(Image: Mitchell Squire/Private Media)

After Scott Morrison’s belated appearance on 7.30 last night — an experience he indicated he was unwilling to repeat before the election — the question about the prime minister is not so much about how often he lies as whether he is actually capable of not lying.

It was an appearance riddled with deceit and falsehood. He blatantly and clearly lied that Gladys Berejiklian had denied her damning descriptions of him to one of his colleagues as a “a horrible horrible person… actively spreading lies” when she has made no such denial.

He lied that he never “had any time for the factional games in the Liberal Party” when the entire NSW Liberal imbroglio is the result of Morrison’s efforts to preserve the power of his chief minion, Alex Hawke, and preserve the power of factional powerbrokers at the expense of grassroots members.

He lied about his claim that his opponents didn’t want him spending money on victims of floods (eventually weakly claiming that he’d read some comments on his Facebook page to that effect).

Labor MP Justine Elliot claims Morrison misrepresented his conversation with her when he claimed he’d said to her about flood relief that “we would be doing further analysis in the coming days, and we would make further announcements and that’s exactly what we did”.

And he lied that his attempts to protect Hawke in NSW by holding up a vast number of preselections until election eve was because he was standing up for women in his party: “I’m very serious about having great women in my ranks.”

This is the man who tried to bully Julia Banks after he became prime minister; who undermined Berejiklian by backgrounding against her; whose office backgrounded against the partner of Brittany Higgins while he evaded responsibility for the issue by instigating an inquiry that he lied to Parliament about; who refused to read allegations against Christian Porter; who ignores the unresolved sexual harassment allegations against Barnaby Joyce; who has worked to prevent NSW Liberal MP Melanie Gibbons from contesting preselection for Hughes in favour of right-wing man-child Alex Dore; who as treasurer defended the decision to dump Queensland MP Jane Prentice as party democracy at work…

If this is Morrison being for women, you’d hate to see what he’d do if he took a dislike to them.

If Morrison’s apparently obsessive lying was in the spotlight in his interview with Leigh Sales, there were other attributes of the Morrison persona that also got a good airing. There was his readiness to blame any criticism of him by female MPs on their poor mental health and emotional state, which Crikey pointed out in mid-2021. The criticism by NSW Liberal MP Catherine Cusack, who declared her disgust for Morrison and said she couldn’t vote for him, was according to Morrison last night all down to the fact that she was “upset” about the northern NSW floods — in the same way Concetta Fierravanti-Wells’ forthright critique of Morrison was all down to her being “disappointed”.

For Morrison, no criticism of him by a woman is ever valid, or ever reflects an objective assessment of his actions; it’s always down to their being upset, emotional, angry, having had a “harrowing” time — although he appears, after Crikey called it out, to have dropped his insistence that he’s always offering these poor overwrought women “support”.

Also on display was Morrison’s willingness to ditch even the oldest of friends and allies if it becomes convenient. As a general rule, it’s always best not to stand between a politician and a passing bus if you’ve done anything to embarrass them, but Morrison would need a Greyhound fleet to deal with the scores of people he’s chucked under the wheels over the years. Having abandoned “mentor”, spiritual adviser, close friend and political mate Brian Houston after the latter resigned in disgrace from Hillsong, Morrison insisted yesterday he really had nothing to do with Hillsong — though now he’s at least admitted that he attends its conferences.

All of this leads to one of the more remarkable features of Morrison’s time as prime minister: the unanimity across the political divide about what kind of person he is. The assessments come from Labor, the Greens, One Nation, Barnaby Joyce, independents and, most strongly of all, from many lifelong Liberals inside Parliament and out: the man is a liar, a bully, a gaslighter and only concerned about himself.

What you see with Morrison is what you get. And it looks shabby indeed.