Going for his third reset in a week and his second in a day, the prime minister fronted A Current Affair last night. The appearance dispatches the fantasies of a number of press gallery journalists and Coalition MPs that all this women stuff is confined to voting demographics hostile to Scott Morrison and thus irrelevant.
By the end of his sit-down with Tracy Grimshaw, Morrison had still not extricated himself from his cover-ups, evasions, deceits and relentless efforts to politically manage the explosion of issues that has smashed him and his government.
After the catastrophe of Tuesday’s attempted reset — in which Morrison lost control and lashed out at his chief backer, News Corp — he tried again on Thursday morning in an interview with Sabra Lane. But his obsession with political management prevented him from making any headway.
“Can you categorically say that your office hasn’t been backgrounding against one of [Brittany Higgins’] loved ones?” Lane asked, repeating a question that the PM has been asked more than a dozen times in Parliament.
Morrison responded with evasion.
“No one, there has been no one in the gallery, nothing has been raised with my office from anyone in the gallery making any of those accusations or any discomfort about anything that my office has done. People make allegations all the time second, third-hand. But there’s no one who has raised that with my chief of staff out of the gallery.”
Within hours, Brittany Higgins had raised it with his chief of staff. The PM could run, but he couldn’t hide.
The issue continued to dog him all day. In question time — a forum in which he blatantly lied last week about the Gaetjens inquiry — he admitted he had received Higgins’ correspondence.
“Separate to that, following my interview this morning on ABC AM, my chief of staff received confidential information from a primary and direct source regarding these matters. In response, based on that information, I have asked my chief of staff to commence a process…”
So finally, weeks after Peter van Onselen revealed that Morrison’s staff had been backgrounding against Higgins’ partner David Sharaz, Morrison had finally got around to asking what his office had done. Reluctantly. When he had run out of excuses and evasions.
By the time he fronted Grimshaw, he spoke, almost incoherently, about multiple sources in his own office: “Well, it was both a direct source, so spoke directly to my chief of staff and it was a primary source. So someone who allegedly had witnessed this.”
But if Morrison had been finally dragged to inquire about who had been spreading smears about Sharaz, there was no movement on other long-running evasions and deceits.
Grimshaw pressed him on why he hadn’t bothered to read the documents detailing the alleged rape committed by Christian Porter in 1988 before asking Porter about it, and accepting his assurance it didn’t happen.
He hadn’t read them because he “had no copy of those … I wasn’t in Canberra, I was in Sydney. They weren’t sent to me electronically. They were sent to me in hard copy and they were immediately forwarded to the federal police as the commissioner had advised me to do.”
“Have you read them since?” Grimshaw wondered. “Well, I don’t have them, they’re with the federal police…”
So, they don’t have faxes or photocopiers in the PMO? The copying of physical documents is beyond the grasp of the office of Australia’s leader? Not even by the team of monks with quill and ink that Tony Abbott installed there?
The more Morrison tries to “reset”, to escape his disastrous misjudgments of recent weeks, the tighter his own lies and evasions trap him.
It wasn’t all down to Morrison himself. Not long before the interview, Nine News revealed the despicable online bullying of two women by LNP MP Andrew Laming. After questions to the Prime Minister’s Office, Morrison demanded Laming apologise publicly for his disgusting behaviour (having, inevitably, “hauled in” the backbencher).
Morrison and his staff were apparently shocked — shocked — that Andrew Laming was a persistent troll on social media. The idea hadn’t occurred to them in January, when Laming made a racist post on Facebook. Evidently they missed it in 2018 when three LNP branch members called for Laming’s ouster given his penchant for “belligerent Facebook arguments with local voters”. Or that time in 2017 when he lambasted teachers. Nor had they learnt from that time in 2016 when he devoted an entire weekend to trying, unsuccessfully, to troll a Simpsons meme page.
It’s decidedly like the fact that Morrison and his office knew all about the allegations of predatory behaviour of Craig Kelly adviser Frank Zumbo but did nothing about it after Kelly defied Morrison and refused to dismiss him.
The prime minister and his grubby staff will only take action when forced completely into a corner — when they’re all out of excuses, distractions and evasions. He’s still doing it. That’s why he’s no more capable of any “reset” than of wiping the perpetual smirk off his face.
What would it take for Scott Morrison to fix the problems plaguing the government? Let us know your thoughts by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication in Crikey’s Your Say section.
Morrison would need a complete personality transplant to be able to fix the disasters that plague him…disasters that are really just all the chickens coming home to roost. Not just Morrison’s, but the whole bizarre circus that used to be the LNP.
Looking back over Morrison’s history, you see the same cycle of events repeating themselves again and again. The transactional, too-clever-by-a-mile manipulator who only relates to people as being either currently useful, or no longer relevant. The man who is secretive, deceitful, constantly trying to engineer faits accompli that benefit him while at the same time leaving room for plausible deniability.
But the problem with this strategy is that eventually you run out of people to do over. And they start to swap stories. The pattern emerges. What led to rapid initial success leads to an equally rapid fall, as the sheer number of lies, double-crosses and excuses become impossible to manage, and the number of people who will never trust you again is overwhelming. That’s the story of Morrison, a sad aspirant to the top job, for no other reason than it’s the top job – the classic hollow man.
In regard to the deep problems that beleaguer the LNP in general, it needs a deep clean and overhaul that can only happen with the removal of the hard right faction, and the influence of the Murdoch empire. The party has turned into a Trump-style freakshow of deeply undesirable people, verging on the worryingly pitiless and deviant, and the few remaining old school libs like Russell Broadbent are saying so in public. I’ve never been a liberal voter, but even i can see the huge difference between the Hewson libs of decades ago, and the current band of nasty weirdos.
