tag:theconversation.com,2011:/ca-fr/topics/backpackers-tax-33353/articlesbackpackers tax – La Conversation2016-12-01T11:20:40Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/697392016-12-01T11:20:40Z2016-12-01T11:20:40ZGrattan on Friday: Can Malcolm Turnbull persuade sceptical voters he is delivering?<p>It’s no wonder Malcolm Turnbull has been desperate in parliament’s final fortnight of 2016 to get some legislative wins. Five months after the election, voters are frustrated by what they see as lack of progress from the government and deeply disappointed with Turnbull.</p>
<p>These messages came from focus group discussions conducted last week by Landscape Research for University of Canberra’s Institute for Governance and Policy Analysis. They no doubt reflect what party polling would be saying. </p>
<p>The Landscape research, done in Brisbane with 26 people aged 19-70 from a range of socioeconomic backgrounds, who were split into five groups, was part of a study exploring the relationship between trust in the political system and attitudes to democracy.</p>
<p>The research showed how out of touch federal politicians are with a critical and disillusioned electorate. Yet while the message is clear that people are sick of how they carry on, the politicians seem unable to change their behaviour. This week’s fiasco over the backpacker tax was a case study. It finally ended in a government-Greens deal late on Thursday after days of unedifying shenanigans all round.</p>
<p>The focus groups found voters are picking up strongly on divisions within the government, and believe his party is constraining Turnbull.</p>
<p>“The ongoing instability of the Turnbull government due to its narrow majority and internal divisions, as well as the adversarial nature of the current political environment, serves to reinforce voters’ views about politicians – they care more about their own political point-scoring and staying in power than working together for the good of the nation,” the Landscape report said.</p>
<p>As one participant put it: “They take a very adversarial approach to each other and they are not actually trying to solve the problems”; another believed the government “isn’t being cohesive because they’re not strong enough. They’re fighting amongst themselves and they’re not listening to the general population.”</p>
<p>These voters were highly predisposed not to trust politicians. They didn’t think politicians could get things done because they believe they have a track record of failing to deliver on undertakings. They see career politicians as out of touch with their concerns.</p>
<p>“They are white men in suits … If they can keep benefiting themselves, I don’t matter,” said a young female hospitality worker. </p>
<p>A retired male customs officer said: “Our political system has lost the plot a bit and no political party is winning a clear majority to make the decisions for which they were elected. They’re hamstrung all the time and having to bicker and fight with the Senate all the time to get things through.”</p>
<p>Many participants had lost hope that Turnbull might drive positive change. They blame what they regard as the government’s stagnation on his leadership, and are very aware of his inability to get his party to go along with him.</p>
<p>“He has to do what his party wants – and his party wants different things to him,” said one participant. According to another: “If Malcolm could, he would fulfil all his promises, but he’s strong-armed by his party.”</p>
<p>“When Turnbull says this and that and then ends up doing nothing you just have hatred for him because he’s the prime minister of your country and you can’t look up to him because he didn’t do what he was supposed to,” said a young female marketing account executive.</p>
<p>As was found in University of Canberra research in the Victorian seat of Indi before the election, these Brisbane voters don’t like Bill Shorten much. Also as the Indi study found – when the question was hypothetical – they regard Turnbull as the better leader to deal with Donald Trump.</p>
<p>In the Coalition partyroom this week, Queensland Liberal National Party MP Michelle Landry warned that core supporters were leaving “in droves” for One Nation. Canvassing Pauline Hanson, some in the focus groups saw the strong showing by her and other independents as a response to disenchantment with the major parties.</p>
<p>“It’s disenfranchisement. People really want change and feel like they’ve been completely let down by the government for so long, they feel like they have no power and no say,” said a 22-year-old university student.</p>
<p>Another participant said: “People have had the major political parties. They know Pauline Hanson’s never going to govern in her own right. But giving people like the Hansons and Xenophons and Derryn Hinches a vote is like giving the majors a kick in the pants and saying ‘get your act together’.”</p>
<p>Others believed people could relate more readily to these candidates than to career politicians (even though Hanson surely falls into the latter category). “The thing we all know about Pauline is that she ran a fish and chip shop. The thing we know about politicians is their political careers.”</p>
<p>But these Queenslanders see Hanson as a poor alternative. “The election showed people are fed up with the major political parties but voters did the wrong thing. They made a mistake by voting for Pauline Hanson because she doesn’t have any real policies,” said a retired nurse.</p>
<p>Others thought Hanson’s popularity was based on a reaction to political correctness and the freedom she gave people to air personal views aligned with hers.</p>
