The biggest contrast between the Albanese government and the Morrison government is that the former believes in active governing and using power to effect change, while the latter believed only in the performance of government and using power to stifle change.
But so far Labor has proved adept at the performance as well.
For Morrison, true to his marketing roots, government was only ever about the next media release, the next announcement, the next press conference. Press gallery journalists marvelled at what a great campaigner he was, seemingly unaware that not merely was he a very limited campaigner — relying on culture war bullshit and demonising his opponents’ policies — but that that was all he was. The campaign, the performance, the media conference was government for Morrison.
For Labor, so far, the performance is in the service of governing. Its summit that starts tomorrow is an elaborate performance, a two-day piece of theatre designed to convey the message of a different style of governing — more consultative, less divisive. It will also furnish political cover for policy decisions that entail some political risk — a significant increase in immigration, a return to industry bargaining, a loosening of the better off overall test requirements.
Both the government and the union movement have understood this and used the summit to heavily push their agenda. Within business groups, however, there appears to be less comprehension. The Business Council — after a decade of wholly tone-deaf and ineffectual attempts to influence policy in Canberra — has figured it out. Its language and willingness to engage even on once-forbidden issues like industry bargaining have been in marked contrast to other employer groups. Small business lobby COSBOA has also seized on it to lift its profile and made a real splash with its agreement with the ACTU to consider industry bargaining.
At the Australian Industry Group and the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, however, it’s more business as usual. The contrast has prompted The Australian Financial Review — where the only reform agenda considered worth pursuing is punishing workers, slashing government spending and cutting company tax and regulation — to lament that business is divided and being outplayed.
More likely, business has grown used to inactive government, one focused on achieving and changing nothing except delivering for its key donors.
Under the Coalition, and particularly in the Morrison years, business lobby groups struggled to make an impact. They would make submissions to inquiries, issue reports, comment on topical matters and call for reforms, but the real game of influencing policy was for individual businesses via political donations, access to ministers and engaging the political strategists of the Coalition as lobbyists. That was the way policy outcomes were secured, not by Canberra-based peak groups convincing politicians of the merits of policy, but by corporations buying them.
Now the game has changed, and not merely because there’s a Labor government and the people buying access and policy are now the heads of major unions. The Morrison model of governing — keep the status quo, suppress wages, dispense favours for mates — was fit only for the pre-pandemic world. Not merely has the pandemic changed expectations about the responsibilities of government, it coincided with the emergence of major policy challenges: the unsustainable inadequacy of Australia’s climate and energy policies, the start of a growing shortage of skilled workers globally, which will likely be a problem for the rest of the century, Russia, China and a much riskier global environment, major pressures in key health and caring industries, growing populism driven by disaffection toward government.
In most of these issues, business is just as much under the hammer as workers and households, giving a greater opportunity for collaboration and consultation. For example, the resolutely anti-worker and anti-union Australian Industry Group has been significantly more “progressive” on climate issues in recent years than climate denialist unions such as the AWU or the mining division of the CFMMEU. Those stuck viewing public policy through the prism of business versus workers — which sums up the perspective of the Fin, for example — are missing the broader policy picture.
Despite all those changes, the fundamentals of politics don’t change. Expect Anthony Albanese and Jim Chalmers to milk the performative aspects of Thursday and Friday as much as possible, regardless of what policy outcomes emerge from the talks.
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“Under the Coalition, and particularly in the Morrison years, business lobby groups struggled to make an impact.”
Again, a total misreading of the situation and the reality. You are kidding, aren’t you? Business groups did have an impact and have got everything they ever wanted. A conservative government wedded to the Fair Work Act also known as WorkChoices lite, a Federal Government committed to lowering real wages, an objective they have succeeded in admirably, a government committed in putting downward pressure on wages, saying they want wages to rise but not doing anything about it like changing the FWA or replacing the FWC with a more judicial body, a government that plays a case by case approach to demands or aims when the real game has been achieved as per point 1 – lowering real wages and forcing people to borrow more or having taxpayer subsidise the wages they should be paying to their employees by pandemic inspired handouts. It is taxpayers who have subsidised businesses through these handouts which business won’t pay their workers themselves in the form of higher wages. Business have got everything they wanted. Tax relief. Lower nominal wages. Falling real wages. Increased borrowing by their workers and their customers. And taxpayer funded pandemic subsidies.
Not as cynical as I feared reading the headline. But I do cavil with one bold statement:
The Morrison model of governing — keep the status quo, suppress wages, dispense favours for mates — was fit only for the pre-pandemic world.
