There are six major issues that dominate public life today and require resolution. Those issues are –the dire consequences following the Iraq invasion, tax cuts during the mining boom that result in continuing budget deficits and debt increases, the threat of climate change and increased carbon pollution, the NBN debacle, hostility to refugees and asylum seekers, and problems with foreign influence and political donations which are producing an anti-Chinese sentiment.
Iraq invasion
This invasion in 2003 that the Coalition strongly supported has brought death to hundreds of thousands of people and forced millions from their homes and countries. The invasion has destabilised Iraq and adjoining countries. It triggered the civil war in Syria. The invasion has promoted widespread political, religious, ethnic and tribal conflicts across the Middle East. Our involvement in Iraq has brought terrorism to our shores. Terrorists are here because the Coalition sent our troops over there.
No Australian person bears greater responsibility for this ongoing tragedy than John Howard who enthusiastically took us into the Iraq War.
Yet the Coalition postures that it alone can be trusted with our national security and to protect us from terrorism which it exaggerates for political advantage.
The budget deficit and government debt
In the 2013 election, Tony Abbott campaigned stridently about deficits and debt as a result of the Gillard and Rudd governments.
Yet the seeds of continuing government deficits and government debt were planted by the Coalition when Peter Costello was Treasurer during the mining boom. For short-term political benefit, he substantially reduced taxes and we are now bearing the long-term consequences. Superannuation pensions were made tax free. There were concessions for negative gearing and capital gains. These concessions have left us with an enduring budget deficit and debt problem.
The ALP cannot be excused entirely. After its successful response to the global financial crisis it failed to reform the tax base as proposed by Ken Henry.
But the real culprit was the Coalition and particularly John Howard and Peter Costello for our continuing budget deficits and government debt. As the Parliamentary Budget Office put it ‘Over two thirds of the five percentage points of GDP decline in structural (budget) receipts over the period 2002/3 to 2011/12 was due to the cumulative effects of the successive personal income tax cuts granted between 2003/4 and 2008/9.’
The IMF came to the same conclusion. It identified two periods of Australian ‘fiscal profligacy’ in recent years, both during the Howard government period – at the start of the mining boom in 2003 and during its final years in office between 2005 and 2007.
Yet the Coalition portrays itself and the public seems to agree that Conservatives are better economic managers. The evidence from the Howard-Costello years does not support this.
Climate change and carbon pollution
In 2008 the Coalition continued to deny climate change. It therefore opposed and defeated the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme proposed by the Rudd Government which would have laid the basis for carbon reduction through a market mechanism. It would have promoted renewable energy and lowered energy costs. This was a major setback in addressing climate change and carbon pollution.
The Coalition added to its unfortunate record on climate change and carbon pollution by repealing the carbon tax of the Gillard government, which was showing clear signs of curbing carbon pollution.
The ensuing climate change confusion discouraged investment in new technology. Energy costs rose as a direct result of Coalition opportunism. Encouraged by its right wing base, the Coalition has continually scare-mongered about renewable energy. We saw that disgracefully in SA. Looking to the past the Coalition brought a lump of coal into Parliament. Perhaps unwittingly it was mocking itself.
Renewable energy is the energy of the future, not coal .But the extreme right in the Coalition is tied to the past and Malcolm Turnbull dare not confront them.
The Coalition has been the major obstacle to reduced carbon pollution and a sensible energy policy that will enable us to meet our Paris climate change agreement obligations.
The NBN
Tony Abbott called the NBN a ‘white elephant’. Taking that cue from his Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, the Minister for Communications in effect sabotaged a possible world-class NBN by refusing to support fibre-to-the-premises. We got a second-rate system as a result.
But the problem goes back to the Coalition and John Howard, with the privatisation of Telstra in three stages in 1997, 1999 and 2006. If at least the wholesale arm of Telstra had remained in public hands, a separate and new NBN company would not have been necessary. Without John Howard’s privatisation the publicly owned wholesale arm of Telstra would have rolled out an NBN as part of its normal business operations. That is what happened in New Zealand and why New Zealand has a far better telecommunications system than we have.