<p>There was also ridicule of Hanson as a joke and a national embarrassment, while some had strong views on what they saw as her despicable racism.</p>
<p>The Landscape report had some sharp observations on political trust generally.</p>
<p>“At the heart of it, electors expect politicians to do the job they were elected to do.</p>
<p>"When politicians and political parties do not deliver on their policies (the reason for non-delivery doesn’t matter), when they waste time (such as bickering among themselves or being badly behaved in Question Time), when they are more interested in themselves than the good of their constituents or the nation (such as short-term policies designed to get them re-elected), when they won’t take responsibility (blaming each other or someone/something else), or when their focus is trying to cling onto power rather than govern (such as dumping prime ministers mid-term), they demonstrate they are not doing the job they were elected to do.”</p>
<p>In these circumstances, people perceive important things are being left unaddressed and see the nation as stagnating. As well, some behaviour by politicians is seen to lead to instability in government. The combination causes people to feel uneasy, and concerned for the future.</p>
<p>“That politicians make them uneasy and feel let down makes voters cranky at their elected representatives.</p>
<p>"So it is not simply that citizens do not trust politicians, or that they are disillusioned with the behaviour and lack of progress. Voters are punishing politicians and political parties for making them feel uncertain, betrayed and scared for the future,” the report said.</p>
<p>As parliament wound up, Turnbull listed various pieces of legislation that had been passed and declared: “We are getting on with our job of delivering on the promises we made to the Australian people … Right across the board, whether it is national security, economic reform, industrial reform or here [with the backpackers tax], in dealing with important tax reform, we’re getting on and getting the job done.”</p>
<p>The next year will test whether he can convince people of that.</p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michelle Grattan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>It’s no wonder Malcolm Turnbull has been desperate in parliament’s final fortnight of 2016 to get some legislative wins.Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of CanberraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/696672016-11-30T12:24:51Z2016-11-30T12:24:51ZTurnbull is happy to horse trade if it gets the nags over the line<p>Malcolm Turnbull didn’t actually trade his first-born this week but it felt like it might come to that.</p>
<p>In a whatever-it-takes frame of mind, the government conceded a great deal to get its legislation to resurrect the Australian Building and Construction Commission (ABCC) through on Wednesday.</p>
<p>So much so that Labor finds itself caught between its attack lines. Does it concentrate on arguing this is draconian legislation hitting the workers, or on claiming it has been emasculated by government backdowns?</p>
<p>Labor spokesman Brendan O'Connor did both. “It would have been a lot easier for Malcolm Turnbull just to change the name of the Fair Work Building Commission because of the backflips the government entertained,” he said.</p>
<p>But “we don’t support the ABCC, we’ve never supported the ABCC, so of course we won’t be looking to continue its conduct and its operation in government”.</p>
<p>This final parliamentary week is replete with contradictions and competing imperatives. It’s not a time for the politically pure.</p>
<p>Turnbull likes to portray himself as a pragmatist who wants this parliament to work. To achieve that he’s had to let a vigorous tail, in the form of assorted crossbench senators, wag the dog.</p>
<p>There have been few limits. The idea of telling the ABC and SBS boards they must have regular public forums, as part of the bid to get David Leyonhjelm’s vote on the ABCC, was little short of bizarre.</p>
<p>That’s not to deride the idea of the forums. Indeed Turnbull may wish he had thought of them when communications minister.</p>
<p>Then for Nick Xenophon there was the elevation of the Murray-Darling water issue to a permanent item on the Council of Australian Governments agenda, where it can be regularly monitored.</p>
<p>Xenophon got nothing of substance on water but decided to be happy enough with having its oversight raised to the level of first ministers (take that, Barnaby Joyce), with some extra scrutiny at Senate estimates.</p>
<p>One can take the view that amending bills often produces a better result, and removing some of the harsh edges of the ABCC legislation falls into that category.</p>
<p>On the other hand, the amount of power in the hands of this or that crossbencher at any particular moment, all of them claiming their own mandates and some with very specific demands outside the legislation being dealt with, is a worry.</p>
<p>Not that it’s new. Tasmanian independent Brian Harradine extracted huge largesse from the Howard government for his home state, and other things besides.</p>
<p>And it could be argued that in the last parliament there was not enough trading to make it functional.</p>
<p>Leaving aside the water and ABC trade-offs, the following were among the concessions made to get the ABCC bill through:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>agreement to a security of payments working group to help protect subcontractors;</p></li>
