Scott Morrison’s efforts to politicise Australia’s complex relationship with China seems to be further soiling his own flagging reputation.
Like a bull in the proverbial, he has spent the past fortnight bombarding the airwaves with hastily googled dossiers and cold war-era panics to suggest an Albanese government would become an antipodean branch office of the Beijing Politburo.
Large sections of the national gallery have embraced his China pivot, breathlessly reporting the attacks on Labor, amplifying intelligence community blowback and catastrophising operational incidents that would normally demand sober assessment rather than tabloid splashes.
But this week’s Guardian Essential Report suggests the Australian public is neither as excitable nor gullible as sections of the media, with Labor regarded as the party better placed to manage Australia’s relationship with China.
These results will seem counterintuitive to those of us who follow politics closely and are conditioned to assume the Coalition has a national advantage on national security. But when this issue is laid out in the context of Australia’s interests rather than the generality, the China attack does not appear to be working.
The most effective scare campaigns connect with disengaged voters in a concrete way. For all its artifice, the 2019 assault on Labor’s plans to rein in tax concessions spoke to the hip pocket. So too Keating’s “no GST” demolition of John Hewson in 1993. Howard scared voters on interest rates in 2004 and Labor nearly did the same from opposition with Medicare in 2016.
When incumbents have won elections on national security scares, they have done so when the issue was already dominating the public discourse in a way that people saw a direct connection with their personal wellbeing.
Robert Menzies’ “reds under the bed” demolition of Herbert Vere Evatt in 1955 was in the heat of the cold war where Australia’s loyalties were clear, Soviet spies were being expelled and his political opponents were literally splitting down the middle. Howard’s “turn back the boats” election in 2001 was prosecuted in the aftershocks of the September 11 terror attacks.
The latest attacks on Labor over China are different. While Australian politics has moved from a broad consensus on engaging with China to a more adversarial outlook as Xi Jinping has consolidated power, there is not the same immediate heat in the issue.
Indeed, according to another question in this week’s report, the vast majority of voters see China as a complex issue to be managed rather than a threat to be confronted. In other words, the clear majority of Australians support a position which is the polar opposite to the government’s current tub-thumping.
In fact, the only group of voters who see the Coalition as being better equipped to manage the China relationship are those in the minority who see China as a threat to be confronted. In this context, you can make the argument the prime minister is really doing nothing but talking to his base.
And not even all of the base. For those in business relationships with China or in industries with trade exposure, the relationship has far greater meaning than a set of politicised debating points. On our figures, that includes a majority of Coalition voters.
The implications of these findings are clear for Labor as well. Rather than being drawn into defending every nuanced statement made in the party’s name over the past decade it can safely characterise this as simply another distraction with the very real potential to undermine the national interest.
And let’s not ignore the political risk inherent in the China gambit. An estimated 6% of Australians identify as Chinese-Australian, with numbers concentrated in some of the more marginal Coalition seats, especially Sydney’s Banks and Reid where well-credential Asian Australian candidates are standing for Labor.
Further muting the prime minister’s attacks is his own credibility as the attack dog. Morrison’s personal approval has deteriorated another five points into net negative over the past month (44% approve/49% disapprove), while Labor leader Anthony Albanese is in positive territory for the first time (42% approve/ 39% disapprove).
And on a raft of personal attributes, the prime minister’s stocks are in freefall.
Looking at these numbers, the China strategy appears more like a Hail Mary from a leader flailing for an issue to galvanise fear of likely change than a seriously constructed voter persuasion proposition.
These are the figures of a leader who has burnt most – if not all – of his political capital, who the public see as untrustworthy, out of touch and lacking vision. When considering the mishandling of the China card, the diminished stature of the dealer cannot be discounted.
Of course, the PM may have a grander plan, a constant drip, drip of “on-water incidents”, maybe a round of Petrov-style expulsions of Chinese diplomats or academics. Perhaps a Russian invasion of the Ukraine will further heighten local anxiety about the state of the world.
More likely the only national defence consideration on this issue is the one to keep him in power. We know Morrison is at heart a marketeer, testing messages on the run and iterating them until they stick. It took him months of tortious analogy to come up with “the Bill we can’t afford”.
But there’s a broader principle in design and innovation that he would be well served embracing: when it comes to China it is in the national interest for him to “fail fast” and move on to his next confected scare campaign.
Anyone mention “union bosses”?
• Peter Lewis will discuss the findings of the week’s Guardian Essential Report at 1pm on Tuesday – free registration here
