Queensland voters were waiting with baseball bats for the Keating government, the late Wayne Goss famously said of the 1996 election.
Voter sentiment had turned feral against Paul Keating, even as he continued to implement a number of enormous, nation-changing reforms: superannuation, industrial relations reform, national competition policy, native title.
Still, journalists were reluctant to reflect the sentiment on the ground that year. “The smart money is on Mr Keating,” one pundit said well into an election campaign that would result in a landslide loss. They’d all been burnt by Keating’s miracle win in 1993.
Twenty-six years later, journalists are too scarred by Scott Morrison’s miracle win in 2019 to reflect the sentiment on the ground: he is viscerally loathed. This is a prime minister who can’t even do a street walk in a disaster area — after announcing tens of millions of dollars in extra assistance — for fear of being abused by locals. A prime minister who won’t let the media film him even on carefully orchestrated visits to affected residences and businesses for fear of a Cobargo welcome.
A prime minister who was once master of governing by announcement now making his announcements — flanked by Bridget “sports rorts” McKenzie — in secure locations to avoid being yelled at. A prime minister incapable of talking about climate change, lest he upset the fragile peace in his Coalition with denialists and conspiracy theorists.
Howard set the scene
Australian policymakers have known for decades — right back to the Howard government, ushered in on the back of Keating’s huge loss — that Australia was the developed nation most exposed to the dangers of climate change; the advanced economy with the most to lose from global warming and the most to gain from concerted international action.
Howard could have followed the lead of his idol Margaret Thatcher and embraced the need for climate action, taking a role of global leadership — after all, Australians always like to tell themselves they’re ahead of everyone else.
Instead the denialist Howard worked diligently to sabotage international climate action, not lead it. The results of decades of inaction have been submerged houses in Brisbane, northern NSW and parts of Sydney over the past fortnight.
Howard, at least, could govern competently when called to do so by crisis. Morrison — having waited more than a week to declare a national emergency, presumably so he could do so in person — can only make excuses, blame everyone else and, as he did yesterday, subtly suggest people are being just a little unreasonable in asking him to do more.
The blameshifting is particularly egregious. Just 18 months ago, the government’s stenographers were cheering its announcement that it would give itself the power to deploy ADF personnel without having to ask the states first. The bill to do that was passed in December 2020. Plainly it didn’t incorporate the need for declarations to be coordinated with the prime minister’s media schedule.
Indeed, Morrison gives the impression he regards the floods as an annoying interruption to his strategy of talking incessantly about national security and the military, in the hope that voters get sufficiently distracted from his domestic failings. But let’s keep the focus on future military acquisitions and ADF personnel, please — actually using them on the ground in Australia is not a subject he likes to take questions on. Indeed, such questions are akin to criticising the men and women in uniform.
Joyce as confounding copilot
It’s Deputy PM Barnaby Joyce’s turn in Lismore today. He has been conspicuous by his absence while Morrison was laid low by COVID. The reason why was demonstrated when he appeared on 7.30 last night and rambled, often incoherently, in response to the simplest of questions — particularly around why basic lessons still haven’t been learnt from previous disasters.
It’s already known that Joyce and his denialist colleagues damage the Liberal vote in urban electorates. That’s supposed to be offset by his greater appeal in regional areas, to bring disgruntled National Party voters back into the fold in a way the bland Michael McCormack couldn’t.
Maybe Joyce could succeed where Morrison has demonstrably failed — starting by actually talking to locals who rightly feel so abandoned by the government.
Meanwhile, Liberal MPs contemplate entering an election led by a man who is too scared to talk to actual voters.
Would you hurl abuse at the prime minister if he ventured into your electorate? Let us know your thoughts by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.
Yes, the Morrison win of 2019, which he strongly hinted at the time, that in his mind, could have been a divinely guided miracle. Since then, we’ve had the nation’s worst ever bushfires, a global pandemic and record breaking floods. So, is it time that journalists started asking him, whether he believes that his God has been punishing him in some way?
And if so, why?
Scomo prefers to cherry pick his “signs from God”.
I always think of that time when he was running for preselection in Cook, and he got smashed by Towkes 82-8. but that didn’t register on his “Signs-o-God” radar at all.