He’s not a hollow man.
He’s completely full of ****.
Well said, Glenn. Excellent analysis, especially the final paragraph.
Excellent description of the man, Glenn. You didn’t copy it from a psychiatric text book, did you? Because it’s a classic description of a sociopathic personality disorder, a few of whom I have experienced, more so amongst health managers than health clients.
Psychopathic spectrum would be as good a descriptor.
Not only have I also experienced the same experience regarding “Health Managers”, I have also observed the same condition in a medical specialist in Brisbane who desperately wants to be on the faculty of UQ.
He is happy to trash other colleagues reputations in order to prove that he is a “superior” specialist.
And I’ve experienced the same thing of sociopaths/psychopaths in management, both in academia and secondary education. Not every manager – there’s the odd good, fair, decent one – but the higher up they go, the greater the chances of it, as has been well documented in various books on the subject. And once in that high position, they link metaphorical arms with other sociopaths/psychopaths and poison not just their own house, but the entire system.
As a superbly able colleague of mine aptly put it when we discussed the inevitable promotion of sycophants-to-the-sociopaths – “shiitake floats”…
Yes, Sue, it’s everywhere, unfortunately. See my theory above.
‘The higher the monkey climbs the tree, the more you see its ugly bits.’
Below, actually.
My experience was in the basket-case called SA Health, where the minimum qualification to be a manager is to be experienced at brown-nosing those above oneself in the bureaucracy. Those without this proven experience don’t get the promotion. But of course, the most useful qualification for floating to the top of the cesspool is a sociopathic personality disorder, as we (and Sue below) have experienced.
Unfortunately, more women does not seem to be the answer, because the women who float to the top seem to be just as bad (and sometimes worse) than the men.
My theory is that it has something to do with the politicisation of and funding cuts to the public service. Back in the 1970’s and early 1980’s the bureaucracy was ossified, but honest. These days, top managers see their core business as covering the bums of the politicians by pretending everything is OK, when things like public health are clearly in crisis. When the system is constantly being forced to live a lie, the culture becomes toxic. The fish rots from the head.
Brilliant: “The party has turned into a Trump-style freakshow of deeply undesirable people, verging on the worryingly pitiless and deviant”
Nice work Glenn, it’s a DNA transplant that is required. I’ve worked with a batch of very successful men who always leave their job after 2-3 years. They have to, because otherwise they are found out. Promo’s time is up, dead man walking. Frydenberg next. He is just a pawn in a game way above his pay grade. To call him a puppet would be unkind to puppets.
Nasty weirdos. Yes. That is the correct term.
As the old saying goes: “When you’re in a hole, stop digging…”
He’s halfway through to the centre of the earth, and he thinks the back to the surface is to use tunnel boring equipment.
You have to ask what kind of a mess you’re in when floods covering half of the east coast of Australia cannot compete for air time with the catastrophic mishandling of this sensitive and extremely serious issue by this buffoon.
On the bright side when he reaches China he can fix the cock-up he’s made of our trade relationship.
What cock up? It’s another Promo! They just had to teach the Australian dissenters a lesson on how much we need China. It’s about loosening up economic resistance to China in the future.
The photo op in the army helicopter looking down on the flood waters certainly didn’t do it for him.
That pork bun face isn’t serious it is vacant.
I certainly like the term “promo”.
Made me think of ‘W’ in Air Force 1 checking in on New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina… no need to actually converse with the groundlings
Didn’t feel the need to liaise with the local (State, Labor) member before photo-opping in the chopper. Politicises every thing. Surprise.
Come on, Bernard. Scotty doesn’t see any compelling reason to reset, as you put it. He doesn’t see any advantage to be gained in changing the same old flannel he’s trotted out at every opportunity since he graduated out of short pants. After all, it is only about political advantage, isn’t it?
A few well documented visits to church and a few strategically timed deep conversations with Jen are all that is required. His engaging “I’m-just-one-of-you”, “would-I-lie-to-you” schmaltzy routine has worked, at least until now.
The fact that the old flannel has gone to holes is neither here nor there to Scotty – its the comforting hazy recollections of Dad and Dave Rudd overlaid with the quiet Sunday afternoon norms of suburban 1950’s Australia that constitute his compass.
His routine never worked with me from the day the worst possible person, Promo, was made SS minister and set about destroying pensioners and every other welfare recipient, and is still doing so.
Yep. The Monthly has reported this morning that the ‘government’ is now trying to get even more people of the disability pension. Including those with acquired brain injuries and those with the foetal alcohol syndrome. The cruelty driving this so-called ‘government’ is just mind boggling. The attitudes they promote are not worthy of a supposedly advanced, modern and enlightened society.
Watching Morrison dig himself deeper & deeper in his hole, & all the empathy coaches are fully booked, so I will just have to keep enjoying watching him suffering as he unwittingly digs himself deeper & deeper. He will reach China soon.
Lies and secrecy are integral with “where the bloody hell are ya” scomo.
How do you ‘reset’ your DNA?
Telling SmoKo to stop lying would be like telling a fish to stop swimmng.
It’s a way of life.
It’s not “lying” – it’s politics. That’s how he seems to justify it.
We are indeed fortunate our PM is a religious man.Imagine how bad his deceit would be if he didn’t have to answer to his Lord.
He will have to answer to his Lord eventually. Can 51% of the Australian population wait that long? NO!
That’s a “Lord” that speaks to her flock through the so called “Prosperity Gospel”.
Good point Patcho , what his religion and Neocon have in common is self interest and greed, a match made in heaven apparently.