The Coalition, with John Howard as Prime Minister, through the privatisation of Telstra, has left us with an appalling legacy, a second-rate NBN. Malcolm Turnbull compounded the mess. This Coalition legacy that has to be fixed.
Stopping the boats
The Coalition postures that it stopped the boats, and that it alone can be trusted to keep our borders secure. Once again, the evidence does not bear this out.
In this blog, I have argued that Tony Abbott did not stop the boats. By the time Operation Sovereign Borders came into effect in December 2013, boat arrivals had been dramatically reduced from 48 in July 2013 to 7 in December 2013. The boat ‘crisis’ was very largely over by the time the Abbott government policies came into effect. OSB was really engaged in a minor clean up when the main game was over.
Further, the Coalition was responsible for the surge in boat arrivals after September 2011, when it opposed and defeated in parliament, amendments to the Migration Act which would have enabled the government to implement the Malaysian Arrangement. Before those amendments were defeated in the parliament, boat arrivals were running at about four to five a month. When the people smugglers saw that the government’s attempt to curb them had failed as a result of Coalition action in the parliament, they stepped up their activities once more. Boat arrivals steadily increased from the four to five per month, to 30 to 40 per month in the middle of 2013. Tony Abbott and the Coalition gave the green light to people smugglers by striking down the Malaysian Arrangement.
Yet the Coalition postures that it stopped the boats and only it can be trusted to keep our borders secure. The evidence does not support this proposition. Unfortunately the media yet again failed to examine what really happened.
Foreign influence and political donations
The anti-Chinese narrative at the present time is being led by our intelligence and security agencies. The Coalition is being dragged along behind. We now have proposed legislation from the Coalition to address some of the problems of foreign influence.
ALP Minister,Senator John Faulkner canvassed a suite of measures to promote ‘Integrity in Government’. It included a National Anti-corruption Plan, Public Interest Disclosure, including protection of whistle-blowers, a Code of Conduct for MPs, an Independent Parliamentary Budget Office, an Open Government Partnership and Electoral Funding reform.
Only some of this was implemented. Unfortunately the critical electoral funding reforms which included prohibition of anonymous and foreign donations was rejected by the Coalition in the Senate in 2009. If only we had nipped the problem of foreign influence and donations in the bud in 2009, the present anti-Chinese narrative and xenophobia could have been avoided or at least lessened.
The Coalition is responsible for the debilitating legacy we bear on each of these six major issues. The media also has a convenient memory in ignoring and forgetting a lot of this legacy. Many were complicit in failing to properly examine these major policy mistakes for which we now bear a heavy burden.
John Menadue is the Founder and Editor in Chief of Pearls and Irritations. He was formerly Secretary of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet under Gough Whitlam and Malcolm Fraser, Ambassador to Japan, Secretary of the Department of Immigration and CEO of Qantas.
Comments
6 responses to “JOHN MENADUE. Coalition legacies.”
Regarding climate change, the main political parties, and to some extent even the Greens, decline or are less-than-interested in listening to what climate science is saying.
Suggestions for presentation of climate science updates to political party top level executives and to institutions have been turned down, the perception being there are simply not enough votes among the public on this issue, a consequence of a partial cover-up by the mainstream media.
Mr Menadue, you are absolutely correct with the argument you succinctly posit re Howard’s internationally illegally dragging us into the Iraq catastrophe, and consequent blowback, notably the long ongoing heightened terrorist threat he has brought to our shores. And spinelessly timid Labor has long played right into the Coalition’s Iraqi blood soaked hands, by allowing the Coalition to take and pose on the high ground of national security and “keeping us safe”.
Your impassioned plea: “When will some of us stand up?” (from your 9 June 2018 Repost: “Joined at the hip…..”). When indeed? And is a question I’ve for too long pondered and been troubled by?
