Last week demonstrated Scott Morrison’s lack of judgment and reputation for mendacity on the international stage. This week served to put a spotlight on those same qualities domestically. What was supposed to be a reset week to take the initiative on climate, start the unofficial election campaign and wedge Labor turned into a further exposé of Morrison’s incessant lying and his lack of policy.
Morrison’s choice of electric vehicles (EVs) as the standard to raise on climate policy was bizarre. He trashed the Coalition’s own EV policy in 2019 in the quest to damage Bill Shorten, ridiculing and demonising EVs along the way. He was always going to be challenged as to why he’d backflipped, and he was, right off the bat. The PMO hadn’t even prepared a good response to that. It was a “Labor lie” that he’d ever campaigned against EVs; technology had changed, Labor wanted to mandate EVs and increase petrol prices.
All of those were lies. Even Morrison’s stenographers and apologists — to whom Niki Savva gave a serve this week — were explaining that, no, Labor’s EV policy included no mandates or price rises.
As with pretty much every Morrison announcement, there was little substance to the EV plan. Even the Financial Review criticised it.
That night, NSW Treasurer Matt Kean went on 7.30 and detailed the NSW government’s plan to lower the price of EVs, encourage fleet buyers to go electric and significantly improve charging infrastructure. Every time Kean speaks on climate policy, he makes it sound effortless as he spells out smart new policies to significantly reduce his state’s emissions, showing up the federal Coalition with every word.
“The federal government’s initiatives are good, but they can go a lot further,” Kean said. “I would encourage the federal government to be looking at doing things like providing direct support for people who want to purchase an EV.”
Funnily enough, that’s Anthony Albanese’s policy.
On Wednesday Morrison launched his new framing around climate and wider economic policy — announcing he was for “can do capitalism” rather than Labor’s “don’t do government”. Stenographers got excited — here was the canny wedge of Labor they’d been waiting for.
How “can do capitalism” reconciles with the tens of billions handed to companies that made money during the pandemic will presumably remain uninvestigated by journalists, as will the fact that that slogan was announced literally moments after Morrison had unveiled another $500 million to fund carbon capture and storage projects.
By Thursday, Morrison was randomly accusing Albanese of “backing in China”, when asked about Emmanuel Macron. The week of reset had turned into a rattled, desperate Morrison. Thin-skinned at the best of times, Morrison has the look of a man furious that his go-to political tricks aren’t working as well as they used to.
None of this should be happening. Australia is reopening off the back of very high vaccination rates and the economy is roaring back to life. A return to unfettered international travel is around the corner. The problems of the vaccine rollout are in the rearview mirror; Australia retains a highly successful record in dealing with the pandemic. Morrison has News, Nine and Seven broadly aligned with him, and the ABC cowed. The electoral record shows that incumbents have enjoyed record support throughout the pandemic.
So why does he trail in the polls and look like a magician whose hat is empty?
The problem for a government that should be in the box seat to win the next election is its leader. Morrison is damaged goods. He has no imagination and doesn’t know how to govern competently. His idea of leadership is issuing media releases. His relentless lying has started to be noticed by voters.
What’s weighing down the Coalition vote is Scott Morrison. His removal will do the government’s political stocks a world of good, giving voters the chance to look past a damaged PM to a sound economy and a return to normality. But it would also do Australia good, replacing a man with no vision or competence with someone prepared to genuinely lead.
Crikey readers froth at the mouth at any suggestion that Peter Dutton could be prime minister. But just because progressives and Twitter hate someone, doesn’t mean they’re unelectable — Tony Abbott demonstrated that.
Dutton’s the only one with the capacity to move on Morrison and remove the single biggest impediment to the Coalition winning next year. Time for the member for Dickson to do the numbers — properly, this time.
Gee Bernard, it’s like you’re offering me a choice between typhoid and cholera. I mean it’s not as if Du##on has ever shown any evidence of competence or integrity – indeed even any evidence of humanity.
I agree with your proposition that the current incumbent is turning into a dead weight in the coalition saddlebags, and that his fatuous mendacity is starting to become difficult even for the stenographic corps in the monopoly media to whitewash.
