It’s bad for a nation that needs governments with flexibility and agility in the short and the medium term. It virtually guarantees another decade of chaotic short-term government and an even lower public opinion about the calibre of present politicians. For those who think we cannot keep deferring urgent public policy problems, it invites even more questions about the incumbents’ fitness to govern.

That’s not really a party partisan statement. Over the past two decades, Labor tacticians have been as bad as Liberals at this sort of bastardry and counter-bastardry. That the system has seemed so inept that it is constantly spitting out prime ministers, putting the focus on short-term politics and public relations– is not primarily a function of technological change or some sort of fundamental crisis of capitalism, economic liberalism or of the disappearance of sustaining ideals.

It is rather more that politicians are becoming more focused on advantage to their side and their ideology rather than the common good and the protection, maintenance and development of Australian society. They are more obviously preferring their personal and sectoral interests to the public interest. And some – on both sides - would prefer to sabotage the economy and the public weal than to permit anything coming from the other side succeed.

We cannot depend on that growing army of small parties and independents to keep the big bastards honest or to navigate skilfully between rival visions of how Australia should be (or, as in the case of some in the bastard, how it should have been). They are too busy themselves manipulating the system for maximum partisan advantage.

But just as dangerous for the long term, politicians on all sides of the parliament are becoming less focused on being a forum of debate between alternative ideas of political, social and economic management of the nation, up for resolution by the electorate every three years. Parties are instead focused on entrenching their philosophies over the lives of succeeding governments, and on compromising the freedom of action of future parliaments.

It’s always bastardry when outgoing governments, knowing they are doomed, do this but it has been common practice for more than two decades. John Howard and Peter Costello massively overstated the budget “black hole” they pretended to have discovered on coming to office in 1996 – thus “requiring” it to abandon rolled-gold commitments it had made to a host of lobbies and allowing it to argue over several election cycles that Labor was constitutionally incapable of responsible economic and budget management. That was a bit rich coming from Howard, who had, as treasurer in 1983, done worse to Bob Hawke and Paul Keating. In 1996, however, Howard had a point in arguing that the budget he inherited had deteriorated sharply during the election period.

During most of the Howard years, he rarely let fiscal or economic responsibility stand in the way of re-election, as Peter Costello repeatedly complained, most strongly with the hindsight of his memoirs. His budget figures were benefiting anyway from a prolonged economic boom, but far from saving for the nation’s future once the music stopped, Howard and Costello opted for massive tax cuts – ones that were far bigger than the structural budget could afford. There was the (increasingly temporary) popularity of tax cuts. But also, as Costello would confide, handing the money back to voters deprived a Labor government, when one came, of a war chest it could spend on social problems and social engineering.

The last term of the Howard government involved a good deal more than that. It was clear that their time was up, and that the electorate was no longer listening. At that point Howard abandoned any veneer of fiscal rectitude or sound economic management, throwing money and making forward commitments of money at almost every political problem. It got to the point where Kevin Rudd, anyway trying to market himself as essentially fiscally conservative, was protesting that new Howard funding commitments were uneconomic and unsustainable, and that Labor would not follow him down this path.

The Rudd-Gillard-Rudd governments were by no means as profligate and irresponsible as coalition politicians asserted. A good many of their economic problems arose from the global financial crisis, which they managed well by Keynesian pump-priming, and by sharp declines in revenue, partly because of the slowing of the mining boom, and partly because of structural weaknesses caused by Howard-era tax schemes.

Costs were kept under tight control: indeed at percentages of gross domestic product that Tony Abbott and Joe Hockey, then Malcolm Turnbull and Scott Morrison, then Scott Morrison and Josh Frydenberg have been unable to match. The Coalition, moreover, has taxed at higher rates too. Still, incumbent government who have budgets for advertising and public relations in the hundreds of millions can hardly complain that mud thrown by oppositions (on more modest budgets), and media partisans at News Corp about debt and deficit disasters have stuck.

The poison pills left by Labor involved long-term commitments on health, education, and social welfare, including the disability scheme. Once, budgets announced programs and their expected impacts on the budget bottom line over the next three years. Now it became routine to make major commitments, in the billions, with much of the projected expenditure occurring up to 10 years – or four election cycles - away. In many cases, the impact of many of these statements on this year’s budget surplus would be modest – often only in the tens of millions. But the promises, to states, to the private sector, or to taxpayers – for periods long away would be in the billions.

The consequence of the time-bombs left by Labor lay often in promises, made to the states, of indexing expenditure promises. Even when the Abbott government was maintaining health and education spending (where it was) one could be certain that Labor would say that it was an effective cut – because of the failure to match promises made in different economic environments, by different governments, up to six years before. Labor was doing this to effect even during the Longman byelection (which pretty much settled Turnbull’s fate) this year: with (vaguely arguable) claims that local Commonwealth hospital funding had been “cut” by the Coalition, even though it was substantially higher in real terms than in 2013.

