Question of character critical for Scott Morrison and Anthony Albanese in the 2022 federal election

The polls point strongly in one direction - south for Mr Morrison. That's even among groups who supported him last time, who might have been expected to support him this time if a win were on the cards, or whose support is vital to the laying of sandbags in critical marginal seats. Some former supporters appear to have lost the faith, or their patience. There may be nearly two months to retrieve the situation. But the turnaround would have to be of heroic proportions, and from steady operators who will not allow themselves to be distracted. Yet most of the key players on the government side look rattled and off their best game.

Moreover, the polls feel right. I do not believe that journalists, or people located in Canberra are any better at discerning that national mood than observers anywhere else. But there is little suggesting an enthusiasm for the incumbents, for any causes they represent, or for any policies that might be expected to be in peril were the applecart upset. Nor does the government seem to have the calm determination and composure designed to conceal quiet confidence. Instead, there are signs of panic, and evidence that members, including ministers, in precarious seats are focusing on personal goodwill rather than identification with party or leader.

Some, including the Treasurer, Josh Frydenberg, are engaged in desperate battles with independents identifying with climate change. These struggles are taking energy and funds from the main battle with Labor. It's the more pitiable from the Coalition's viewpoint because such contests can neither increase nor decrease the number of right-of-centre members of the Parliament. Return to power involves, at the least, taking seats from Labor members.

Parties have won when most have given the game away and gone only through the motions. Scott Morrison got little help from his Liberal colleagues at the last election, and Paul Keating not much more from his Labor ministers in 1993. It is not a coincidence that both victories against general expectations occurred by a prime minister's success in making the leader of the opposition, rather than the government's record or promises, the issue.

Newspoll detail shows how much ground Morrison must retrieve. It has the Coalition 10 points behind Labor, in two-party-preferred terms: 55 per cent to 45. That is the same with men and women. Among younger voters, 18 to 34, 66 per cent indicated a Labor vote, to the Coalition's 34. Among those 35 to 49, it was 60 per cent to 40.

That is to say that among the 54 per cent of the population aged 50 or less, more than five in every eight voters prefer Labor to the Coalition. With each party at 50 per cent each among those aged 50 to 64, and the coalition being favoured 58 per cent to 42 among those aged 65 or more, the split among all aged 50 or more is about 54 per cent Coalition to 46 Labor.

Labor is decisively ahead, usually by 10 points, whether one has a degree, a high school pass or a trade, and among every household income group, usually by 10 points or so, including the $150,000-or-more class.

A hope without much potential has people describing themselves as Christians preferring the Coalition (54 to 46 per cent). But those of no religion, about the same number more decisively prefer Labor (62 to 38 per cent). Voters speaking only English favour Labor (54 to 46 per cent), but those who speak other languages at home are even more likely to vote Labor: 60 per cent.

In NSW, Labor has 54 per cent, in Victoria 58 per cent, in Queensland only 46 per cent, in South Australia 59 per cent, in West Australia 53 per cent. Newspoll does not give figures for the territories or Tasmania, but other polls suggest their figures give Morrison no grounds for comfort, and, possibly, the loss of three seats.

Morrison is now trying hard to criticise the character and the capacity of Anthony Albanese, whether in terms of his ticker or ability to stand up to his factions, but there is little sign so far that his attack is working among the general population.

Morrison's problem is not of finding the right formula of words to make voters terrified of Albanese or secret Labor agendas. It is of finding the words and actions to persuade voters that the government is deserving of re-election, that it has tapped the popular mood and that it better understands the challenges before the country.

Against this is Morrison's own seriously declining momentum. He has posited issues on which he would like to fight the election, but they haven't seized the popular imagination, and even now he is still adrift, hoping that his budget will save him. Events have also moved against him, and so has his luck. Nothing has gone his way for months. He can't even seem to make national security, or war in Ukraine work for him.

The floods in south-east Queensland and northern NSW might best exemplify the loss of luck. As with the bushfires, it reminded voters of his lack of empathy, urgency and his government's appalling reflexes in moving quickly to help people in great need.

But more than the revenge of nature - or evidence of the more unpredictable weather as a result of climate change - is involved on the luck front. Who would have expected that Brian Houston - a man he one proclaimed as his closest friend and mentor - would be facing disgrace at just this moment? And that Morrison's attempt to distance himself from Houston, as much as his quite proper if learned response of feeling for the victims rather than the perpetrator, would serve to demonstrate his propensity for dissembling, misleading and denying responsibility.

Houston brought back to mind the scandal about Morrison's management of the sexual assault of staffers, and the handling of allegations against members of his own cabinet. In more normal times, some of these issues might have slipped in public consciousness as new issues - in China or the Ukraine, for example, or action to deal with petrol prices and food price inflation - took centre stage.

He has so far demonstrated a cack hand in making the new issues work for him - even with his stern voice, or claim of deep experience, wisdom and judgment. Nor yet has his speciality - making announcements - served to make it seem that spending billions on this project or that - dams, vaccine factories, power sources - are focused on the major issues of national need.

