Scott Morrison made a declaration of national ambition this week. He wanted Australia to be the world’s “model” country. “I want Australia to be in the leadership pack, if not even at the front of that pack, when it comes to our success,” he told reporters in Melbourne on Thursday.

“I want us to be the model jurisdiction in the world.” This is an admirable sentiment, the sort of ambition and leadership Australians want from their national leader.

But he was talking about only one particular field – the digital economy. It’s a vital field, and a commendable aim. He announced a series of policy steps to tame the Big Tech buccaneers and protect Australia’s national interests. Among those interests were the privacy of citizens. And, he said, he was also advancing “the safety of our children at the same time as realising the benefits to our economy that comes from these digital technologies”.

“We want our cake and we want to eat it when it comes to digital in Australia,” said Morrison. “We want the benefits for the the public and our economy.” Absolutely.

His government is pioneering in bringing these rampaging multinational corporations into the realm of civilised behaviour. Morrison, with New Zealand’s Jacinda Ardern, led the world in demanding that Facebook and other sites prevent the live-streaming of atrocities after the Christchurch terrorist attack.

And now he’s moving to the broader agenda. Big Tech has had 23 years to do exactly what Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg urged in his company’s old motto: “Move fast and break things.”

Scott Morrison has the opportunity to transform Australia’s politics as well as its economy and climate policy. Illustration: Jim Pavlidis

Because 23 years ago, the US Congress passed a law that actually suspended the normal operation of law so that the tech industry could have unique advantages, section 230 of the US Communications Decency Act. This gave the tech companies a special immunity – they’re not responsible for what others put on their platforms.

That is the root of the problem. No one noticed when they were quirky, fun, garage start-ups. But now that they are among the biggest and most ruthless corporations on the planet, governments everywhere are waking up.

With the Big Tech firms blithely enabling child abuse, criminal fraud, rampant misinformation and foreign undermining of democratic elections while making vast profits from it all, Morrison stated that “we are not going to put up with this”.

So why stop there? On the same day, in the same press conference, he addressed the bushfires, drought, and climate change. Why not declare his ambition for Australia to to lead the world in firefighting best practice and innovation, drought management and climate change?

But no. Suddenly the emphasis was on the limitations of Australia’s powers, not the breadth of its ambitions. He didn’t squarely address the problems but stressed that existing government policy was adequate.

“The Commonwealth, the Federal Government, is responding to all of the needs that have been presented to us by our state and territory authorities,” he assured.

“We have over 200,000 registered firefighters in this country. That is an enormous, an enormous national resource, which we value greatly. They are supported for their equipment and needs by our state and territory governments. And that is where that support is provided. And they deal with the Commonwealth for broader nationally coordinated efforts.”

Good to know, Prime Minister, but hardly leadership. Decoded, “it’s someone else’s problem, but we help when we’re asked”.

Illustration: John Shakespeare

He made the case for Australian activism on the digital economy, but he argued for complacency on the urgent crisis preoccupying his people.

If anything, he sought to minimise the current demands for help and leadership as being merely youthful hysteria at a bit of smoke haze: “I’m a Sydneysider and I know how unusual it is to see that haze across my city. And I know how distressing that has been, particularly for young people who wouldn’t have seen that before.”

Apart from the condescension, there’s the implicit assurance that it’s all just business as usual. The former NSW commissioner of fire and rescue, Greg Mullins, says repeatedly that climate change has introduced a “step change” in the nature of drought and fire in Australia.

But Morrison knows better, evidently: “I do remember Sydney being ringed by fire in my lifetime. I remember as a young fellow being down at the beach and seeing smoke all around as I looked back out from the surf across the sand and I’ve seen it before.” What would an internationally recognised firefighting expert know?

With masses of evidence of the physical harm to Australia’s people, the mental illnesses building up across a frightened community under stress, the practical problems of firefighter exhaustion, pressures on small business who have freed their employees to battle blazes, and so on, the country is crying out for leadership. Instead it got excuses.

He didn’t urge Australia to be calm about the misconduct of Big Tech, but he urged the country to be calm about the fires and the choking smoke haze that repeatedly descends on some of Australia’s main cities.

Perhaps the saddest of all was hearing the Prime Minister regurgitate the hoary excuse for inaction on climate change – that Australia accounts for only 1.3 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions.

This is what the former High Court judge and banking royal commissioner Kenneth Hayne has described as “learned helplessness” on emissions. You could make the same excuse on regulating the tech titans. Australia this year accounts for 1.1 per cent of global retail e-commerce, according to Statista. Did Morrison cite this in announcing his plan to assert sovereignty over the digital economy? Did he say, “anything Australia does will not make a difference”? Of course not.

If Australia surrendered to this self-declared helplessness, it would never contribute to solving any shared problem. We certainly would not have fought for the defeat of fascism in World War Two, for example, or taken part in the Montreal Protocol that successfully saved the earth’s ozone layer.

Morrison sees the whole complex of problems – fire, drought, water shortage and climate – as a political risk for himself and his government. After years of Coalition civil war over climate change, Morrison does not want to upset the delicate ceasefire. And it has worked for him. So far.

But the balance of risk is changing. The raging fires, the drought, the water shortages, not caused by climate change but intensified by it, are changing attitudes in Australia. Rather than play a grudging catch-up later, Morrison has the opportunity to lead. Not by rushing to take selfies with Greta Thunberg and announcing a target of zero emissions by Monday.

The big opportunity is to smash the whole paradigm that has held Australia in paralysis for a decade. Renewable energy is a multi-trillion dollar growth industry. Australia already is participating, but largely in spite of federal government policy, not because of it.

With an immobilised federal government sitting in the middle of the landscape, Australia is working around it. Households are installing huge acreage of solar panels, companies are investing tens of billions in new power generating capacity, state governments are setting their own renewable energy targets.

Imagine how Australia’s economy could be energised, in every sense of the word, by a nationally coordinated drive to be the world leader in this enormous growth industry. Australia has the opportunity to be the lowest-cost electricity supplier on the planet. This is exactly the scenario explained in Ross Garnaut’s new book Superpower. This would be a competitive advantage for Australian industry and the entire economy.

Morrison has the opportunity to transform Australia’s politics as well as its economy and climate policy. Champion an economic opportunity for Australia to lead in one of the biggest growth sectors of the early 21st century.

Rather than persisting with the dead-end dichotomy of “cheap electricity versus climate action”, he can take the lead in enlarging an existing investment boom, creating a strong economy, with the cheapest electricity, and dramatically cutting carbon output as a result. He would be able to pledge “the safety of our children at the same time as realising the benefits to our economy that comes from these renewable technologies”.

If he were to move early, he could secure economic and climate advantage for Australia and shut out Labor, depriving it of one of its major campaign strengths. The politics of complacency can succeed against the realities of intensifying fires, drought, water shortages and climate change for a while. But not forever. Fire season began in winter this year. This is not business as usual.

Peter Hartcher

https://www.smh.com.au/national/a-nation-crying-out-for-leadership-from-scott-morrison-got-excuses-20191213-p53jtn.html