However, leaving aside the fact that the government (whoever is leader) are hostage to the weird arcana which is the National Party, I cannot agree that changing the leader will result in any discernable improvement in government competence, effective policy definition, ethics, integrity, honesty or public interest. Mo%%ison has made himself the personation of the Liberal Party – members of his back bench, and for that matter his cabinet have had years now to do the right thing on climate, or public integrity, or corruption, and every step of the way they have fallen in behind this odious individual. Either these MPs agree with him, or they are too fearful for their own comfort to stand up for the public interest. It was only when the polls started to show that a bunch of urban blue-ribbon seats were genuinely at risk from independents that we were treated to the current minimalist pantomime of a non-existent climate policy.
If I dare to hope, it is for a thoroughly well hung parliament after the next election. Bring on the minority government!
Nailed it, Griselda!
Correct, leadership changes in Australian politics are akin to deckchair shuffling on the Titanic. Futile efforts to somehow change the inexorable truth – political parties are moribund, doomed and slipping from relevance.
Right, Griselda.
“…it’s time for his party to remove the biggest impediment to reelection”
The biggest impediment is not the lying PM but the party’s entrenched corruption. Howard used our helium to buy their campaign donations ever since.
I dare to hope right with you.
Spot on, Griselda. How the hell is Dutton going to deal with Matt, and Barnaby, and Bridget, and all of those tinfoil hat wearers in his own party? Short of rounding them up in a Night of the Long Knives, and making them disappear. Dutton wouldn’t do that… would he?
“Dutton wouldn’t do that… would he?”
Mr. Dutton would absolutely love to do that. Whether he would have the nerve is another kettle of fish.
Griselda, I agree totally with your view that changing the LNP’s leadership will have no effect on the government’s ‘competence, effective policy definition, ethics, integrity, honesty or public interest.’ The LNP/IPA as they exist today constitute a moral and intellectual void that inhabits government for only two reasons which are:- 1) its own continued survival and 2) the financial prosperity of its members and its shadowy backers.
Australia needs a break from these shysters or we will not survive much longer.
Correct. Why are we even discussing this disgusting mob. There is not one minister that I would classify as capable.
Off with their heads and get on with governing the country. If all the LNP voters voted Greens or Independent we may possibly end up with a functioning respectable Government. One that debates policies and listens to the public. Wow that would be a novelty. (The Greens may need a little house training.)
Setting the bar as high as ‘capable’ is a bit of a stretch for Scott & Co., Maroochy.
There is not one minister that I would trust to watch my wallet while I went for a swim.
I agree with Bernard only to the extent that a change to Dutton will only increase the hiding the LNP get at the election – disunity and all that…but I hope for a big Labor win with a stack of good independents and Greens.
With a powerful mandate and a willing parliament, great things will happen, and just in the nick of time for Australia.
But for the rest of the world, very hard indeed to be optimistic.
Well said, Griselda. Bernard should be challenged to reveal one example, just ONE, of Dutton’s competence to govern or even hold down a ministerial position. And that’s not even bringing his odious personal traits into the equation.
Look at the total balls-up he made of being Health Minister (‘Worst ever’ said the AMA), and then the administrative shambles of both Immigration – notorious for its wildly inconsistent treatment of immigrants and other arrivals/visitors, its dreadful tendering and non-tendering of overpaid, outsourced ‘security’ tasks, and the worst-run government department financially – and that Home Security ministry or whatever it’s called with its Border Force that stuck its incompetent finger into the Ruby Princess schemozzle.
Sadly, Bernard seems to be confusing authoritarian and authoritative when it comes to that jackbooted dill, and vastly over-rating the rest of the coalition. Even the things adduced to the government’s skill were mainly achieved by or pushed for by the states.To think that the government would be able to forge ahead were it not for Morrison. My, that is fanciful and fantastic!
Love this!!
As far as I can tell Keane is not making any claim for Dutton beyond reckoning that the Liberals’ best chance of winning the next election would involve replacing Morrison with Dutton ASAP. Dutton’s competence and what he would do for the country is irrelevant to this calculation.
“Gee Bernard, it’s like you’re offering me a choice between typhoid and cholera”.
Dear Griselda,
My post had a laugh emoji attached which was automatically omitted in posting. What an algorithm the moderators have put in. Thanks for the laugh! You humans often have good humour. Surprising given the rubbish pollies you have.
Until fairly recently the bot would withhold any post with the word ‘liar’ or ‘lies’ in it so at least that’s been tweaked due to the many articles on this PM.
Pity about other common words such as that meaning ‘ambling’ or the coin made up of twelve pennies.
