Morrison returns to Liberal first principles

The Morrison Government’s focus on recreating jobs lost in the pandemic marks a welcome return to first principles. By David Furse-Roberts.

With an election year upon us and promising signs of a receding pandemic, the Prime Minister this week turned his attention to how Australia may flourish once again in a post-COVID world. Addressing the National Press Club on 1 February, Scott Morrison acknowledged that the nation had faced extraordinary times but signalled that now was the time for Australia to recover its enterprising spirit from a pandemic which has held it back. In so doing, his speech was noteworthy in its appeal to apply classic Liberal values to the economic and social challenges of today.

As expected, much of the PM’s address focussed on the government’s management of the pandemic. Morrison spoke of not only the public health response, but of the economic measures designed to help Australians overcome the acute losses to their businesses and livelihoods.

As important as it was for the Prime Minister to reiterate the public policy challenges of the pandemic, the real message of his speech was the need for the country to shake off its COVID-19 torpor and spring forward with confidence.

In his vision for a re-energised Australia, Morrison set his sights squarely on job creation as the means to driving economic recovery. For the Prime Minister, the creation of more jobs would not only fuel economic growth but enrich the human capital of all who are gainfully employed. Reminding his audience of the transformative power of employment, he declared:

Jobs change lives. They change families. They change communities. They give Australians purpose and independence. They free them from the clutches of welfare and dependence. And they do the heavy lifting of transforming the budget also.

In setting concrete targets, the PM pledged to reduce unemployment to less than 4% in the second half of 2022, observing that ‘we have not seen this in Australia for almost half a century’.

The PM’s vision to reduce unemployment to such levels is not simply a wishful hankering for the days of near full employment but heralds a welcome return of the Liberal Party to first principles.

Whatever views people may have held on the public health justification for ‘lockdowns’, there is no doubt that the enormous job losses sustained were extremely detrimental to the material, social, emotional and spiritual wellbeing of the millions of Australians affected. By seeking to recreate the jobs that have been lost, the Morrison government is doing something tangible to reaffirm the Liberal Party’s belief in the innate dignity of labour and its intrinsic importance to the worth of the human individual.

Although the value of work is widely regarded as a core Labor Party value, it is also an ideal that courses through the veins of the Liberal Party, informing equally its philosophy and practice.

For Robert Menzies, gainful employment was not simply about “earning a living” but key to an individual’s sense of purpose and belonging. Amongst other things, work afforded the space to apply one’s talents and cultivate new ones, opportunities for professional development, workplace camaraderie, the satisfaction of actively contributing to society and due reward for effort.

As such, a job was the best form of welfare. As the economists Henry Ergas and Jonathan Pincus appreciated in their chapter from Menzies: The Shaping of Modern Australia, the goals of Menzies’ social welfare policy were primarily pursued ‘by an emphasis on job creation rather than through transfers’ of government revenue. For the nation as a whole, Menzies saw the creation of more jobs as the primary means by which greater numbers of Australians could transition themselves from being on ‘the list of beneficiaries’ to the ‘list of contributors’.

For the Liberal Party founder, one of the great duties of capitalism in the post-war world was ‘to provide civilised working conditions’ and ‘to provide constant employment for as many people as possible’. That same vision evidently drives the Morrison government today in its quest to reduce unemployment to less than 4%.

Like Menzies, Morrison appreciates that reducing unemployment will not only grow Australia economically but improve people’s daily lives. In his words, it will enable ‘families and local communities to plan for their future with confidence’. Importantly for the Prime Minister, low unemployment augers well for the future of our children:

It means that when our kids leave school, or finish their apprenticeship or university, they can focus on the job they aspire to rather than worrying about whether they can get a job. There is no more important vision than having a country where we enable our kids to realise their dreams about what they want for their life.

As well as allowing people to pursue their dreams, Morrison also appreciated that more jobs can allow Australians to ‘give back to their community wherever they can’. In other words, they become cheerful subscribers to Menzies’ ‘list of contributors’. These outcomes go to the heart of what another of Morrison’s predecessors once termed the ‘human dividend’. In his 2010 biography, Lazarus Rising, John Howard reflected that:

Good economic policy was not an end in itself; that economic changes made no sense unless there was a human dividend. The clearest human dividend was, undeniably, reduced unemployment, so important to enhancing human dignity and making inroads into poverty.

When Howard assumed office in 1996, unemployment in Australia sat at 8.51%. By the time he left in 2007, it had fallen to 4.38%. With Morrison similarly committed to driving down unemployment, the human dividend of more jobs will yield a rich return for a people who have sacrificed so much through this pandemic’s season of trial.