The end-of-year reflections by Prime Minister Tony Abbott and Treasurer Joe Hockey were a reminder of the federal government's surprisingly poor year. The measure has been the government's perilous position in the polls. The surprising elements of the year that have generated these poor polls have been broken promises, breaches of trust and unfair budget measures. These elements have been multiplied by so-called marketing and communications failures. Too many of these elements recall the equivalent failures of the outgoing Gillard government. This is a new government that has patently not learned from recent history.
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A good dose of humility and repentance would have served the government well at year's end. But Abbott and Hockey did not choose to go there. Instead, under the guise of sweeping away the barnacles on the ship of state, Abbott did nothing of the kind. He gave notice that he would tweak his paid parental leave scheme but provided no details and precious little humility.
He replaced the $7 Medicare co-payment with a cut of $5 in the Medicare rebate. This makes little difference but Abbott dared to claim it would make a good policy better. Hockey, for his part, when asked whether he had made any mistakes during the year, admitted only to failures in marketing his policies and gave no evidence that he had learned any lessons about the more important mistakes in the content of those budget measures. The government missed the chance to begin 2015 with a cleaner slate.
If the failure of the government to learn from history has been a surprise, 2014 has also been a welcome, stable year in federal politics. The four main elected leaders, Prime Minister, Deputy Prime Minister and Nationals leader Warren Truss, Labor leader Bill Shorten and Greens leader Christine Milne all held their positions, despite whispers about the performance of all four. However, among unelected leaders, Governor-General Quentin Bryce has been replaced by General Peter Cosgrove and NSW Governor Marie Bashir by General David Hurley.
The federal parliament has also remained in unwelcome focus as the government struggles to pass its legislation. In 2013 the focus was on the Gillard minority government. Legislation did pass but extraordinary attention was still devoted to Rob Oakeshott, Tony Windsor, Andrew Wilkie, Adam Bandt, and Peter Slipper among others in the House of Representatives and the Greens in the Senate.
They are all now pretty much forgotten but they have been replaced in the public imagination by the antics of Clive Palmer and the Speaker, Bronwyn Bishop, in the House and the eight cross-bench senators, six of them new. Jacquie Lambie, erstwhile Palmer United Party member, stands out, but each of them has attracted some attention. John Madigan and Lambie have left their respective parties, while Nick Xenophon has started a new one. Bob Day and David Leyonhjelm have their own party labels, but behave as though they are independents.
At a deeper societal level, 2014 has been a year full of massive threats and social failures. The recent killing of the hostages in Martin Place came on top of the global threat of Islamic State, which has involved not just the commitment of Australian forces but a significant number of Australian citizens joining IS to fight in Syria and Iraq. The threats have also involved the dual Malaysian Airways tragedies with the loss of hundreds of lives, including those of about 30 Australians. There has also been a threat of a different kind, the Ebola virus in Africa, which Australians have played a part in fighting.
As dreadful as these international threats have been, the internal social failures revealed during the year should rank even higher among our concerns. Revelations by Royal Commissions and other enquiries have revealed a society riven by endemic corruption and institutional sexual abuse. Too often we fail to stand back to take in all these social failures as a whole. The enquiries have included the Royal Commission into Institutional Child Sexual Abuse, the New South Wales Independent Commission against Corruption, the Royal Commission into Trade Union Corruption, the various enquiries into sexual harassment and abuse in the armed forces and the Royal Commission into home insulation.
These revelations, to which could be added some damaging activities by financial institutions, of widespread individual and institutional failure, corruption and crime have rocked Australian society during the year but perhaps not to the extent that they should have, because most of our most reputable and respected institutions have deservedly been called to account.
As the year draws to a close, it has contained so many political issues that finding a top 10 is next to impossible. I have already mentioned child sex abuse and sexual harassment in institutions, corruption in public life, the dynamics of the new Senate, the failure of the government to pass so much of its Budget and the Malaysian Airlines tragedies.
To those five I would add the stopping of the asylum seeker and refugee boats, the compromised abolition of the carbon tax, the rise to prominence of Foreign Affairs minister Julie Bishop, associated with major free-trade deals, the G-20 and Vladimir Putin, and the beginning of the commemoration of the centenary of World War I, highlighting the military in Australian society. Finally there have been a range of cuts: cuts in support to the motor vehicle industry, cuts to the public service and hence to Canberra, effective cuts in defence force pay and cuts to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
These 10 issues should make us pause over the Christmas-New Year period. We will see most of them again in 2015.
John Warhurst is an emeritus professor of political science at the Australian National University.
