The greatest emergency in Australian politics is not in the federal budget papers. It’s in a different kind of deficit: the democratic deficit whereby, after two decades of broken promises, entitlement rorts and corruption scandals, the electorate has lost faith in the political system. Public trust is at an all-time low. This is not just the Australian habit of tearing down tall poppies. It reflects a slow-burning anger in the electorate, a deep dislike of all things political as people have given up on democratic ideals.
At one time, I thought Tony Abbott understood this problem. Having campaigned for nearly three years against Julia Gillard’s broken carbon tax pledge and put trust at the centre of his covenant with the Australian people, one would have thought the Prime Minister had just two rules for government. One, keep all of his promises; and two, do as much as he could thereafter to reduce the budget deficit.
The Coalition’s much-touted debt tax, however, has sidelined this commonsense approach. Abbott has lowered himself to the status of any other hustling, two-bit political shyster. As acts of folly go, this one is a cracker. A man who put everything on the line by promising to keep each and every one of his election promises has crashed at the first honesty hurdle. He already had an integrity problem, a hangover from last year’s travel rorts scandal, but a broken tax promise is much worse. Abbott has handed to Bill Shorten the political sword he used so effectively in opposition: slashing a government to the ground on the core question of trust.
...
It [the Commission of Audit] was useful only for revealing how senior Liberals see the future of community services in Australia, with an end to universality and the residualisation of the public sector. Contrast this with Abbott’s 2013 election manifesto when he campaigned as Gillard-lite, making extravagant promises for paid parental leave, Gonski school funding, the National Disability Insurance Scheme and the maintenance of carbon tax compensation (sans the tax itself: compo for nothing).
On top of this largesse, Abbott promised no net cuts to education, health, defence and pension spending, plus no new taxes – a magic pudding approach to budget management.
The gap between these commitments and the Commission of Audit report’s recommendations is being felt in two ways.
The first is in broken promises, as the government scrambles to do something meaningful about the budget deficit.
The second is in political frustration, as right-wingers come to realise that Abbott is something of a straw man: useful for turfing Labor out of power but hopeless at winding back the welfare state.