Great politics and poor policy undid the Coalition. But one thing might have saved it

There is, simply, no substitute for doing the work. Especially when you’re in a challenger position. Particularly when your opponent is a maestro on the political tools.

The Coalition is bust. Despite successfully holding the prime minister to account for his lacklustre and politicised response to the Bondi terror attack, it dissolved when parliament was finally recalled. And, as many commentators have correctly noted, the fragments formerly known as His Majesty’s opposition have no one but themselves to blame.

Liberal leader Sussan Ley was right to call for parliament to be recalled urgently over summer. The job of running the country can’t be done on the schedule of a French plumber. If something as serious as the mass slaughter of peaceful citizens takes place, there is no excuse not to go straight back to work.

From December 15, or as soon after as practicable, the federal parliament should have been back in session, developing terms of reference for a royal commission into the failures which gave succour to antisemitism and allowed it to kindle into violence. Our elected representatives should have been working through details of how legislation needs to be improved to deal with violent religious and ideological extremism, as well as the failures of the gun licensing system. Instead, the prime minister spent a month denying the need for a royal commission.

When he finally recalled parliament, just a smidge before the scheduled resumption in February, he dumped a U-Haul full of toxic waste into an omnibus bill on hate speech and gun control and demanded it be passed as a matter of urgency. The Coalition (RIP) naturally pushed back, as did the Greens. Everyone could see it was an improvised explosive device masquerading as draft legislation. The bill was split, but the flaws weren’t all fixed. Yet the Liberals caved to the political pressure being applied by the prime minister.

They hadn’t done the work they needed to over summer if they were to resist. Instead of going through existing hate speech legislation and considering whether it had weaknesses, consulting experts on whether there were areas that could reasonably be strengthened, as well as examining past judgments to discover why the existing laws had failed at the point of enforcement, the opposition contented itself that it was out-politicking the PM.

There is no excuse for this. Of course, the opposition doesn’t have the same resources available to the government. Sucks, doesn’t it? Still, if you want to command the resources of government again, if you genuinely think you have a better case to run the country, you just have to do twice the work with half the inputs.

Nor did it have the moxie to prepare a line to counter the prime minister’s claim that they should pass a bill that still concerned many as a matter of urgency. There was an obvious one: “We’re behind schedule because doing this job properly takes weeks and thanks to the prime minister, we’re only just starting.” But then, that might have highlighted the fact that the Coalition hadn’t done any prep work either.

Most who voted in favour of the bill seem no better able to articulate their reasons for doing so than those who didn’t. The fact that many in the Jewish community wanted strengthened hate laws is not reason enough by itself to defend a vote for the bill. Nor is the danger of making the perfect the enemy of the good. These are valid considerations, but they are far from a coherent rationale.

The press didn’t expose this because it no longer expects politicians to think in paragraphs. It’s a sign of how bad things have become. Nationals senator Matt Canavan did read the bill and, in the wake of the subsequent Coalition split, went on ABC TV’s 7.30 to explain why he voted against it. A discussion between a parliamentarian and a journalist who’d both read the legislation might have been informative. But interviewer David Speers wouldn’t give Canavan the time to make his case or choke on his own words. Perhaps politics has succumbed to a culture of low expectations.

It’s becoming a pattern. At the beginning of 2023, the scope of the Indigenous Voice to Parliament, which Albanese had committed to as a legacy-defining issue, was unclear. After launching the wording for the referendum question in the middle of the previous year, the prime minister had, unaccountably, done absolutely no work to explain why this was the best formulation. Instead, we were told that everything we needed to know was in the Calma-Langton report. This was dutifully repeated by many media outlets. So I read the Calma-Langton report. It was less than 300 pages – not a big read for anyone who deals with policy. The prime minister apparently hadn’t. The answers to the questions people were asking weren’t there, as I laid out in this masthead.

Eventually, the Voice referendum failed because Albanese could not explain (beyond saying that it was what Indigenous people he was speaking to wanted) why he thought the wording was right as it was. He just refused to amend it. The Coalition articulated clear reasons, including in a devastating dissenting report led by Keith Wolahan. People who “didn’t know, voted no”. The people who did the policy work ultimately prevailed. Yes, the Advance campaign and the leaders of the Coalition parties played a key role in crystallising and popularising concerns, but it was the government’s failure to do its homework that opened the door to failure.

The lesson the prime minister seems to have learnt is not to leave his opponents the time to expose him. Great politics, poor policy – which makes it ultimately a betrayal of the national interest.

If there is one lesson for the remnants of the prime minister’s self-conquering opposition, it is that there is no replacement for hard policy yakka in taking on a man who has made political manoeuvring his lifelong study.

The right person to unite the oppositional fragments will have to be prepared to work at least as hard as the taxpayers they claim to represent.

Parnell Palme McGuinness is an independent insights and advocacy strategist. She has done work for the Liberal Party and the German Greens.

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