A few weeks ago, the ever-astute Niki Savva wrote that Scott Morrison could be remembered as the prime minister who won the election he should’ve lost and lost the election he should’ve won.
Many people, particularly progressives, would likely take umbrage with the idea that Morrison should be winning this election. After all, this is the prime minister who went to Hawaii during the bushfires, ballsed-up the vaccine rollout, failed to plan for the Omicron wave, remained tin-eared around serious matters of sexual misconduct within the Coalition, and, by his own admission, has little policy ambition for what would be the Coalition’s fourth term in office.
But putting aside all that, Morrison has presided over a remarkable pandemic success story, which should have the Coalition cruising toward a landslide rather than praying for another miracle. Australia has had one of the lowest COVID death rates in the world. Our vaccination figures are also world-leading. Those months of painful pandemic restrictions are a thing of the past. So are the horrifying images from March 2020 of Centrelink queues stretching down the block — just over two years on, unemployment is at a 50-year low.
There’s a sense of frustration from Morrison when he talks about Australia’s position compared with the rest of the world. Twice this week, he’s mentioned a New York Times article that suggests nearly a million Americans would be alive today if the United States had Australia’s COVID death rate.
But voters don’t care about the Times. Instead, they care about Morrison’s egregiously bad vibes, and an unpleasantness so palpable it has remained Labor’s strongest electoral asset throughout a shaky campaign.
Morrison has tried hard to cast himself as a kind of heroic wartime leader. But through three crisis-ridden years, the prime minister’s manner has been anything but soothing. Too often, he’s come across as both hectoring and tone-deaf, a man so obviously driven by little more than the relentless pursuit of the shortest-term political gain.
It’s that short-termism that explains some of his more infamous moments. The “it’s not a race” comments were made when the government simply hadn’t shored up vaccine supply. And on COVID matters, he’s so often been an opportunistic weathervane.
When cases rose in Sydney last June, he first praised the NSW government for avoiding restrictions, then insisted a hard(er) lockdown had to work, before trying to cast himself as the voice of vaccine-driven freedom.
Morrison sledged Mark McGowan over Western Australia’s hard border, intervened in Clive Palmer’s legal challenge to open it up, and then started posing for photo ops with the WA premier because the government needs to hold its seats in Perth.
These are just a couple of incidents that sum up Morrison’s intensely cynical approach to the pandemic, an approach that has left a bitter taste in the mouths of so many voters around the country.
It’s also reinforced the feeling that where Australia has succeeded, it’s been in spite of the prime minister, not because of him. The first COVID lockdowns in 2020 came at the urging of Gladys Berejiklian and Dan Andrews. State premiers made and wore the politically painful decisions around locking down, and reopening their borders (with little help from Canberra).
Andrews and NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet have essentially led Australia through the latest stage of the pandemic (it was the latter who first reopened international borders unilaterally).
All of this has made it far harder for Morrison to “own” the successes. And when failures do happen — the early days of the vaccine rollout, the abrogation of leadership during the bushfires and the floods and the Omicron wave — his stubborn refusal to take any responsibility has made him an obvious punching bag.
Morrison can’t escape the stench of those failures because by offering no policy ambition, he’s cornered himself into an election about the past three years, with a thoroughly dispiriting message of “stick with the devil you know”.
On the challenges Australians actually fear, Morrison just offers more cynical short-termism.
On climate, a few PowerPoint slides and a net zero commitment vague enough to keep the Nationals happy. On cost of living, a suite of short-term measures designed to win an election. On housing, a dumb policy coughed up days before the polls open.
Even so, the “headline” pandemic record alone should be enough for a government to win on, especially when COVID has generally been so generous toward incumbents. If it isn’t, blame must fall on Morrison, and the terrible vibes he can’t help but give off.
“It’s also reinforced the feeling that where Australia has succeeded, it’s been in spite of the prime minister, not because of him.”
I don’t think it is a feeling. More like fact.
When you have to drag out an extra from Weekend at Bernie’s the “Core or Non Core Promises” expert, you are in trouble, and for that, we should all be thankful.
All he needed was the sunglasses.
Je ne crois pas.. Je sais!
Three of our last six PMs have been uber religious, ultra royalist, woman-dissing, LGBTQ-averse, tone-deaf to indigenous, belligerent, dinosaur, males, who would have looked a bit old fashioned when I was a kid in the 1950s.
A wonderful topic, sure, for a glass case at the Museum of Australian Democracy. But it is truly depressing to think that these throwback types are still coming through as national leaders of a supposedly advanced OECD nation.
tut tut you really have to keep up – LGBTQIA+. Has been renamed the Alphabet people in US – that is not sexist, gender neutral and allows for expansion
Reminds me of the 20 or so years after WW 2 when the influx of middle and eastern Europeans were regularly called alphabets.
What a Rout .Despite the great leader of the Liberal /Nat/ CP. throwing every lie in the book at the Labor , Teal ,Green options the Australian people have shown Mr Morrison and his cronies they do not like liars, bullies,climate change laggards,snake oil salesmen coal wavers and other threats to Australias future .
That The FORMER leader of the worst government in Australia’s history cried foul and complained about his treatment by Crikey contributors is confirmation of the fact that we did our bit .
