Malcolm Turnbull’s Prime Ministership has seemingly got off to a pretty good start – no one misses his predecessor and Bill Shorten is struggling to break into the honeymoon suite that the new PM currently resides. But on Turnbull’s path towards becoming Prime Minister for as long as he wants is the obstacle of his being in the Liberal Party, and having to deal with those in its rightwing who would have him commit political suicide.
It’s clear that Turnbull is enjoying a very nice honeymoon period – something which hasn’t happened for so long that a few commentators are mistaking it for a permanent state of affairs. But just as Kevin Rudd was able to destroy Malcolm Turnbull in the popularity stakes back in 2008-09 only for himself to fall into a heap largely through machinations of his own party, so too are there dangers within Turnbull’s own party.
Good policy needs a chance to germinate, grow, and also needs to be tended – which can involve a bit of pruning
The one aspect which has been most pleasing during Turnbull’s brief period thus far as Prime Minister is his desire to shift from the “rule in rule out” game.
Good policy needs a chance to germinate, grow, and also needs to be tended – which can involve a bit of pruning.
The rule in-rule out game kills such a process – for it involves the belief that there is no ability to prune various aspects of a policy before it is finally unveiled as legislation.
Tony Abbott was rather useless at the game. He would try to say that things can’t be ruled in or out, and then the next minute he would rule out any changes to superannuation.
Turnbull and his Treasurer Scott Morrison are taking a much broader approach, though it is quickly becoming clear that raising the GST to 15 per cent and/or broadening it to include health care and education costs is more in the “rule in” than “rule out” camp.
But while this process is devised to soften up voters, and also attempt to make the ALP look intractable, Turnbull will also have to deal with concerns from within his own party.
This week, as rumours that a rise in the GST was being considered, out came Liberal Party backbenchers to voice their displeasure.
Now you might think the backbenchers were wanting Turnbull and Morrison to rule out increasing the GST, but no, they wanted him to rule out a situation where he would increase the GST and not cut other taxes.
It says something about the thinking of some in the Liberal Party right now, that they are worried that should Turnbull increase the GST he will do so in a way that is too left wing.
Demanding a policy of raising the GST include income tax cuts is pretty obvious, and is a bit like demanding a birthday party include a cake
These backbenchers – which include Cory Bernardi – don’t want the increased revenue from the GST to be used to pay for government services such as education, health, age pensions – ie all the myriad of expenses which need to be funded to a greater extent than in the past due to factors such as the ageing population.
No, for them the outcome of raising the GST is less tax overall being paid.
Partly their calls are rather superfluous – demanding a policy of raising the GST include income tax cuts is pretty obvious, and is a bit like demanding a birthday party include a cake.
But Turnbull knows even with a nice softening up on the GST, voters are still going to need some convincing that the policy will see them better off. If the outcome is just less tax, people are going to be able to do the maths – and if they can’t, the ALP will do it for them.
One of the consequences of over a decade of talk about governments having to live within their means is that if you say you will reduce tax revenue overall, then people know that means you are going to have less to spend on services – services like health and education.
As the first Hockey Budget showed, people are very alert to suggestions of cuts to services and any measures which will improve life for the wealthy over the poorest.
Turnbull might for now be able to easily deal with the issue of his own personal wealth, but should his government’s policies begin to betray a lack of fairness, then he might be less uncaring of Bill Shorten walking around telling everyone that Turnbull has a lot of money.
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It would also take a pretty brave politician to argue that the GST should be paid on health and education expenses and then argue that government spending on those areas should also be cut.
If Turnbull and Morrison play their cards right by proposing changes to the GST and also changes to areas such as superannuation taxation concessions, which are universally known to favour the wealthy, then the ALP is pretty much stuck with shouting “GST” and hoping everyone ignores the other parts of the policy.
But if the changes also include cuts to government funding of services that a majority of voters believe are essential then not only does the ALP have a strong case to make, it has one which voters will understand easily.
Thus far Turnbull has been good at ignoring the rule in rule out calls from journalists and from the ALP, but he might be wise to rule out listening to the suggestions of government backbenchers who certainly would seem to lack any political nous.
