At a time when Australians desperately need competent, proactive government, we have platitudes about respecting the Omicron virus, mixed messages from state and federal officials, and a perception that policymakers are rewriting their pandemic rule book on the fly.
It doesn’t have to be like this. In part, it’s all a result of personal, political failures. Despite Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s desire to cast himself as a Teddy Roosevelt-style fixer, his lack of meaningful vision, image-focused approach to politics, and fixation on the short term has left Australians floundering through this latest chapter of the COVID crisis.
But much of the incompetence is deeper, and more structural in origin. As Bernard Keane argued in Crikey this week, a government of diminished capacity and a public service devoted to serving the interests of that government rather than providing frank and fearless advice has left us with leadership that just isn’t very good at getting stuff done.
And sitting at the heart of that sputtering machinery is cabinet. Meant to drive policy and fix national problems, the Morrison cabinet is a microcosm of the prime minister’s approach to governing — loyalists are rewarded and portfolios doled out to solve political problems, while too many ministers hide from scrutiny and a chance to influence the national debate.
All up, it’s a nepotistic, vision-lite approach to governance that probably wouldn’t cut it on a corporate board. So why does cabinet get away with it?
Mates rewarded, duds promoted
No matter the government of the day, cabinet appointments must strike a delicate balance between rewarding talent, bringing forward policy vision and solving political problems both internal and external. But the Morrison cabinet is skewed well towards the latter.
Recent reshuffles, where loyalists have won top jobs, are a case in point. Immigration Minister Alex Hawke, one of Morrison’s key factional allies who helped do his numbers during the 2018 leadership spill, was promoted to cabinet in October. An extra seat at the table was created for Resources Minister Keith Pitt to buy the Nationals’ agreement to a net zero emissions target.
The Nationals’ leadership spill brought Barnaby Joyce back into the fold. It also saw Darren Chester, generally considered a competent Veterans’ Affairs Minister, dumped in favour of Bridget McKenzie, architect of the sports rorts affair.
McKenzie isn’t the only minister whose past integrity issues have been forgiven and forgotten. Environment Minister Sussan Ley, who once resigned as health minister over an expenses scandal, is back. Stuart Robert, a key Morrison ally, was sacked from the ministry in 2016 over breaching ministerial rules during a secret trip to China with a friend and Liberal donor. He’s been back in cabinet since the 2019 election. Angus Taylor overcame a gaffe-ridden 2019, capped off by his office sending doctored documents about Clover Moore to The Daily Telegraph, to remain in cabinet.
Then there are those ministers no longer with us: Christian Porter, who quit amid the fallout from a historic sexual assault allegation (that he strongly denied) and failed defamation case; Alan Tudge stood down pending an investigation into an alleged abusive affair with his former staffer.
Disappearing ministers
Putting aside integrity questions, far too many cabinet ministers are essentially invisible, dodging public scrutiny and failing to make deep policy contributions. For better or worse, a handful — including Treasurer Josh Frydenberg, Health Minister Greg Hunt and Finance Minister Simon Birmingham — get most of the air time.
And while speaking to the media isn’t the only metric for success in a portfolio, it is an opportunity for a minister to articulate and shape the national debate around important issues, a thing they should, after all, be doing.
Many do not do this. When was the last time you heard anything from Melissa Price? Why was Ley basically silent through most of the debate around net zero last year? Why does Foreign Affairs Minister Marise Payne inject herself into the debate so much less than her predecessor, Julie Bishop? For an attorney-general handling contentious issues like religious discrimination, why aren’t there more opportunities for journalists to question Michaelia Cash?
The takeaway here is while much critical ministerial work happens quietly, too many of the Morrison cabinet seem determined to avoid any real scrutiny.
Would this cut it?
Imagine for a hypothetical second that Australia was a company, Morrison the chippy CEO, and his cabinet the board. Would their performance be deemed adequate? Corporate Australia obviously has its own issues with nepotism and incompetence. But it’s hard not to conclude the current crop are, at times, held to far lower standards than many employees around the country.
The Australian Institute of Company Directors’ skills matrix gives us some idea of the kind of things a corporate board should, ideally, be looking for. The “interpersonal skills” section, which includes requirements like “leadership”, “ethics and integrity” and “crisis management”, would probably find many of the aforementioned wanting in cabinet ministers.
Governance skills, things such as strategy and policy development,might also stump many of the absentee ministers, unless they can mount a case for what they’re actually doing on the policy front. Cabinet’s failure to adequately plan for the Omicron wave surely doesn’t pass the governance test.
Finally, AICD’s guidelines has a section on diversity, which includes having people from Indigenous, culturally and linguistically diverse, and LGBTIQ backgrounds. While corporate Australia doesn’t fare particularly well on the diversity front, Parliament is decades behind.
Aside from Indigenous Affairs Minister Ken Wyatt, cabinet is entirely white. While gender diversity is up since the Abbott years, there’s still an overwhelming sameness to cabinet. Former corporate lawyers are over-represented. Nearly half worked as either staffers or within the Liberal Party machinery before their entry to politics.
It’s unsurprising that a cabinet stacked with political apparatchiks puts the politics above the policy and vision. But it’s a big, oft-forgotten reason for our current malaise.
“… a cabinet stacked with political apparatchiks puts the politics above the policy and vision. But it’s a big, oft-forgotten reason for our current malaise. ”
It’s a reason, and it’s important. But to stick with the comparison the article makes between our government and a corporation, another big reason for this malaise in policy and vision is the devastation and de-skilling of the APS. This is the equivalent of a corporation getting rid of most of its experienced managers, leaving it well short of the necessary capabilities in several critical departments. In consequence it relies on external consultants who are paid a fortune to say whatever the client wants to hear but whose interest is in serving themselves, and on equally costly out-sourcing it lacks the skill to properly control or manage.
The shareholders / voters are leaving intervention far too late.
Yes.
Morrison’s evangelical background is what I believe lies behind much of what he does or does not do. The “I know something you don’t” smirk suggests to me that he believes that he and his favored fellow worshipers are destined for paradise while the unworthy will be abandoned to fiery damnation. Morrison’s beliefs and their influence is well overdue for exposure in the mainstream media but alas it seems a no go area. He doesn’t care because he doesn’t feel he needs to as his future is assured, that’s what makes people like him so dangerous.
I’ll walk down Pitt Street naked if this lot of crooks, dolittles and vagabonds get re-elected.
“Pitt St Coventry”?
Hear Hear!
What it is is “government by insipid, visionless, buck-passing can-kickers” – devoid of vision, creating problems they refuse to take responsibility for, and passing those problems on to future generations.
…. not unlike Howard?
You can Tampa that down!
This hopelessly incompetent commonwealth government has at least mastered the art of playing politics (often badly) utterly devoid of any policy. And they get away with this risible nonsense because most of the media just reports the soap opera of politics and eschews any analysis of policy. All the media has to do is point out there is no policy. But it can’t even do that.
When they control the government which perpetuate the empires they have built in UK, USA and Australia, why would they criticise the present pack of grubs we are left with to govern?