After another rotten week for Scott Morrison, in which his mendacity, poor temperament and lack of judgment were spotlighted for everyone to see, all eyes today turn to… Peter Dutton at the National Press Club. The defence minister will rise at 12.30pm to deliver an address to a sold-out event.
Morrison has headed to South Australia, where he is now not building any submarines and is unlikely to ever do so. On current polling from Roy Morgan, things aren’t too bad for Morrison there: Labor only leads 55.5-44.5%, which is actually down a little. That would only pick up Boothby. Not as bad as further west — in WA, Labor would pick up three and go close to a fourth seat on a monster 9% swing. Or to the east — Labor leads 58-42% in Victoria, which would mean four seats, despite Labor’s already ridiculously high vote there.
But hey, who believes in polls any more? Admittedly it’s not a good sign that Labor now leads the LNP in Queensland, for the first time anyone can remember, 51.5-48.5%, an absurd number that would wipe out half the LNP federal representation. Morrison needs to hold the northern fortress, while he picks up seats in NSW — seats like Gilmore, Macquarie and Eden-Monaro. Annoyingly, Labor upped its lead there to 55.5-44.5%.
That’s before the Voices Of and other independent candidates pick away at faux-moderates like Trent Zimmerman, Dave Sharma and Tim Wilson in urban seats where the government’s climate denialism, and the support of Liberal moderates for inaction, is really starting to rankle. Tim Wilson is trying to portray his challenger, former ABC journo Zoe Daniel, as a “puppet”. As former MP Julia Banks noted, suggesting female candidates are controlled by men is a well-worn Coalition tactic. One wonders how well it will go down among female Liberal voters.
Even though the polls are moving the wrong direction, there’s time enough for Morrison to turn things around, surely? But Morrison’s problem is that he keeps making himself the issue. Whether it’s his lie about Hawaii, or about Sam Dastyari, or dozens of other matters where he has failed to be truthful, or about his inability to control his own party room such that he can’t introduce his own bills for fear of defeat, or his pandering to extremists, or his refusal to even discuss a proper integrity commission, Morrison has ensured the spotlight is on him all the time.
And, always, there’s that lack of judgment, like the Hawaii lie, like yesterday’s rush of blood to attack the NSW ICAC, and lying about its investigation into Gladys Berejiklian’s breach of public trust over the misallocation of grants. It’s unsurprising that the prime minister of the most corrupt government in federal history should attack a genuinely independent anti-corruption body, but yet again Morrison was focusing attention on his own failure — in this case to deliver an election commitment that the majority of Australians want.
Morrison would like to be talking about Labor, and Anthony Albanese, but he’s been frustrated by Albanese’s refusal to be goaded — either by the government or the media — into offering any policy targets, by Labor’s discipline and its successful targeting of Morrison’s credibility; even the propagandists at The Australian admit Labor has been “relentless”.
Dutton has no such problems. His message is that Labor is soft on China, which is fairly ridiculous since Labor was attacked as too hard on China just a few years ago, but forget consistency. Dutton’s job is to get the government as near as possible to a wartime election, and argue Labor are appeasers and traitors. The current target is China, but Russia could be of service if it invades Ukraine, even though that’s not exactly in our own region.
Dutton also handled his 7.30 spot with Leigh Sales well on Tuesday, having no trouble responding to graphic evidence of ADF bullying and worse, bluntly noting “we’ll deal with it very harshly” and “we have a professional expectation from our people, they deliver it and in the circumstances where they don’t, people can expect to be separated from the Australian Defence Force because they aren’t welcome within the ranks of the ADF”.
Who knows how Morrison would have handled that? Presumably not by saying that he understood the frustration of the perpetrators.
The other notable aspect of the week was the growing evidence that Morrison’s own backbench has reached the same conclusion that his critics reached some time back — that nothing he says can be believed, and there’s therefore no point listening to him.
Watch the media reaction to Dutton’s speech today. Some glowing reviews from the Murdoch press will be a Bat-signal that help is needed for the government, and the incumbent isn’t the person to provide it.
Please, please, PLEASE, Bernard. Stop talking up Peter Dutton.
I have enough trouble as it is, sleeping at night with Scottie as prime minister. I don’t need more nightmares.
“Folderoldemort”?
Please talk up peter dutton. The gift that keeps giving. For everyone except the LNP and the ALP. Those days are gone.
please wear gloves as political PPE. Expect a deluge of splinters, grouped according to some ethereal demographic. And whoever can define that demographic and appeal to it, wins the vibe contest.
Yes, please, Bernard. You are right, of course, to point out that Dutton, having pressed himself to the fore at the Press Club, might be greeted with effusive praise from Murdoch propagandists, er, “journalists”, and that this will be a signal that the right wants a more disciplined, while even more ruthless, bearer of the Coalition’s neoliberal religion. But please, that’s a nightmare. Discipline isn’t everything. Handling the recent case of bastardisation in the ADF well isn’t everything.
Even if the ALP continues to pay some lip service to the religion of Neoliberalism-so well displayed in Victoria, with an ALP government but also with a “user pays” charge for electric vehicles no matter how they are charged-we might hope that they will not show the zeal shown by the Coalition on reducing the cost of the NDIS at the expense of people with disabilities and on punishing the unemployed for not getting a job when there are still fewer jobs than job seekers. Wouldn’t that be better than seeing whether Murdoch’s dominance of print media will con enough voters into thinking for no good reason at all that a more zealous adherence to the Neoliberal religion will be good for the economy?
