Thus spake Mungo: Time to explode with big ideas

Bill Shorten, says the government’s environment minister Greg Hunt, is a nice guy, but hopelessly out of his depth.

Coincidentally, that’s much the same way the environment feels about Greg Hunt, but that’s another story.

Hunt’s more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger chiding of the opposition leader is based on the fact that Shorten has spent his time this year fomenting resistance to a rise in the GST. And indeed he has: Shorten has been running around the country accosting hapless voters in precisely the style of Tony Abbott warning of the frightful consequences of a carbon tax.

The venues are different; Abbott haunted small businesses, while Shorten is infesting the aisles of supermarkets. But the message is the same: the proposal will wreck the economy, destroy the livelihood of millions, leave Australia mired in poverty and misery.

But, insists Hunt, there is a key distinction: the carbon tax was real – or at least it became so after the 2010 election, although Abbott had been inveighing against any form of pricing carbon emissions well before then. Indeed, he had won the party leadership on the basis of what was, at that stage, a policy rather than a bill before parliament.

The difference, insists Hunt, is that right now ‘there hasn’t been any proposal, policy, preferred option put forward to change the GST.’ And he’s right: but that is exactly the point.

All Malcolm Turnbull and Scott Morrison have done so far is canvas various ideas – what they like to call a conversation, although in fact they are talking only to each other, and in total privacy. But the leaks, deliberate or otherwise, make it clear that a rise, in either the rate or scope, or both, of the GST is definitely on the table – perhaps even their plan A. Sooner or later Turnbull will have to tell us: is it on or isn’t it? And when he does, it will give Shorten a win.

If the answer is yes, then Shorten will say that he told us so: all the shilly-shallying was no more than a deceit and a deception. The government was always going to push for a GST increase, it was always intending to slug the workers and their families, he has warned them and he was right: now the campaign proper can begin, vote against a referendum on this cruel and unfair impost.

But if the answer is no, Shorten will say that he had called the government’s bluff; in the face of his relentless crusade, Turnbull and Morrison backed off. Shorten saved the honest toilers from the terrible fate their harsh rulers had in mind for them. Cynical, perhaps but potentially very effective. Shorten’s strategy may be derided as premature at present, but it makes perfect political sense.

And, let’s face it, he had to try something. Hunt is right about one thing: Shorten’s year of big ideas last year got lost somewhere along the way. It was not that there were no ideas: Shorten talked about superannuation, multi-national tax evasion, infrastructure, climate change, education, health, welfare – there should have been lots to talk about. But there wasn’t: Shorten simply failed to break through.

The ideas were washed away in days as more urgent matters (most obviously the erosion of Tony Abbott) took precedence. And infuriatingly, some of Shorten’s best ideas were later taken over by his opponents: his proposal to beef up research and development was gleefully appropriated (Shorten would no doubt say misappropriated) as Turnbull’s signature tune: innovation.

The story of last week was not the likelihood and consequences of a GST rise, but Shorten’s taste in salad leaves – the relative merits of iceberg and cos.

The year of ideas proved a fizzer; so Shorten abandoned defence and turned to attack. Negative, certainly; but he had learned from a master. If Abbott could succeed through doing nothing except destructive and misleading diatribe based on slogans and photo opportunities, why couldn’t he?

Unfortunately the answer is obvious: he is not Tony Abbott, but, far more importantly, Malcolm Turnbull is not Julia Gillard. Turnbull is not invulnerable, and his stellar popularity can, and almost certainly will, be tarnished before the next election. But he is smart, lawyer smart and media smart. He is not going to fall into the same traps, the same gaffes and miscalculations, that beset both Gillard and Kevin Rudd. And he has an electoral buffer; Gillard and Rudd were in a minority government when Abbott struck, while Turnbull has a comfortable bit of fat to shed – he would rather not shed it, but it’s good insurance.

It is unfair to Shorten for Greg Hunt to dismiss him as just desperately looking for something: ‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen anybody in the opposition leader’s job look as lost as he does now,’ Hunt has concluded patronisingly. But Shorten is not lost; knows what he is doing and why he is doing it. What he does not know is how to make it work – how, to explode with the big idea which will finally capture the imagination of the disillusioned voters and sway the doubters and drifters behind him.

But in the meantime, he at least has a weapon with which to fight, and while it might not be a decisive one, it has proved in the past to be a potent one – just ask John Hewson, or even John Howard. The big problem is to make people take him seriously.

This is Hunt’s real agenda – to refuse to engage Shorten, to laugh him into irrelevancy. And for the moment at least it seems to be working. The story of last week was not the likelihood and consequences of a GST rise, but Shorten’s taste in salad leaves – the relative merits of iceberg and cos. Diverting and even funny at times – a lot better than his zingers — but not quite what is needed from an alternative prime minister.

So Shorten’s immediate task is to get out of the comic role in which Hunt and many of the commentators are trying to cast him, and make the drama real. Eventually Turnbull himself will have to provide the denouement, but in the meantime all Shorten’s followers can do is channel the horticulturalists: pyrethrum. Or, more colloquially: lettuce spray.