Now, of course, Morrison has partially succeeded with plans to legislate an array of small-now big-later personal income tax cuts over a 10-year period. He is now proposing to draw forward by up to three years, previously announced plans for dropping corporate tax rates. This is not presented as an election promise, to be implemented if the Coalition is re-elected, but as a commitment intended to bind (and limit the freedom of action of) the Shorten government nearly everyone now expects in about six months.

So also with energy plans, and with major infrastructure projects, some (such as Sydney road and rail development) of dubious public value, and, probably with an array of industry projects pretending to be defence expenditure on surface ships or submarines. And with COAG deals with the states, including Labor states, where the focus of promises has been on future spending, not spending during this term of government. As for the states, including Labor states, money once promised can never be withdrawn.

And who in this government cares that Catholic systemic schools, and the general private school sector are to get much more money than the formulae would suggest, at the expense of public schools? Or that West Australia gets billions more because of an arbitrary change to an agreed formula for divvying up GST revenue? That’s all lead in the saddle of the next government, not this one.

And with inquiries, by people chosen by this government without consultation with the opposition but set to report to the next government. Morrison is not doing this to improve the debate, but to give an appearance of concern over political issues he is simply seeking to defer. That’s different from what the conservative commentariat call “virtue-signalling” on matters such as freedom of religion, another area for posture but without much actual intention to do anything.

The opposition ought to be particularly alert over the next months, for efforts to take some of this expenditure off-budget. And for expenditure promises, including drought relief, where the primary impact will be in on future deficits, not the one in prospect. That is, of course, quite apart from the fact that, it being electoral and by-electoral season, Morrison is announcing grants, square-offs with lobbies, and making forward promises by the minute.

It is true that oppositions now have access to independent budget advice, able to be used to see some of the traps left by previous governments, and that this Labor opposition has gone further than any opposition since John Hewson in 1993 to show details of its thinking, its philosophy and its plans. But that does not mean that it will not be hamstrung by “commitments” and “promises” made by Morrison covering periods over which he has no expectations of being in government. The more so when we have, in Bill Shorten, a leader whose mimicking of old-style low-profile tactics is generally to blandly agree not to change much that government proposes, except in areas chosen as the election battleground. It is not so much that he assumes that he can win in a canter without much in the way of commitments, but that he believes that he should focus on big hits, as for example with pre-school education.

Sentimental and emotional people of the Left have already noted that Shorten is 120 per cent committed to the national security, national surveillance and border protection state that is now in place, and that he, and his spokesmen, have only mild criticisms to make of its practical administration, particularly under the monolithic department of home affairs. And if there are, as Peter Dutton alleges, some Labor luvvies who are visibly sickened by the conscious cruelty and brutality of treatment for boat people, one can be sure they will get no sympathy or concession whatever, least of all from Shorten, and two key members of his team, Chris Bowen and Tony Burke, both former immigration ministers.

The cynic should also note that Labor has almost no profile on Aboriginal affairs – a field which has gone backwards under the coalition, if that were possible after the policies, approaches and maternalism of Jenny Macklin. There’s a deadly silence about the fate of the university sector, and a fear that the primary and secondary education auction (now that the government has bought off the Catholics) will be less about resources, and more about gimmicks, such as the Rudd era laptops for students.

For me, the test of a Labor government will not only be its promises, and its program on climate change, but its willingness to level with the population about the global crisis and what Australia can and should do about it. The politics of it ought to be more simple now that Morrison, and the relevant ministers, have simply vacated the space, even as there is ample evidence that voters, including many coalition voters, recognises the issues and the need for action, and cannot understand why the party of Menzies is in such thrall to people who are doing the world, and Australia, such harm.

A Shorten government, if it is fair dinkum, will need some space for effective action. That’s space that many coalition warriors, as presently advised, are determined they will not get, whether by politics fair or foul. It’s space that will be hard to find if the practical politics of ordinary government are subsumed in spite, point-scoring, the nihilism of the Abbotts and the continuation of the tribal feuds that would rather see the whole country lose than that rivals prosper.

In 2019 shouldn’t we be able to hope for a contest which stresses some nobility in politics, some commitment to actual democracy and to long-term goals and aspiration, and some mutual respect between people of different philosophy and outlooks.

It’s not so much a question of who started this dreadful game; both have been at fault. But the place might blow up if someone doesn’t declare a halt to the anti-personnel warfare. Or burn up.

Jack Waterford is a former editor of The Canberra Times.