Not to mention the God bothers
It is ridiculous the election is this close. How corrupt and incompetent does a Coalition government have to be to not be supported by Murdoch media and a significant number of the population? If it had been down to the Federal government, Australia would likely have been in a much worse case COVID-wise. They were dragged kicking and screaming into action by the states. They stuffed up every step of the way. Murdoch Media has been poisoning the globe for far too long. Its support is the only reason this Government is still in power, let alone looking like winning the election.
Corruption is a benefit to old Rupert, the more the merrier.
Murdoch only changes his tune if he thinks his empire and riches are threatened.
I don’t know anyone under 50 who reads newspapers or watches streaming news
Some years back I had a well educated European guest stay with us for a while. He toured the wide brown land extensively and upon his return , I asked what he had found. His answer may go some way to answering your question GJ. He said that he found Australians to be very friendly, extraordinarily helpful but profoundly ignorant – and often proud of it.
They are concerned about the possibility of a Royal Commission or an inquiry about media diversity.
What is it with middle aged men and their obsession with Sky and Fox News?
What is it with the young who cannot analyse but look at their digital machines every 5 minutes for next big story
Yeah, but did we come through it because of him or from the handling of it by other actors. It must also be acknowledged that “it” is not still beaten by a long shot, just now seemingly, ignored as something to worry about. He has a habit of claiming credit where none is owed.
Worse he’s electioneering a scare campaign about Albanese being likely to put everyone back into lockdown. Cynical and contemptible.
Fact 1 Premiers ordered lockdowns not the PM
Fact 2 The poor vaccine rollout meant NSW and Victoria were in lockdown for at least 6 to 8 weeks longer than they needed to be
Fact 4 the pandemic is not over and restrictions may yet be required again
Fact 5 unlike Morrison’s record, it can be expected that Labor will act on public health evidence and advice rather than play politics and blithely disclaim responsibility for excess deaths in areas where it is responsible, eg. Aged care.
Pandemic not over? Influenza is never over but had fallen off the radar even though the mortality rate is similar to COVID. 50% of my friends, family and work colleagues have had COVID now and survived. We’re being conned.
There are worst things than dying.
1 in 20 people who have contracted SARS2 CoVid19 will go on to develop Long Covid which commences its manifestation approximately 3 months post infection and its severity is totally unrelated to the severity of initial infection.
Overwhelming fatigue, developing type 2 diabetes, lung, kidney and heart muscle scarring and the “brain fog”, which on MRI has been proven to be significant scarring of the cognitive areas of the brain. This must have been a progressive process or the person would have had stroke symptoms.
Cambridge University had just completed an extensive normal brain MRI images for their library. They contacted their volunteers after the first waves of Covid and asked anyone who had “Brain Fog” to return for a follow up MRI and so proved the damage done.
The muddying of the waters between Influenza and a Covid19 is downright deceptive.
We have very effective vaccines against influenza, and if you happen to contract influenza, you will develop an immunity against the strain for life.
Whereas, Covid19 mutates all the time and each mutation becomes more vaccine evasive, if you contract whatever mutation of Covid19, it gives you one moth’s immunity from that mutation and nothing against any other Covid19 variant.
There was also an action meant to distract the population suggesting that Covid19 will become endemic and it most certainly will not become endemic, as the disease is certainly an epidemic presentation disease. This theory has been used to justify the opening up and dropping of personal protection equipment such as masks.
How many years are we going to accept the usual Influenza deaths of 2000 and 11,000 from Covid19.
.
you are perfectly correct cannot compare influenza with SARS Covid-19
it is like comparing polio with EBOLA.
Thanks for that. So the authorities are underplaying not overplaying the whole scenario. Hmmmm. If it’s that bad, China should pay.
Odd that you mention “…an immunity against the strain for life” for ‘flu which is the ultimate shape shifter – that’s why a new vaccine is required every season.
It’s those damned migratory water fowl of the northern hemisphere – undocumented migrants every feathered one of them.
Unlike nice simple covid, so stable & immutable that someone thought that the Greek alphabet would suffice for naming the strains…
Monkey pox might be a new contender – don’t kiss one!
Thanks for your anecdotal evidence, I will give it the due consideration it deserves.
The mortality rate is NOT similar to Covid. Since you are apparently ignorant of Google, here’s just one of many authoritative statements from health websites:
In a bad flu year on average around 30,000 people in the UK die from flu and pneumonia, with a loss of around 250,000 life years. This is a sixth of the life years lost to COVID-19.
Surely it was the Premiers who lead us through the Covid pandemic. not the Prime Minister, his role was to be late with vaccines and rat tests, lambast the premiers for their actions, favour his home state over everyone else and generally stuff things up.
His claim to be a war time leader is ridiculous, he has no leadership qualities, refuses responsibility and quite frankly he would not have cut it in any unit I belonged to.
Morrison, in my day, would have made only third on the rung of bin-collectors.
The true Morrison was evident in the Holgate matter where she was dismissed over a few watches given in recognition of achievement, whilst the dismissor has handed out millions of tax payer dollars and favours “looking after mates”. Consistent with this the rejection of an ICAC equivalent. Voters need fear the pursuit of power by those who indulge in abuse of power.