But he sees one eagle painting…
And conversely, the public is supposed to be selective on Morrison’s religiosity. That is, we’re supposed to believe that he’s a genuinely faithful member of the Pentecostal church: a church that tends to believe God created the world around 10,000 years ago, that alcohol is the devil’s work and that homosexuality is an abomination. Yet at the same time, we’re supposed to believe that Morrison is a gifted technocrat, who fully understands climate science and has a grasp on the complexity of emissions reduction. We’re also supposed to believe that he loves nothing more than a beer in a public bar, and that really, he’s got nothing against gays.
The Prayer of Scott Morrison is Psalm 22:1 ‘My God! My God! Why have You forsaken me?’
The Prayer of Scott Morrison’s people is Psalm 109: 8 ‘May his days be few; may another take his place of leadership.’
Psalm 22.2 “O my God, I cry in the day time, but thou hearest not; and in the night season, and am not silent.”
Is that why Smirko is wearing out, as he so claims, the carpet with his prayer both day and night to The Lord?
Maybe if he “got up off his fat arse” and did some work that is needed in
this country instead of praying to keep being PM of it, which to him is
the end of the work as far as he’s concerned and he now only needs to do
photo ops and hat changes perhaps, just perhaps, he wouldn’t be the most
loathed PM in the history of this country. Get off your knees and walk, to the
GG and resign and get him to call an election, NOW.
God wanted to punish Australia so he manipulated events in his mysterious ways to ensure that not only was Australia visited by Drought, Heat, Fire, Plague, Storm and Flood but also that it was led by a bunch of incompetent nincompoops while all this was going on…
The Great Tribulation, see my piece above, obviously started much earlier as indicated with the election of The Mad Abbot and the ensuing bunch of incompetent nincompoops.
Followed by a world of drought, fires, floods, plague and if not exactly famines here in Australia, certainly shortages appearing in shops and supermarkets.
see piece below
“Those whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad.”
Only a mad electorate would have elected Scummo so the Divines’ plan seems a success.
and only a mentally impaired electorate would have reelected Craig Kelly.
But could this all be a trail run for The Rapture?
Smirko, Brother Stuart RoboDebt, as well as others in the government cohort belong to Pentecostalist cults, with a chiliastic eschatology, now also wrapped in the so called Prosperity Gospel, that has all the true believers, that is those that are Pentecostalists, will be taken from the earth by The Rapture.
While all others, atheists and those that follow any other religion, Christian or otherwise will be subject to The Great Tribulation…where they will all experience worldwide hardships, disasters, famine, war, pain, and suffering, which will wipe out most of all life on the earth before the Second Coming takes place.
Richard Flanagan’s 2019 take on the same issue:
“Morrison’s Pentecostal religion places great emphasis on the idea of the Rapture. When Rapture arrives, the Chosen – that is those Pentecostalists with whom the prime minister worships and their controversial pastor – will ascend to Heaven while the rest of us are condemned to the Tribulation – a world of fires, famine and floods in which we all are to suffer and the majority of us to die wretchedly, while waiting for the Second Coming and Scott and co wait it out in the Chairman’s Lounge above.
Could it be that the prime minister in his heart is – unlike the overwhelming majority of Australians – not concerned with the prospect of a coming catastrophe when his own salvation is assured?”
trial run for The Rapture.
Do they also believe, in this mocked up cult, that they will take all their wealth(money),
negative geared housing and fossil fuel shares with them?
I would think deliberately setting out to destroy the world would have the opposite
effect on the God who made this world.
His fake God was the main reason evil Howard bulldozed him into Parliament, against the wishes of preselectors.
And that is the only fault with this article – Howard did much more than sabotage climate action. He sabotaged Australia generally, and Australia remains still in his thrall. Hardly any of his worst policies – population, mass immigration, climate, water policy, the queen, school funding, school chaplains, tax breaks, edu-migration, resources giveaways, real estate speculation – have been rolled back, and an Albanese Government would not touch them either.
You left out The Lying Rodent and two so called “wars” which are in fact US military adventures.
The Afghan Imbroglio and The Iraq Fiasco were both GOP initiated US military adventures into which LNP governments marched off lockstep. With LNP governments committing evermore blood and treasure of the Commonwealth of Australia based on deceit, deception, disinformation, fabrication, all in all lies, as well as dissimulation, fear mongering and scare tactics. Lest We Forget the GOP initiated Viet Nam Farrago.
Not wars, as no war declared, neither in the Congress of the USA nor in the Parliament of the C of A.
And all to what end…hardly the defending of Australia?