<li><p>a requirement for preferred tenderers for government building work to provide information about the use of domestically sourced materials and the impact on jobs and skills growth;</p></li>
<li><p>changes to government procurement policy across the board – Australian standards will have to be met for procured goods and services, and for procurements of more than A$4 million the economic benefits to the Australian economy must be considered. This has a distinct whiff of protectionism;</p></li>
<li><p>a two-year grace period for companies seeking government contracts to get their enterprise agreements to comply with the new building industry code. Originally the new code would have applied retrospectively to enterprise agreements struck since April 2014, disqualifying some companies from government work;</p></li>
<li><p>a requirement for employers in the industry to show that no Australian worker is available before they can take on a foreign worker. This was the one successful Labor amendment, passed in the face of government opposition;</p></li>
<li><p>preservation of a number of the existing civil liberty safeguards available to a person subject to examination, which the original legislation would have knocked out;</p></li>
<li><p>a review of the act within the next year;</p></li>
<li><p>making decisions under the act subject to merit review; and</p></li>
<li><p>accepting the onus of proof should not be on employees to prove they held a reasonable concern about health or safety when ceasing work.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>Labor denounced Turnbull as a “horse-trader by nature”, which he is. He’s about outcomes. In business he was about deals. When he was seeking the leadership, he “traded” earlier positions on climate policy and the same-sex marriage plebiscite as part of his pitch for votes.</p>
<p>When Leigh Sales on Wednesday night pointed to the deals he’d done on crossbenchers’ “pet projects” and asked “is your legislative agenda, looking forwards, going to be held hostage by all of the niche interests that all of the crossbench has?”, Turnbull replied: “Well Leigh that’s the nature of politics. We don’t control the Senate and so to secure the passage of our legislation through the Senate we have to negotiate with the crossbench.”</p>
<p>In this case, it was vital for Turnbull to end the year with substantive legislative achievements, which he has obtained. The two double-dissolution bills are through, with tougher union governance rules passing last week.</p>
<p>But having played ball, albeit at a price, on the ABCC, the Senate immediately delivered Turnbull a slap when it rejected the 15% rate for the backpackers tax, and instead voted for 10.5%.</p>
<p>So it was back to the trading room, with Treasurer Scott Morrison – who is so far not budging from 15% – trying to turn around the numbers.</p>
<p>Leyonhjelm has now accepted 15% – in return the government has agreed to drop publication of the names on the planned register of farmers and other employers of backpackers. Morrison was also working on Derryn Hinch and One Nation’s Rod Culleton – he needs one of them.</p>
<p>Failure to get the backpacker tax legislation passed this week would take some of the gloss off the win on the ABCC. Most obviously, it would infuriate the farmers.</p>
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Malcolm Turnbull didn’t actually trade his first-born this week but it felt like it might come to that. In a whatever-it-takes frame of mind, the government conceded a great deal to get its legislation…Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of CanberraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/689952016-11-17T10:36:05Z2016-11-17T10:36:05ZGrattan on Friday: Trumpism has Shorten and Turnbull focusing on the politics of ‘disquiet’<p>Pauline Hanson knows how to hurt. She tweeted this week: “When you look at Bill Shorten’s recent rhetoric it seems Labor is now taking its cues from Pauline Hanson’s One Nation. Good to see.”</p>
<p>Of course Shorten strongly rejects any such thing. But after Donald Trump’s win, the mainstream parties are looking towards those people who, squeezed by economic change, alienated and often angry, swelled One Nation’s vote in July.</p>
<p>Their concerns will be increasingly accommodated in the next couple of years. The question is how far that accommodation will push policy towards more inward-looking and status-quo stances.</p>
<p>In a speech warning against countries retreating from openness, Malcolm Turnbull on Thursday said in an understatement: “The need to undertake reforms that will deliver long-term gains – but which may create winners and losers in the near term - isn’t keenly felt in many parts of Australian society.”</p>
<p>The disruptive effect of Trump’s victory is rippling through Australian politics, delighting Hanson – who is relishing the possibilities that lie in the next Queensland election – but discombobulating the main parties, which know its risks, although for Labor there is also the smell of opportunity.</p>
<p>Trading on the perceived unpopularity of Trump here – 59% believed Australia’s economy would be worse off with Trump in the White House, according to a <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/national/ipsos-poll-shows-what-australians-really-feel-about-donald-trump-20161111-gsnbdt.html">post-election Ipsos poll</a> – Shorten is now referring to Turnbull’s company tax package as his “Donald-Trump-style corporate tax cuts”.</p>
<p>When Shorten addressed the Victorian ALP conference on Sunday the United States was firmly in his mind.</p>
