Sexual assault policies fit pattern of abuse of power

But it's not only open squabbling, leaking and undermining that signifies a party losing a grip on its capacity to rule. It can come also from signs that a party lacks the discipline, the rules, the devotion to tried and accepted processes, and the moral leadership to be able to concentrate on doing the job. After a month of chaos in the Coalition, starting with but by no means confined to the Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, any observer could be forgiven for wondering whether the government, the Prime Minister, or both are doomed.

One might think that this should not be so. As Treasurer Josh Frydenberg has been proclaiming, Australia is emerging from the most challenging economic circumstances in more than 70 years already in a generally better economic position, apart from enormous government debt, than ever it has been. Employment is up. Parts of the private sector are wallowing in government cash or tax incentives - all able to be spent with very little accountability. While Australia's island status, its closure of its international borders, and the efforts of premiers and chief ministers can take their share of the credit, the Morrison government deserves some credit for the way in which it took early charge of the pandemic, and the economic catastrophe that involved, dropped most (but not all) of its ideological blinkers and forged a path out.

Australia's achievement, whether with morbidity and mortality only a tiny fraction of the US, Canada, Britain, western Europe and South America, or with an early economic recovery ahead of most other countries, is no small thing, and will sound heavily with voters when they next come to pass judgment. Most voters, we are constantly told, make judgments based on economic assessments, and on achievements rather than aspirations. In Australia, moreover, governments lose elections rather more than oppositions win them, and though the tenure of the Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison government is now at the point where governments lose, Morrison's energy, and the impact of the pandemic and the recession may serve to be making 2021 seem to be year two, not year eight.

But events of the past month, particularly on issues involving sexual assaults on women, and, more recently, the antics of a class of Coalition minders, have done serious damage to the government and to Scott Morrison. To Morrison first because even men could suddenly see that Morrison had no feeling or empathy for what he would have called "women's issues". After every fresh disaster, Morrison seemed first to dig in, not least with his trademark prevarication, bluster and blame-shifting. Then when it became obvious even to him that he was only making his situation worse, he attempted to retrieve his position by admissions that he had failed to appreciate the issue, with appeals, particularly, to women, that they understand and join with him in a crusade to improve the lot of women. His appeal involved a good deal of onion, including claims about his family that risk ultimately drawing them directly into the political debate. For those inclined to extend sympathy, if not forgiveness, for his wooden headedness he would seem almost immediately to sabotage himself by putting on the snarl, making threats (and false claims) to journalists, and undoing all of the humility and the humanity he had only just been putting on.

Meanwhile, in parliament, his political combativeness, unwillingness ever to concede a point, and his tendency to use carefully chosen forms of words to avoid accountability put all of his least attractive characteristics on display day after day. When the woman allegedly raped in the office of the now Minister for Defence addressed the women's rally, she said that one of the most bitter pills had been that while Morrison had been publicly apologising to her for what happened, she had learnt that his office had been backgrounding selected journalists with supposed dirt on her loved ones. At least one journalist who said he had been backgrounded made it clear that he would give chapter and verse of what had been said, and by whom, if such backgrounding were denied.

Morrison was asked about what he knew of the backgrounding, and if, as he claimed he had not authorised it, what inquiries he had made of his office about whether it had occurred. Day after day, to an identical question he would say that he had no information that any such backgrounding had occurred. He would ignore the question - sometimes asked front on, about whether he had made any inquiries. It was obvious to any one, on either side of the chamber that he would not ask the question of his staff because it would show trademark Morrison politics in action - saying one thing in public while studiously pretending ignorance of what was being done in his name behind the scenes.

If I were in the Labor campaign team, I would be playing over and over again the tapes of Morrison's evasions and prevarications on just this issue alone. So obvious was the effort to avoid telling the truth, that ordinary members of the public would have no difficulty in appreciating his shiftiness, his shittiness, shirtiness and lack of basic decency over a sexual assault which was causing his government political problems. Over the period he was further entrenching that impression over his resistance to any examination of the fitness for office of Christian Porter, and his automatic instinct to defend men in his team who had been accused of blackguarding the rape victim. The problems and impressions were compounded by the evasions and time-wasting of the secretary of his department Phil Gaetjens (a former member of his staff) and the extraordinary spectacle of Australian Federal Police Commissioner Reece Kershaw, in changing his evidence 180 degrees to a parliamentary committee so as to make his statement "agree" with Gaetjens.

