Plots and Prayers by Niki Savva;

Author:Niki Savva;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: POL000000, POL015000, POL055000
Publisher: Scribe Publications
Published: 2019-07-01T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER EIGHT

Oh, Mathias

What made Mathias Cormann’s defection hurt all the more, apart from the fact that Malcolm Turnbull and his office trusted him implicitly, was that during the Longman by-election campaign, Turnbull told his advisers he wished he had killed off the second phase of the company tax cuts in June. In fact, he had told his leadership group they had to be either dumped or passed by the time parliament rose on 28 June. The reason they continued to live on, and why his treasurer, Scott Morrison, backed him to head off previous attempts by cabinet ministers to dump or reshape them into cuts in personal income tax, or bigger cuts for small business, was because Cormann kept insisting on having one more chance to get them through the Senate.

When Turnbull imposed that deadline of the final fortnight of the parliamentary sitting, no one in the tight-knit leadership group – more secure in terms of leaks than the cabinet – which met every sitting day in his office, spoke up against it. Not even Cormann. Everyone agreed. Turnbull told the group that the company tax cuts were a barnacle that had to be removed. Several members of the group – which included the prime minister; the deputy Liberal leader, Julie Bishop; Morrison; the Nationals’ leader, Michael McCormack; Cormann as finance minister and as leader of the government in the Senate; his deputy, Mitch Fifield; and the leader of the House, Christopher Pyne; plus their most senior staff – recall Turnbull saying this at the beginning of that first sitting week, and then repeating it at the beginning of the second sitting week.

Everyone seemed to be in furious agreement that it was the right call to have them dealt with before parliament got up for the winter recess, and definitely before the five by-elections scheduled for Super Saturday, 28 July. No one demurred when Turnbull issued the edict, but, incredibly, after Pauline Hanson welched on the deal to pass them, Cormann pleaded for yet more time. He was this close, this close, he kept telling Turnbull. He was still confident he could get Hanson and the other crossbenchers across the line. He wanted one more chance. Turnbull, backed by Morrison, relented, and gave it to him, because Cormann had come so tantalisingly close to getting agreement, because Cormann’s arguments that governments should stick by their convictions had merit, and because Turnbull’s faith in the ability of the finance minister to deliver, given his record with the recalcitrant senators, was so absolute.

There had been attempts before this to kill off the second phase of the package, which had never been popular and which had given the opposition leader, Bill Shorten, a bottomless, poisoned well of choice lines to hurl at the government and the prime minister. The previous deadline was before the May 2018 budget.

The government’s narrative, that the tax cuts would boost jobs and growth, was no match for Shorten’s cut-through line promising better hospitals and schools, not bigger banks,

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