback radio or out on the hustings, hes getting it from his own MPs. For them, it represents an existential crisis. Increasingly, theyre wondering whats our plan B? So far at least, there is no obvious answer. Last week, as the new Senate met for the first time and was expected to quickly consign the carbon and mining taxes to history, Abbott went to Western Australia with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. His attendance was a warm gesture towards a foreign leader who had addressed the Australian parliament the day before, but it was actually quite unorthodox. Foreign leaders often travel to other cities or regions when they make international visits, but it is less common for the host leader to tag along. So confident was the government of its carbon tax repeal last Wednesday, despite having put in only the most cursory spade-work with the newbies, that Abbott saw no need to be present. His private office even organised a bang-up afternoon tea to celebrate the big moment. Luckily it was also somebodys birthday so the cake was not wasted. It would be more than a week, several setbacks, and some 55 hours of grinding Senate debate later, that it would come to a final victorious vote. Abbotts confidence was nothing to his Treasurers, though. Joe Hockey had been insisting there was not a moment to lose in addressing the budget crisis as he demanded the government be allowed to do what must be done. Yet when the new Senate met to talk carbon and mining before moving on to key budget savings requiring legislation in order to begin in July and August, Hockey went missing. It has been more than nine weeks since the budget was handed down and yet still the majority of it has not even been introduced to the parliament. Political veterans cannot recall a precedent where so long after being handed down, a budget is still being discussed and is still so fundamentally friendless. Abbott is holding his nerve and is urging his troops accordingly. But he is also wise to the political dangers, which is why backbenchers have noticed a more receptive prime ministerial ear of late. This started with dinner for new Coalition MPs on budget-eve designed to reassure them that it would be a tough sell but would pay political dividends by re-election time come 2016. According to sources, Abbott since has been ensuring that concerns can be aired internally - although not in the party room which always leaks - via more intimate dinners for smaller groups of backbenchers. It is a clever approach. But the real question is whether Abbott can shift his governments posture to capitalise on the new situation in national politics, rather than playing victim to it. That means compromise. As one sage insider noted, getting the entire budget through is no longer an option. The task now is to work with what weve got, he said, categorising the new Senate as a known known. Yes theyre populists, but leaving the Greens aside, the crossbench is now made up of pro-business, pro-consumer conservatives, the MP said. We should be able to work with them quite well on many things, but we are going to have to talk to them and we are going to have to horse-trade. The MP says the first thing that should go is the GP co-payment, or GP tax as Labor calls it. It appears to have no support outside the government, having achieved the neat trick of unifying some unlikely players such as the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners, the AMA and all of the consumer organisations. It also has zero chance of passage in the Senate. On Wednesday, Bill Shorten brandished a petition signed by thousands of GPs calling for the $7 charge to be dropped. Doctors, lets be clear, are not your standard Labor rent-a-crowd and cannot be so easily dismissed. The government should be prepared to dump the idea, but not without a quid pro quo. This is the Treasurers challenge. Rather than going off-message to threaten even more unpopular cuts to unspecified programs, if opponents wont yield, Hockey must now start talking. First call should be to the opposition. Amazingly, at this stage, no back-channel approach has been made to Labor. Ditto with the Greens who might still offer the best hope of a return to fuel excise indexation. Then there are the other independents. Its time Hockey did a bit less threatening and bit more talking. Mark Kenny is Fairfax Medias chief political corespondent. smh.au/federal-politics/political-opinion/joe-hockey-needs-to-change-tack-in-budget-offensive-20140717-ztz5f.html#ixzz37o5vyZPI
Posted on: Fri, 18 Jul 2014 09:15:00 +0000
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