<p>He pointed to “the long-term decline of the economic security of working people [there] – the squeezing of the middle class, the rise of the working poor”.</p>
<p>And “some of the seeds of the disquiet we see overseas are present [and] growing in this country, although we are not there yet”, he said. Labor would “heed the lessons from the mines and mills and factories of Detroit, of Ohio, of Pennsylvania”.</p>
<p>Shorten has a set of slogans, likely to appeal to the disquieted: “Build Australian first. Buy Australian first in our contracts. Employ Australians first.”</p>
<p>Turnbull is also looking to what he describes as the “rising disquiet”, saying the presidential election had taught that policy changes must be fair.</p>
<p>But more problematically, Turnbull wants to define fairness “in a very broad sense”. Rather than looking at winners and losers narrowly, decision by decision, he sees it as a matter of “making sure our overall system is fair, examining the transfers of goods and services over a person’s lifetime and asking ourselves, does this reflect the benchmarks we set ourselves of an open, fair and just society?”.</p>
<p>Short-termism is the hallmark of our politics, however, and the prospect of voters adopting Turnbull’s “broad” concept of fairness in the current environment wouldn’t seem high.</p>
<p>This week the Trump ripples played out particularly over the issue of foreign workers with Shorten, who toured regional areas in Victoria and Queensland, revisiting 457 visas.</p>
<p>“Employers are using and abusing temporary work visas to bring in cheap labour,” he said. “Manipulating the visa system to import and exploit overseas guest workers.”</p>
<p>The government’s reaction was to have things both ways, attacking Shorten for hypocrisy – saying as employment minister he was an “Olympic-grade 457 visa issuer” – but also announcing a tightening (a decision it had already taken) and flagging further action.</p>
<p>At the same time, government and Labor are jostling over the tax arrangements for backpackers, with the opposition trying to cut back the tax rate for them from the Coalition’s proposed compromise.</p>
<p>Labor is also seeking to position its foreign policy stance for the age of Trump but it has found this slippery ground.</p>
<p>Shadow Foreign Minister Penny Wong wrote in an <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/comment/trumps-election-is-a-turning-point-for-australian-foreign-policy-20161114-gsp5kd.html">opinion piece for Fairfax</a>: “We are at a change point, and face the possibility of a very different world and a very different America. Our collective task now is to carefully and dispassionately consider Australia’s foreign policy and global interests over coming months, and how best to effect these within the alliance framework.”</p>
<p>While reaffirming Labor’s commitment to the US alliance she said that Australia needed “to work harder in our region”.</p>
<p>The article was unexceptionable, and the Shorten office had seen a draft. Nevertheless, the government was quick to exploit it, with Turnbull saying this was an instance of “Labor being hopelessly divided on national security”.</p>
<p>It’s not just the government that will face a challenge on foreign policy in the Trump era. For Labor, it’s a matter of striking the right rhetorical balance.</p>
<p>The ascension of Trump will add a new element of uncertainty for Turnbull as he faces trying to regroup in 2017.</p>
<p>With the final parliamentary fortnight starting next week, he hopes to end this year by securing the passage of the industrial relations legislation, including to re-establish the Australian Building and Construction Commission.</p>
<p>The deal with the US to take the refugees from Nauru and Manus Island can be claimed as an achievement, though it can equally be seen as belatedly dealing with a problem. The tough lifetime ban on visiting rights for ex-Nauru and Manus people faces a struggle in the Senate. And the government can only hope there is no reassessment of the refugee deal from the Trump administration when it takes power.</p>
<p>The government’s priorities for next year look demanding. As part of refreshing its agenda, it wants to do something on housing affordability, as well as focus on infrastructure (Turnbull has an infrastructure statement due next week) and cities, linked closely to the jobs narrative. There is a tertiary education policy to be unveiled (finally). A review of climate change policy has to be made.</p>
<p>As we move through 2017 the implications of the Trump revolution for Australia and the responses required will become clearer.</p>
<p>And all this will be against the need for Turnbull to improve perceptions about his performance.</p>
<p>Sydney shockjock Ben Fordham was blunt and brutal when he interviewed Turnbull this week. “Can I tell you prime minister what people are actually saying about you at the moment? … They’re saying you’re not doing a good enough job as prime minister. They’re saying that you are out of touch with the average Australian.”</p>
<p>In the time of Trumpism, there are few worse things to be condemned for than being “out of touch” with average people.</p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michelle Grattan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Pauline Hanson knows how to hurt. She tweeted this week: ‘When you look at Bill Shorten’s recent rhetoric it seems Labor is now taking its cues from Pauline Hanson’s One Nation. Good to see.’Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of CanberraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.