Indeed the most politically potent aspect of the events of recent weeks may not be the impetus to changed attitudes over sexual assault, whether in parliament or the broader community. It may be in persuading people that the government's response to this "crisis" is one with its ad hoc, and frequently ham-fisted responses to other crises in the community - including climate change, defence procurement, bushfires, floods, and policies to protect older Australians, veterans, the disabled, and Indigenous Australians. Very little focus on good policy formation, on evidence, or even on the reports of inquiries originally commissioned with a view to putting off action under the pretence of needing the best advice. Hosts of announcements, each with very little substance, but carefully positioned from a marketing point of view to seem engaged, active and caring. Various big splashes of money, almost invariably to mates and cronies in the private sector, with little in the way of accountability requirements. A pattern of governing, and spending, without any apparent overriding principle, or internal scrutiny of value for money. Deep resistance, joined by an increasingly politicised senior bureaucracy, to traditional means of checking and controlling expenditure, or monitoring the behaviour of supposed stewards of the public interest. Conscious politicisation of supposedly independent forms of review. An increasingly corrupt indifference to traditional - perhaps constitutional - principles of fair play, equal treatment and access to public resources, and an increased confidence in the politician's "right" to spend by whim, and to rule by discretion and lack of regard to the spirit and letter of the law.

It is within this sense that one should look at recent weeks for evidence about how the Coalition governs itself - including its appetites - and how it governs "for" Australia. And some will further ask whether, if the system is so compromised, we should assume that economic decision-making, or public health policy has been somehow quarantined from the misgovernment, mismanagement and contempt for the public interest.

It is said that early in the catalogue of Morrison's mismanagement of the issue that some of his advisers asserted that the matters that had come to the fore - alleged rape, the safety of women in parliament and in the wider world - was a "doctor's wife" sort of issue, of intense interest only to the female chattering classes, with little bite in the main electorate, particularly among women predisposed to vote conservative.

On this account it was said, the best political strategy for Morrison was to ignore protests and evidence of increasing anger, and to expect that the marchers and the speakers, having waved their little fists would go home with smug self-satisfaction and let the issue subside until the next occasion to grandstand arose. That attitude, it must be said, seemed also to guide the response of Marise Paine, the Minister for women's issues, whose response to the issue was, if anything, more leaden than Morrison's.

If that was the judgment, it was disastrously wrong, as Morrison now concedes. Nor is the issue, now that it has gained some momentum, likely to go away. There are umpteen inquiries in train - at least three more were announced last week, including, belatedly, requests of the Solicitor General and the Attorney-General's Department that they examine the capacity of Porter to resume any of his legal officer duties. That's on top of an inevitable investigation into PMO backgrounding, after a formal complaint and direct evidence from a journalist. There are also investigations into the boorish behaviour of a group of gay Liberal minders, as well, if more privately, into what can be done about Senator Eric Abetz. Criminal trials, inquests and defamation cases cannot be delayed, deferred, or closed by government.

Labor might think that it has benefited politically, even as it has been aware of the capacity of the issue (or at least any grandstanding about it) to rebound on them. Labor women have been to the fore, because that was the natural thing to do on such an issue. Even if, as women might tartly respond, the real issue needing to be addressed is not the safety and security from assault of women, but the changing of men's attitudes and behaviour. Yet another reason why an already unenthusiastic government may falter.

MORE JACK WATERFORD:

It is, actually, an issue from which the Coalition can lose votes. But it is not necessarily one from which Labor can automatically gain them, even if it talks the talk more convincingly, or - something it has yet to do - weaves recent events into its existing policies.

The electorate may be much more forgiving, even of Scott Morrison, than one might think. There are many issues on which voters feel strongly without their automatically becoming vote-changing issues - particularly when both parties have promised to lift their game. The lack of virtue of some players is obvious: it is not so clear who voters should trust.

The issue has dominated parliament for more than a month, seemingly with a fresh atrocity or evidence of sexist or offensive thinking almost by the day. It has caused good commentary, particularly from female journalists, and, probably, affected their view of Morrison's character, decency and integrity forever. The fury of some journalists is palpable, and many - including some who have failed to call out refugee detention policies or robodebt atrocities - are determined that governments - of either side - will not be let off the hook.

But it is all too easy to assume that a consensus among politically engaged people is an accurate reflection of the mood out in the electorate. That is not to suggest that large numbers of women are indifferent to the issue, or have not themselves been continually anxious and worried about the real risks of sexual assault. But the obvious problem has not been honed into political shape, and the determination that something must be done has yet to emerge with a marketable set of policies for action. Paul Keating once said that to really put an issue on the agenda one had to talk about it until one was blue in the face and sick of the sound of one's own voice. And even then, one had only started.

And there is a real risk of the issue losing momentum as parliament goes into recess, and the number of set-piece occasions (all too limited) to hold government to account decline. Those who are engaged may have great zeal to keep the issue alive, including monitoring all of the inquiries. But Morrison at last has the opportunity - in much more of a vacuum - to make more announcements without substance, on every other subject in the world. There's also the vaccination campaign and the budget, leaks from which will be orchestrated, inter alia, whenever the temperature of the sexual assault issue increases. Political arguments are rarely won simply because they are right, or just, or necessary, or evident common sense. They are won by noise, or by behind-the-scenes influence. The better half of the Australian population is still, in politics, regarded only as a pressure group. Perhaps altering that perception - in Scott Morrison as much as anyone else - should also be on the agenda.