It was never ‘fit’ for anything other than govermnent-organised corruption. It was corrupt then and it remains corrupt!
“Those stuck viewing public policy through the prism of business versus workers — which sums up the perspective of the Fin, for example — are missing the broader policy picture.”
No Bernard you are wrong again and have again misread the situation, thinking that you are smart when you are too smart by half. The real picture in the situation of the AIG, formerly the ACCI, is that these industries in this lobby interest group, let’s call them for what they are, are smarter than other industry and interest groups on the employers’ side. The AIG realise that fossil fuels are going to cost more going forward and that trading countries will impose border carbon taxes as Europe is working out now. It realises that only reducing GHG emissions will ensure the survival of business. Let’s face it. Some seemingly smart people make really bad decisions. Like the Germans did in 1933 electing Hitler to be their leader. They paid a heavy price for that mistake. We will pay a similar price of we don’t move forward on reducing GHG emissions.
As for the AWU, they have always been a scab union. A fascist union. They only monopolised the wool industry workforce because the Commonwealth Government in 1917 outlawed the IWW just like the CFMMEU came to fruition in the aftermath of the abolition of the BLF in 1987 by another Labor rat – Bob Hawke. This union, the CFMEEU, formerly just the CFMEU, came into being in 1991 through the merging of the BWIU, the Engineering Union, the Timber Workers Industrial Union (of which I was a member at the time), the Miners’ Federation and the AMWU – metal workers union. I can tell you that the vote in my union, the TWIU, for a yes or no in favour of the merge was a total of 11%. That’s right. 11% for both Yes and No. Not 11% No and 50% Yes. 11% Yes and No. That reflected the apathy and defeatism in the union movement at the time that both Hawke and Keating injected into it. Now we are paying the price in low wages and insecure work.
Will Albo give us secure work and real wage rises. London to a brick he won’t but I would like to be proven wrong on this…for once.
“…policy decisions that entail some political risk — a significant increase in immigration, a return to industry bargaining, a loosening of the better off overall test requirements.”
Yes. Risk you seem to be downplaying in your Albanese love-in. All these things you speak of are a risk to our hard-won wages and conditions. Business and their lobby group friends are at this summit solely to enable themselves and their members to lower wage and conditions through things like the watering down of the better off overall test, the stymying or failure of a framework for industry bargaining which they don’t want to see come to fruition and through an increase in the migration intake. All these are oriented towards putting downward pressure on wages or cutting them as Turnbull did when he allowed through the FWC, Sunday penalty rates for employees in the retail industry to be reduced.
Make no mistake. Businesses are here to not fulfil any bargain they make or to modernise their workplaces or productivity. They are and always have been on about putting downward pressure on wages and conditions for their employees – the only costs they can more easily put downward pressure on. I know in the furniture industry in the 1980s and 1990s and in Bathurst generally in the 1990s that businesses also in addition to putting downward pressure on labour costs would also put downward pressure on costs in general by not paying their suppliers, not paying their contractors, not paying their bills. Some didn’t even pay their banks and walked away from their businesses or farms. We have to be very careful in dealing with business generally.
I look round the place and I don’t see any modern, bright, shiny, new enterprises. I just see dark, small mechanic shops still open in the dark at 5.30pm. I still see hair and nail salons open. I still see ugly, glass covered commercial buildings with their tenants a stone’s throw away from closing down. To be replaced by some other poor sod trying his hand at something. Businesses won’t invest in their businesses. In their premises. Not in this country at any rate. You only have to look at where people who own or run businesses live – in nice, well made, large homes with waterfront views while those who work in their paint shops or vehicle repair shops or outboard motor retail outlets fight for room or for the use of a spray gun or for a seat at the lunch table.
I ask anyone who is interested or who has the time, to take the time, compare where Customs used to work in Newcastle until 1990 at their old Customs House and where they have worked since. Small daggy offices in Hunter Street to now an equally modern daggy office cum warehouse building in Honeysuckle Drive and see how the mighty have fallen.
“The Morrison model of governing — keep the status quo, suppress wages, dispense favours for mates — was fit only for the pre-pandemic world.”
Where’s your head at. These things are not fit for any world.
Yes, the fabric of society has changed so completely that the concept of secure work, for example, is now strange. The idea of a one income family buying a home is incredible. Car ownership used to be a luxury. Now you find yourself living in it. The homeless were the broken souls of warfare; now they’re broken by ‘normal’ life. The Labor Party does not represent a ray of hope, as perhaps we used to hope it did. The ship of State may have raised its sail but the anchors are still down.