Alas, the lists of idiocies go on- The perpetrators, shameless, just repeat the original lies, in and out of office. It’s a cycle that ensures that actual, reasoned public debate withers. And now the remnants of media that dare criticise are derided in a Trumpese dialect. A people’s court and a few summary executions are probably in order considering the magnitude of national wealth and future opportunity wasted, but that’d be politically incorrect
Thank you John for your informative article, how can we get you a spot on Q & A one to one with Tony Jones, maybe ABC CEO Michelle Guthrie could be approached, maybe a Four Corners investigation into the Coalition legacies as out lined in your article. Our trusted ABC the people’s public broadcaster is considered to be above Party politics and more trustworthy with no FAKE NEWS as part of its charter.
John,
Thank you for putting these ideas so well.
Surely the idea of a small country like Australia is to try and get on with those around us, not blindly go to war thousands of miles away for reasons which were proved to be lies.
The cost as you so well show was too high, it created another crisis of refugees as well as death and destruction in the region. Totally unacceptable. The same government as you so rightly point out sold off the utility companies which immediately created a profit motivation where none existed before. Not only did it do that but also created a false marketplace which the liberals say is against there mantra. The price of Electricity and Gas were bound to go sky high. These utilities are now mainly owned by overseas interests which in itself is a Sovereign risk.
The NBN debacle is another poor legacy for Australia. The sale of Telstra as you say created the need for another player to introduce broadband. Like the utilities, the owners of Telstra didn’t want to invest in new technological infrastructure all they seem to want to do is to increase the price in a controlled market environment and bank the profits. Whilst this is good for them, the people and businesses in Australia are curbed in so many ways and services which could be delivered by the NBN. Imagine the benefit to Agriculture of monitoring, research and analysis which a fast internet could have delivered? Imagine the medical benefits of remote monitoring, scanning and diagnosis? All we can do is to now imagine, because the use of copper to produce a broadband network is a sham and a lie.
Still further was the shutting down of the car industry. All for the sake of a subsidy of $500 millions. Every country which makes cars subsidises their manufacture. Econometric modelling by the University of Adelaide showed the loss of 200,000 jobs and a hit to GDP of $26 Billions. In their submission Holden showed that Australia put in $1 for holden’s $3 and a return of $18 was the result. Yet the economically illiterate Treasurer called Holden liars in the Parliament of Australia 10 days before the Productivity Commission were due to provide their interim report. So he trashed his own process and the car Industry. Holden then decided it could no longer make cars in Australia and that prompted Toyota to exit also. All because of an ideological driven Agenda by the Liberal party. Against all the positive economic indicators.
The Coalition are not good economic managers, they are wreckers and ideologues who would not know if a tram was bearing down on them with no brakes. Thank you for your article.
John,
Great list. Thanks.
On the NBN, perhaps something that might be added.
In 2013, the ‘Fiscal Impact’ (“on-budget”) of the NBN was the interest on the difference in Govt Equity borrowed to fund it.
This has been confirmed by a PBO report, 14-Dec-2016. [https://theconversation.com/pbo-report-shows-blowout-in-cost-of-the-governments-loans-to-the-nbn-70414]
The Equity difference was $900M ($30.4B – $29.5B).
Govt Bonds at the time were getting 4.5%. [but 2%-3% for the last few years]
The payback period was 20 years (NBN Corporate Plan notes ‘payback in 2033’).
Accounting for paying down the balance, the total interest paid would’ve been ~$485M (in nominal, not ‘real’ $$).
Which for 10M households, is just $48.50 per household over 20 years, roughly $2.50/yr.
Not per voter or per person, but per household.
THIS was the whole of the Financial Difference in 2013 between the two NBN plans, under $50 per household.
I’ve yet to meet anyone who:
– had heard that argument put (I asked the ALP to raise it during the 2013 election campaign & they demurred),
– and at this price, didn’t want Full Fibre.
regards
steve