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Change is in the heir

Political editor

Not even two years ago Scott Morrison was riding high of the back of Covid-19. But as the results from the Australian federal election rolled in last night, they issued a stark warning for New Zealand Labour: Beware the perils of Covid incumbency.

At print time, Morrison’s Liberal Party looked to be well short of a majority.

Leading into yesterday’s election, the polls pointed to a win for the Australian Labor Party and its leader, Anthony Albanese.

Both leaders were unpopular, but Morrison’s personal popularity took a dive in the latest Newspoll, published by The Australian newspaper on Friday. Albanese was at -5% net favourability. Morrison was -13% net.

The reasons given for ScoMo’s unpopularity are many and varied, including that the centreright Liberal-National Coalition that he leads has been in Government for nine years across three separate prime ministers.

Perhaps in a sign of desperation, Morrison revealed when he went to vote an asylum-seeker boat had been intercepted off Aussie waters. Australia’s hard-nosed border policy has been a political asset for the Coalition for years.

However, the issues are brutally similar to those facing Labour in New Zealand: postCovid inflation, supply shortages, high fuel prices and a numbing tiredness in an electorate sick of Covid-19’s rules, regulations, disruption and privations.

However, because of the relative size of Australia’s economy, those pinch points that are being seen in New Zealand are less acute, so far at least. Even the Reserve Bank of Australia, which hiked its official cash rate target to 0.35% is still shy of Adrian Orr’s cash rate of 1.5%.

Courtesy of Covid, Morrison, as with Jacinda Ardern, became overexposed with an electorate that first saw him as a decisive leader, then increasingly as shifty and do-nothing. In the broad scheme of things, Australia’s management of Covid-19 was not particularly better or worse than New Zealand’s. Politicians tend to get thanked for jobs well done before people ask ‘what’s next?’.

Covid-19 threw out the decades-long rules of conventional politics. Lockdown restrictions, massive debt runups, wage support and the like may have saved hospital systems from being overrun, but for Morrison, the political bill appears to have become due.

The reality is that Australia’s prosperity has been bankrolled by the huge capital formation that took place during the mining investment boom of the 2000s and early 2010s. Iron ore, coking coal and liquefied natural gas exports underwrite state government budgets and the federal tax take. This has been the case since John Howard’s prime ministership, which ended in 2007. Morrison has done little to improve on this situation. The only creative policy pitched during this election campaign has been allowing firsttime homebuyers to take up to $A50,000 in superannuation out to put towards a home. Australian Labor, the creator of the super system, which is largely controlled by union-controlled industry super funds, is dead against the idea.

For New Zealand, the result – which ever way it goes – is neither particularly good nor bad news. The likely defining aspect of the relationship over the coming years will cover geo-strategic issues: the rules-based international order, managing China’s rise and furtive forays into the Pacific, and the War in Ukraine.

The whole campaign has been a doleful affair. After losing in 2019 with loads of ambitious leftwing policies, Labor this time took a small target strategy: the ScoMo lite.

And, at the time this went to print, it looks to have paid off, though the rise of the minor parties in key seats revealed a level of unease with both the major parties.

But it does sound a warning for the Government here. Australia has been more or less well-governed through Covid, as has New Zealand. But with economic storm clouds gathering, a middling Budget and after two years of frenetic Government and relentless media exposure, the public here could be tiring as well.

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en-nz

2022-05-22T07:00:00.0000000Z

2022-05-22T07:00:00.0000000Z

https://fairfaxmedia.pressreader.com/article/281651078719123

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