This effort to ‘scrape off the barnacles’, as John Howard apparently used to call it, before the election campaign starts has merely created more of a mess.

The Morrison government is under pressure on almost every front and the Prime Minister appears to be holding the whole endeavour together with scotch tape, a string and a prayer. Internally, the coup to replace Malcolm Turnbull resolved precisely nothing and put the government into minority, and the threat of further defections to the crossbench (or to the Nationals) hangs over the government’s head like the sword of Damocles. Externally, the voters applied maximum pressure by registering their displeasure at the ballot box in Victoria and Wentworth, while Labor and the crossbench proved so adept at applying pressure to the Coalition’s weak spots in Parliament that the government scheduled the bare minimum of sitting days for 2019 it could get away with.

There’s no doubt minority government is harder than majority government, but it’s not impossible if you
have the skills. Julia Gillard managed it effectively for three years, negotiating with the crossbench and
minor parties to pass more legislation per day in office than any almost any other prime minister. But
given Morrison’s inability to resolve the Liberal party’s internal divisions or confront its gender problem,
it is not surprising he scheduled just 13 sitting days before the April budget and likely May election.
All three policies announced this week - religious discrimination, underwriting new coal-fired power and
a national anti-corruption commission - are basically landmines left over from previous battles between
the moderates and the uber-conservatives within the Coalition.

Religious Freedom Act is a solution in search of a problem

There’s ‘very little hard evidence’ of religious discrimination, Philip Ruddock, head of the religious freedom inquiry told Radio National Breakfast on Friday. Like the so-called ‘crisis of free speech’ on university campuses, the government’s proposed religious freedom commissioner and Religious Discrimination Act is a solution in search of a problem. Meanwhile, the real problem of schools being able to legally discriminate against LGBTIQ kids remains unresolved and is being handed to the Australian Law Reform Commission to fix.

The irony is that Morrison was one of the most vocal proponents of the Ruddock review, as a way for then-prime minister Malcolm Turnbull to appease those within the Coalition ranks who were implacably opposed to marriage equality and could not accept that they lost the debate. The Wentworth by-election exploded Morrison’s own landmine when details of the review’s recommendations were leaked to the media during the campaign and the public was rightly horrified to discover religious schools had the power to expel kids for being gay.

The timing for a push to expand the rights of religious institutions could not be worse. The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse showed the public repeatedly and brutally that religious institutions cannot be trusted to put the best interests of children ahead of the reputation of the Church.

Months after the redress scheme for survivors began, only 20 people have received any form of redress and the Catholic and Uniting Church have yet to join up to the scheme. The marriage equality debate showed how far public attitudes have shifted and any moves by the Morrison government to expand the rights of religious institutions at the expense of the rights of gay and trans people will sink like a stone with a majority of voters.

Toothless anti-corruption corruption commission

The government’s long overdue announcement that it will establish a federal anti-corruption body, to be called the Commonwealth Integrity Commission (CIC), is a welcome admission that corruption does not stop at state borders.

There is no doubt the pressure from Labor and the crossbench during the last sitting weeks of Parliament forced the government’s hand on this issue.  Despite assuring the public it has been working on this issue since January, announcing the CIC in the second-last week before Christmas, after Parliament has risen and after describing it as a ‘fringe issue’, sends a clear message to the public about how much of a priority this truly is for the government. The details do the rest: it won’t be retrospective, meaning it won’t be able to investigate corruption that happened under this or previous governments; it has limited jurisdiction and insufficient funding; it lacks
the ability to hold public hearings for corruption; and it cannot take complaints direct from the public or
make its own referrals.

For the past three years, research from The Australia Institute has demonstrated the major gaps in Australia’s federal integrity and accountability system. The Institute’s National Integrity Committee, made up of former judges and corruption fighters, created a blueprint for an effective anti-corruption body including: a broad jurisdiction, independence and sufficient funding, strong investigate powers and the ability to hold public hearings. It is extraordinary that no standing national integrity agency has ever held a public investigation into allegations of corruption and the inability of the government’s proposed Commonwealth Integrity Commission to hold public hearings is just one of the key weaknesses of its design.

Former NSW ICAC Commissioner and member of The Australia Institute’s National Integrity Committee, David Ipp AO QC, has said that “its main function is exposing corruption, this cannot be done without public hearings”. While fellow Integrity Committee member and former NSW Court of Appeal and Supreme Court judge Anthony Whealy QC also flagged concerns that the CIC will need to reach a threshold of ‘reasonable suspicion’ of a criminal offence before it can begin, adding “this will rule out all the sorts of corruption exposed by NSW ICAC”.

As veteran investigative journalist Kate McClymont tweeted on Thursday: “Sunlight is the best disinfectant, so it would be a travesty for a federal anti-corruption body not to hold public hearings … often further witnesses come forward as a result of public hearings”. Luckily, it is the Parliament, not the Prime Minister, that is ultimately responsible for making sure the details are right and that Australia will have an anti-corruption watchdog with teeth.

Underwriting new coal-fired power is bad economics

On the same day the Prime Minister announced the Religious Discrimination Act and the Commonwealth Integrity Committee, Energy Minister Angus Taylor called for expressions of interest in new power generation projects, to be underwritten by the taxpayer - of course.

This is extremely sloppy policy-making. The Coalition is calling on interested parties to pitch projects without the Parliament even setting up legislative framework for the scheme. Moreover, making the taxpayer underwrite new coal and gas-fired power is a disaster economically and environmentally, and the last thing Taylor should be doing if he wants to reduce electricity bills. Efficient coal-fired power is the most expensive form of new energy to build and retrofitting Liddell’s ageing coal-fired power station was estimated to cost around $1 billion, while the price of renewables and batteries are plummeting, putting downwards pressure on wholesale electricity prices.

Not only will this hasty plan lump taxpayers with enormous costs and a carbon liability that could run into the billions (who knows? Not the government), but this plan to underwrite new fossil fuel projects is a down-payment on more intense bushfires, droughts, heatwaves and a bleached Great Barrier Reef for future generations.

Rather than scraping off the barnacles this week, the Morrison government has only succeeded in delaying some fights while highlighting how far the Coalition ship has careened off course.

Ebony Bennett is deputy director of The Australia Institute @ebony_bennett