Same what I just thought and said. Well put Griselda
If I dare to hope, it would be that the Coalition is thoroughly trashed as the coming election, losing so badly that they have no hope of returning at the following election, ideally also not the one after that. A WA 2020 style result, or Canada 1993. Let the adults in to take charge, to clean out the Augean stables left behind by over 8 years of incompetence, corruption, climate inaction, dog-whistling, attacks on the vulnerable and general malevolence. The current “Liberal” party has nothing useful to contribute. Better that the party fall apart. That wouldn’t be a problem, the business community would soon put together a party to advance their interests, one that would be competitive within a few years, just as the did in the 1940s. Hopefully this time it would be a genuine Centre-right party which allows actual liberals a voice, not a bunch of hard right reactionaries.
Won’t happen but one can dream.
It seems extraordinary to me that people can believe anything Scott Morrison says. When there is televised evidence that he lied about the Labor EV policy and he still denies he lied – is there something very wrong with him?
I hope this last month or so, with COP26 and the EV nonsense can open people’s eyes to this how sly and dishonest this PM is.
Morrison, apparently, told 3AW listeners that he had never told a lie in public life!
Interviewer: Scott, what’s your favourite lie?”
Scott: “I don’t tell lies.”
Interviewer: “Yes, that’s my favourite too”.
I think Scott said he didn’t believe he ever told a lie. This could mean that either the massive Morrison lie count is increased by 1, or that Scott is such an effective narcissist that he doesn’t even know when he’s telling the truth. I’m not actually sure which is worse.
Yes he took the George Costanza route, “it’s not a lie Jerry, if you believe it” He didn’t see the question coming since he must have felt safely ensconced with shock jock Neil Mitchell and the old dears and angry old small businessmen. So it’s a good example of just how reflexive and ingrained his lying and denial is. It’s of a one with his inability to admit he may have changed his mind or position, he steadfastly maintains that he has always thought and acted consistently. What I say I’ve thought is what I think and always has been. It’s the reflex of an adman and a shallow one at that.
Peter…I believe there is much more to this scenario than Scummo being an ‘effective narcissist’. He is showing all the signs of needing his head examined! Does anyone believe that this maniac is sane??? Perhaps it’s time that Norriscum and all potential ‘leaders’ in this country were certified mentally competent!!
And, according to the Guardian, followed up by repeating the lie about Labor’s intending in 2019 to raise the price of petrol to force people into electric vehicles. Obviously he was hinting they’d do it again!
“is there something very wrong with him?” Only when people begin to fully recognise from whence his belief in his personal abilities to deceive and control the thinking of anyone hearing his voice comes from, will they realise that, yes, there is something very wrong with him. And he and anyone else who share those beliefs should have absolutely no part in the governing of this country.
There is much about Scottie that is totally wrong.
Yes his blind belief in his blessed miracles and the mythical superpower and magic pudding wand
They don’t have to believe him to like him. He stands for them.
Replace a dead set liar with a slimy opportunist. That’s got to work.
In that case don’t vote Liberal.
Morrison’s previous US bestie, Trump, was (and is) described by me as a lifelong sufferer of mythomania. Sadly, I think mythomania also inflicts Morrison. Unlike Trump, whom I also describe as a deluded, divisive and dangerous demagogue, Morrison, is more of an ‘accidentally national leader, beset by poor judgement, and a marketing career that excluded ability to action and deliver on promises made, with the exception being the wholly-unchristian approach he took towards migrants whom he demonised and punished in a manner truely unfitting for someone proclaiming Christian credentials. That, in my reflection, is principally due to his poor judgement which is on display almost daily, and a poorly concealed dark side to the man’s character.
Pentecostals believe in the anti-Christian prosperity Gospel and neglect the Second Great Commandment direct from the mouth of Jesus Christ!
Indeed. Pentecostals don’t follow Jesus, they use him. A bit of “Jesuswashing”, akin to the greenwashing favoured by fossil fuel companies telling us that their brand of petrol is good for the environment.
You say ” … replacing a man with no vision or competence with someone prepared to genuinely lead.”
There is no-one — no-one — in the Federal Parliamentary Liberal Party who is capable of that. None of them have any vision or competence.
Morrison is merely the Liberal party, personified!
I can’t think of one that would make a competent back bencher, let alone be actively involved in a competent government!
When someone is prepared to lead, it behooves potential followers to ask “Where & why?”
Morrison is Dutton dressed as lamb.
A sheep in wolf’s clothing?