Nor does a program of plugging holes, by making promises extending well out of the budget cycle - address a critical problem. It is that he, as much as Albanese, has made a central issue of his own character and integrity, and his way of doing things. It's a problem compounded by his explicit refusal to describe a vision for the country, other than a vague satisfaction with the way things have always been. And by the apparent want of any central guiding principle in what the government does. And his propensity, when galvanised by public reaction to do something, to handle it by throwing money at private sector mates, cronies and party donors.

That this invariably happens with maximum secrecy and minimum accountability - and, thanks to the approach to stewardship of Treasurer Frydenberg and the Minister for Finance, Simon Birmingham, a failure to claw back public money that should not have been given out. That this approach is in shabby contrast to the mean-minded and illegal approach to the management of welfare benefit - typified by robodebt - tends to underline the allegation that this is a government that takes from the poor to give to the rich. The hope of one day having some sort of accounting for this is one of many for thinking a change of government would serve the public interest.

New governments should hit the ground running, even as they are exhausted by the election campaign, and nearly three dreary years of disaster and pandemic. Party suits, who include Anthony Albanese, generally consider it bad luck to do too much early detailed planning of program, ministry and of machinery of government matters, for fear of counting the chickens before they hatch. This was said to be a sin of the Bill Shorten campaign, down to detailed leaking of the fate of department secretaries.

Talking aloud about an action program can also create fresh campaign issues, including the "discovery" of evidence of likely Labor-Green co-operation in forcing legislation through the Senate.

But a big pause at the beginning makes for trouble. Labor should look busy immediately. It should begin detailed work on its integrity commission - starting by throwing out the accumulated wisdom (or "learnings") on the subject in the Attorney-General's Department, whose fundamental opposition to it was not merely in obedience to government whim but of its own instinct and dislike of being open to account.

A taskforce containing a retired judge or two, some state experience, and maybe some backbenchers, including independents, should be polishing the drafting. A second should be working on the actual agency and on galvanising the ancillary agencies most likely to slow its progress, and, ultimately to drag it down. This includes the DPP and the AFP, and agencies behind the intelligence and security screen seeking special exemptions.

The new government must also show that it means business in restoring confidence in the integrity of public administration and the management of public funds. The Financial Management Act must be restored to pride of place as a fundamental piece of constitutional government. It should contain new attention to specifying, in appropriation legislation, just what is intended and expected in outputs and outcomes. Vague and meaningless phrases - authorising and allowing virtually anything - should go. A program for a dam, or a fast train should have transparent accounting mechanisms showing where and how money was spent.

Australia does not necessarily need a boost in public service numbers, least of all in central departments. But it does need to rebuild expertise in policy formation, development and evaluation, so that it is the primary disinterested and independent adviser to government on policy and programs. This should be funded by a wholesale shift away from the employment of outside consultants - whose advice is rarely disinterested and often not even very expert.

The aim might be assisted by prohibiting the use, inside consultancies, of former public servants, defence or ministerial officers, for at least three years after departure from the public service, with similar rules for former ministers. Ex-politicians who were not ministers, particularly those retired by the electorate, should be on the grass. They should be unable to peddle or prostitute their access, their influence or their inside knowledge of the system for at least two years. A former career in politics does not create a human right, after retirement, for government work.

Various agencies of government need comprehensive reform, including of management, because they have become compromised by deeply politicised processes instituted by previous governments. Urgent work is needed on the NDIS, but also in the funding of aged care and childcare, and the supervision and regulation of such systems.

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Even more work is needed in social security and human services. A highly ideological approach by ministers to reducing access to welfare has seemed to be accompanied by a suspicious attitude among higher public servants that most beneficiaries are scroungers, that their payments are discretions not rights, and that obedience to the actual law is almost irrelevant. The surest - I would say the most essential - evidence of a new system focused on actually helping citizens in need would be the dismantling of its hopeless and incompetent call centres and eternal telephone waits.

A new government should remove the AFP and ASIO from Home Affairs. They should stand alone in neutral agencies. It should dismantle and disband the empire-building intelligence agency inside Home Affairs. The pretence for this amalgamation was "co-ordination" of advice to government; in practice it has caused reduced independence of action, much increased bureaucracy and cost, unnecessarily using up extra appropriations for counter-terrorism work.

Both the AFP and ASIO need reduced co-ordination by outsiders and more internal independent focus on their core work. It could be at the expense of no longer being independent broadcasters on matters well outside of their remit, such as where complaints about state crimes committed by government MPs ought to go, or which academies are imagined to be enemies of the state.

In 2007, Kevin Rudd made Senator John Faulkner a minister for integrity, as well as a wise-voice-at-large inside cabinet telling ministers their ideas were barmy or dangerous and possibly illegal. Faulkner had the brave idea that the appointment of independent officials and membership of boards and other advisory bodies ought to go on merit, by advertisement and interview with officials, rather than as discretions by ministers wanting to reward old factional colleagues, MPs who had lost seats and friends and relations. A short list of exceptions (for example High Court appointments) was promulgated, but the working rule was that if you were not exempt, it went by merit.

Naturally, even succeeding Labor ministers weakened this rule - which should have been legislated. From Tony Abbott on, the old patronage system was restored to the point where the appointment of Incitatus to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal, at $400,000 a year, and similar appointments occasioned no surprise. We need some Faulkner spirit back.

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