SIMON BIRMINGHAM: Scare campaigns may help opposition vote but not national interest

You can tell a lot about a potential prime minister by how he or she behaves as leader of the opposition.

Will it all be politics, or are there national interest genes? Is there the ability to put politics aside and shift gears when something is important to Australia’s long-term interests?

Peter Dutton is proving to be a leader with a national interest perspective when it comes to important calls.

Yes, of course he is playing a harsh political game. This is the nature of our adversarial system, and if you let the other side crush you, your chances of winning are zero.

An opposition is there to provide the view of an alternative government and to challenge a government that is making bad policy decisions that are against the national interest.

In several major calls in recent months for NDIS reform, aged care reform and social media reforms, Peter Dutton has shown how he can and has abandoned his partisan cards in the name of the national interest.

The National Disability Insurance Scheme has been the biggest change to government services in recent years.

No decent Australian would dispute the intent of the NDIS. But when the cost of the NDIS, which now supports more than 660,000 Australians, began to exceed the cost of Medicare, which supports all 27 million Australians, it was clear that its sustainability was in doubt.

The Morrison government has sought to make the NDIS sustainable by tackling a rise in eligibility, an explosion in costs and a crackdown on some questionable services provided at taxpayers’ expense.

However, in a crude example of doing politics before making policy, the Albanian opposition at the time blocked any reform. Worse still, they resorted to direct political scare tactics, urging people to vote for them to “save the NDIS”.

Enter government and Anthony Albanese suddenly discovers that the NDIS sustainability issue is now his problem. Lacking any pre-election policy to address this problem, Labor has a two-year review in place, which appears to have resulted in policies that are very similar to the reforms proposed by the former Liberal-led government. Quelle surprise!

Before the election last year, Peter Dutton could easily have copied Albanese’s tactics, dusted off Labour’s own scare campaign and tried to capitalize on the concerns of the disabled community.

But he didn’t. Peter Dutton put the national interest first. By ensuring his team voted for reforms, he delivered an estimated saving of up to $3 billion a year to help the budget, taxpayers and NDIS sustainability while providing the support participants needed.

Elderly care was a similar story. It is politically easy to spend more on aged care, but determining who will pay for it is much more difficult. This reflects the obvious challenges and risks that come with an aging population.

The aged care royal commission has delivered its final and expensive report in the final term of the Morrison government. Our latest budget responded to the royal commission and built on a five-year plan to improve aged care with new home care packages, respite services, training places, retention bonuses and infrastructure improvements.

Following the change of government, Dutton realized that the implementation of reforms would only be successful if they were affordable and sustainable in the long term.

Peter Dutton made clear in his first budget response speech that the Liberal Opposition, under his leadership, would work with the Labor Government to deliver modest fiscal savings in aged care as well as the NDIS.

True to his word, instead of a scare campaign about how much more retirees or pensioners might have to pay, Dutton led the Opposition last week to vote for reforms that the Government said would save an estimated $12.6 billion when fully implemented over 11 years.

Dutton’s responsible stance is a far cry from Labour’s infamous Mediscare campaign against Malcolm Turnbull, which was based on a fantasy policy.

Peter Dutton could have tried to curry favor with powerful tech moguls like Elon Musk even over social media reforms, but instead he stood up for the welfare of our children by leading Labor to adopt social media restrictions this week.

Of course, not everything is positive. Because the test of political leadership is measured not only by what an opposition leader supports, but also by what he opposes.

Again, it takes faith and strength to stand up to one-time cash splashes, one-time student debt cancellations, or massive government subsidies to hand-picked industry winners.

Dutton demonstrated this belief and strength by rejecting billions of dollars in populist spending that saw Anthony Albanese fail to explain where the money was coming from or how it would make Australia stronger.

Australians will weigh many things at the next election. The proven track record of an opposition leader who is willing to both put the national interest first and make tough decisions should rank high in their assessment.

Simon Birmingham shadow foreign secretary