Although Parliament doesn’t resume until next week, both major parties seem to have already hardened their arteries, before any effective negotiations have begun. 

The leaders, Turnbull and Shorten, have both stated their positions via “megaphone”, each using a significant public speech to do so - both preferring to rely on their media spectacle, rather than on direct, private negotiation.

Mostly, each has stuck with the sort of rhetoric they relied on in the recent election campaign, short of claiming a “mandate” for their position. Turnbull is proposing an “omnibus bill” attempting to lock the Opposition into supporting certain expenditure savings measures that they said they would support during the campaign, while Shorten is attempting to get Turnbull to agree to his tax proposals that the Government forcibly rejected during the campaign.

This process has already hollowed out their credibility, especially as both have claimed a willingness to “reach across the aisle” in the “national interest”. Don’t listen to what they say, as words mean what they choose them to mean, look at what they actually do!

Essentially, they have already sank back into the mire of politics as a daily media contest, a contest that is unnervingly short-term, mostly negative, sometimes personal, but all about just scoring points, rather than genuine policy development and good government.

With an as yet “unknown”, but potentially disruptive, Senate, real progress on the major policy challenges is most easily made by the two major parties working together, as they have the votes to pass the necessary legislation, without having to negotiate with the “rump” of crossbench Senators. 

A very clear message of the last election was that the electorate is fed up with the old politics and traditional politicians, that has been far too self-absorbed in themselves, and in their own political games, at the expense of good government – you might almost say “any” government.

The electorate is demanding change, but like lemmings, the major parties seem unable to recognize this and to respond effectively. For example, I was told this week how the Opposition is attempting to position itself on the assumption that the Turnbull Government may only last a year. So, it goes, Shorten should position himself as if he is “helping’, a little, on Budget repair, while preserving his position for an early election.

That is, go along now with some expenditure cuts that the Government proposes, but with a view to perhaps reversing them in the quest to win that early election. An example cited, was the Government’s proposal to essentially close down ARENA, the Renewable Energy Agency, by cutting their funding by some $1.3 billion. The Opposition could support this now, in the name of essential Budget Repair, only to promise to reverse it in the run up to an early election, to consolidate their “climate change credentials”. 

True or not, this reveals the very worst of how they play the short-term political game, willingly distorting the opportunity for short-term political gain, even against their commitment to a target of 50% renewables by 2030, and even at the expense of “jobs and growth”. 

Genuine Budget repair demands a structure where they can, and should, negotiate out of the spotlight.