Although there are some elements of Scott Morrison’s electoral fortunes that are out of his hands — the emergence of another variant, state border closures — there’s one area of major weakness that’s directly within his control: integrity.
The political realist view of integrity is that, for all the froth and bubble around a federal ICAC, the issue isn’t important for voters and certainly won’t change votes. Voters think all politicians are corrupt, and all governments engage in pork-barrelling, so Morrison suffers no damage from the issue.
Against that, however, is that integrity has become the second string to the bow of the array of independents standing against urban Liberals. Whereas it used to be climate and asylum seekers that characterised centrist independents in the wealthier electorates of Sydney, now it’s climate and a federal ICAC, with so-called “Liberal moderates” incapable of shifting their denialist colleagues on either.
Unlike climate, the issue is readily neutralised. If Morrison wants barnacle-scraping before the election, here’s the easiest of all: a revamped federal ICAC model with real powers that treats politicians on the same level as federal police and public servants is straightforward, and unlike his current model — dictated by News Corp to Christian Porter — would be quickly legislated.
Of course, Morrison has spent much of the past few months demonising effective anti-corruption bodies like the NSW ICAC, so it would represent a sudden reversal. But this is the man who as treasurer embraced the banking royal commission that he spent years demonising as a threat to the nation’s financial stability. Consistency, famously, means nothing to him.
It would be even easier to commit to ending pork-barrelling, because it wouldn’t require legislation.
An extension of the Commonwealth grants rules and guidelines to all Commonwealth funding of any kind, and a tightening of those guidelines to prevent ministers or ministerial staff from making any decisions about funding, prohibiting any communication between ministerial offices and public servants about allocation, and increasing the auditor-general’s budget to conduct more vetting of the administration of grants might start to reassure voters that the blatant rorting of taxpayer money by the likes of Bridget McKenzie and Alan Tudge won’t be repeated.
But wouldn’t this deprive Morrison of a crucial weapon in his reelection strategy? Isn’t there a $16 billion war chest (more like $6 billion, after commercially confidential payment provision is taken away, says Treasurer Josh Frydenberg) waiting to be splashed on marginal electorates?
Two things: there’s little evidence that McKenzie-style rorting delivers any electoral benefit, and any announcement the government makes between now and the election about grant funding will be seen not as manna from heaven by grateful voters, but for what it is — yet more pork-barrelling.
Morrison — leader of the most corrupt government in federal history, and a man devoid of any evidence of integrity in relation to his approach to politics — could offer a Damascene conversion to the cause of anti-corruption.
The cognoscenti might not believe it, but it might do for voters, especially those who traditionally vote Liberal but who are toying with going independent.