I suspect, in regard to Dutton, that Keane is planting naughty rumors. In this spirit, he might also look at ‘plans’ to sell the ABC, or to raise the threshold of the aged pension to seventy. For this Government’s behavior is such that even the most insane rumors could be believed. A return to the White Australia Policy? Voting rights for property owners alone?
Voting rights for property owners alone? And only for men, of course, none of those lady persons.
And return to 25 as the minimum age for voting.
Amenable to 35 and open to further restrictive suggestions.
Easily done with voter ID laws. Change the criteria to rates notices only. But it couldn’t happen here, could it?
Have to agree with you Graeski. Couldn’t think of anyone worse to take over from Morrison and that’s saying something.
Keane is not ‘talking up’ Dutton. He is describing Dutton as currently the most likely successor to Morrison as Liberal leader. It is irrelevant whether you, I or anyone else wants that to be true or not. Can you demonstrate serious flaws in Keane’s assessment? Exactly. Please stop asking Keane to pretend the world is as you would like it instead of being as it is. Crikey should not change itself into a comfort blanket for those who want to live in a reassuring fantasy world.
You have pinged the flaw with subscriber supported opinionistaring.
Lotta it about.
Too right, mate. Couldn’t have put it better myself.
But he isn’t the most likely. It will be Dutton challenging, Frydenberg taking the reins. He is there only hope.
That’s not impossible, but Freudenberg is a stuffed shirt and lacks the underhand deceit and treachery that helped Morrison get through. But most of all, your scenario requires Dutton to make exactly the same mistake twice. Really? Since his last debacle I’m sure Dutton has learned some lessons in basic arithmetic.
I thought after Abbott we would never have a worse PM but hey wrong I was
Morrison is great he is doing an Abbott black death on himself and claiming to be the victim
It’s great stuff
Have you ever seen such contrived theatrics I thought Trump was over the top with this stuff but our Scotty is a true method actor
Well, there is certainly madness in his method.
I think Abbott was worse, Morrison doubled benefits for a short time,[then gifted double that on business], proving it works very well, could Abbott have done that?
Trying to rate the most irksome isn’t fun.
It’s funny watching Morrison take his latest “Anti-Kangaroo Court” stand-up routine on the road now – especially in front of that Robodebt back-drop? It’s all just a rehash of his old material.
“Expedient” converts Sharma, Zimmerman and Wilson et al – stewing in their own historical juices over their pro-coal fire ….. Pass the fava beans and that nice chianti…..
“Dutton has no such problems”? He has his own boutique problems ….
That’s Morrison’s DNA. Its filthy! isnt’t it. He is the Ringmaster of a circus of clowns back flippin through hoops to get re-elec ted. It is so TOXIC
Peter ” Himmler” Dutton, thanks but no thanks. I do not think I could tolerate having to read Mein Kamf as he would try to push it as a religion.
We have had ABBOTT, NOW MORRISON and abject failures.
Dutton would be the trilogy of bad mistakes.
Thanks but no thanks!!!
You mean Obergruppenführer Kartoffelkopf!
Obergruppenführer came to mind when the choice was made for the uniforms of his and Pezzullo’s Grenzpolizei
It did appear that they may have been thumbing through the back catalogue of Hugo Boss c.1930?
Give me a break Hayward, that is a big word and my mind does not absorb big words
Neither did Germans 90yrs ago, plus the problem of active verbs always coming at the end of the sentence.
In reverse order.
Obergruppenführer was one of the Third Reich’s paramilitary ranks that was first created in 1932 as a rank of the SA and adopted by the SS one year later. Until April 1942, it was the highest commissioned SS rank after only Reichsführer-SS.
How about Untergrabenkartoffelkopf?
Trouble is, he might sprout.
Not really. The German language just tends to bookend words together to make longer ones, then gives them an initial capital to make them sound even more ominous.
Ober + Gruppen + Fuhrer – see, not so hard is it?
There is even a word for such…words – portmanteau.
Although possible in other languages, Latin roots, declensions & conjugation tends against doing so.
Except portmanteaus blend the words, usually with none of the full words appearing in the finished product. The Germans just string them all together, without any elision.
My point was that, with the German combination words (not portmanteaus), they are a lot less scary if you just break them down into their individual make-up words.
The Dutt will be flat out holding his seat
He’s only vulnerable if you hit his probic vent.
That was ‘common wisdom’ – due to the threat from PHONies – until GetUp decided to pluck the low hanging fruit by sending froot-loops to enlighten the Dixon electorate.
It worked even better than St Bob’s Caravan of Complacency which, independently – as much as the slime mould of the latte left brigade can be said to function autonomously…not very much – hitched up the wagon trains, though failed to secure native guides, and went forth, fifth & last into the Deep North.
Having learned nothing from Napoleon about attacking a northern redoubt, the retreat and inevitable result was also ignored – fake news works both ways.
Of course, now I understand! It wasn’t the 60 million spent by UAP on harvesting the terminally stupid ex-LNP voters and handing them back to the LNP, as the biggest electoral spend in Australian history… or the Murdoch/Stokes/Costello Propaganda machine, or a beaten, starved and abused ABC, too scared to say “boo”.. and after all that, only winning by one vote?
It was all the fault of the “greenies”… my eyes are opened.