The Afghan Imbroglio, based on much mendacity, as the real perpetrators were not from Afghanistan or Iraq, but were Sunni Wahhabi-Salafi Islamists, 15 Saudis, 2 from the Gulf States, 1 each from Egypt and Lebanon.
Funded by the Saudi government generous support of the Sunni Wahhabi-Salafi, still the mainstay of the terrorism movement around the world The Imbroglio only just finished in 2021, its 20th year, cost running at c.AUD 9 billion,
The Iraq Fiasco, for which PM Howard was proud to serve as Deputy Dawg, an immoral and illegal attack based on a pack of lies, dissimulation and fear mongering started with a Biblical style Shock and Awe to strike the Land of Iraq as, Dubya, The Faux Texan and Blair The Poodle had consulted The Lord before it was launched! At a cost of c.AUD 5 billion. Which led to The Da’esh Disaster AUD?
And now, Smirko and His Brethren are preparing to spend AUD 500 million on creating a vast Son et Lumière for the Military Industrial Complex at what should remain a place of remembrance and reflection on the horrors of war,
Except for the last nine words, you got it right.
The Invisible Man has already pledged his troth the Rodent’s Way.
Time to find Hanrahan and commiserate.
It’s obvious. He was the first of God’s punishments on Australia.
It’s only a divine miracle when it’s of personal benefit. When things turn sour it’s a “spiritual attack” (by demonic powers who, presumably, vote ALP).
It’s revealing that Morrison banned the media from following his rural PR exploits yesterday. Is he taking advice from President Xi on how to control information & suppress the masses while protecting the powerful. Or from President Putin perchance? He has more in common with these two despots than he imagines.
Yes, it is interesting. And if his past behaviour is anything to go by, I’m sure that would have loved to have done some self-aggrandising photo ops. I suspect that he would’ve wanted to pretend he was being useful, by spending 2 minutes throwing flood damaged furniture in a skip. Or staking a claim that he was just an average bloke, by holding a beer amongst a group of exhausted local volunteers. So, why didn’t he?
Since the no photo ops announcement was made while he was flying to Lismore, I suspect that he was going on what his advance PR flaks were telling him. That is, he would have already had people in Lismore, trying to organise staged photo ops with friendly locals. It seems to me, that they might not have been able to find enough locals, willing to smile nicely and shake his hand. Actually, they probably would have given him the message, that the locals were so angry, that any attempts to get out and about, would have resulted in the sort of pictures that he wouldn’t want to see on the evening news.
So, our sabre rattling, warrior leader, decided to sneak in the back door.
Yes, generally Smirko is wanting to be in the limelight , but currently he is appearing as The (not so) Artful Dodger, a role he played in a high school production of Oliver!
Katherine Murphy in The Guardian back in September 2020 sums up Smirko, as a true political thespian.
Scott Morrison: how he went from Artful Dodger to political shapeshifter
A name you’ve left out, Bernard, is Tony Abbott. Howard started it, but this current fiasco was caused by the decision to install Abbott as PM. Installing him meant demonising & then removing a functioning process to deal with climate change. I know you have a small opinion of some of Labor’s climate initiatives but all of them were a start capable of improvement. All of this had to go so Tones could get the job.
“…bland Michael McCormack”
Is that the right adjective? When he was the Nationals leader the subjects of the Green Party or climate change would sometimes come up. McCormack described anyone connecting bushfires in 2019 to climate change as “raving inner-city lunatics” and went on about “the ravings of some pure, enlightened and woke capital city greenies at this time when [residents are] trying to save their homes.” Linking the fires to climate change was “disgraceful” and “disgusting”. Green’s leader Adam Bandt was a “threat to Australia”. McCormack said to Bandt “You talk of global warming; hell will freeze over before I start listening to the Greens…”. When Bandt sent the OECD his views on Mathias Corman’s application to be its general-secretary McCormack blew up, “Treasonous, I would call that. An absolute traitor to Australia!” And so on.
Bland? Is that all?
“charisma-free” would be more accurate, i reckon. McCormack’s prob within his party and the media was not that he didn’t spout enough ultra conservative stuff, just that he could never say it in a memorable way.
“personality-free” as well.
That performative bluster did, at the time, prompt me to wonder whether McCormack would be the only Nationals MP not hauled before a future ICAC, but only because he’s too stupid to be corrupt.
… Is Morrison in witless protection