Peter Dutton’s management strategy for the revelation of Scott Morrison’s penchant for secretly swearing himself into the roles of his ministers is pretty simple: not much to see here; let’s move on; voters are interested in inflation.
That was already a tricky line to maintain in the halcyon days of, well, before yesterday morning, when the multiple ministries were confined to “just” Health, Finance and Resources. Once we learnt Morrison’s fondness for pinching his colleagues’ ministries had proliferated to include the crucial portfolios of Home Affairs and Treasury, it should have been the moment the opposition leader used to turn on the former prime minister and try to separate himself from the whole sordid Morrison era.
Morrison’s toxicity to the Liberal brand was amply demonstrated on May 21. Now he’s polluting the brand still more. Even his own colleagues are furious with him for his deceit. A senior frontbencher, Karen Andrews, wants him gone from politics. But Dutton — with other senior figures such as Barnaby Joyce — are sticking with the downplaying script.
No big deal, stay calm, folks. Stay calm over something one of Dutton’s senior colleagues thinks warrants Morrison being given the flick. Stay calm over his own colleagues being deceived by Morrison. Hell, Dutton can’t even be sure if he isn’t among the victims of the dial-a-ministry scheme.
The old line is that if you want loyalty in politics, get a dog. That goes doubly so for a man who has betrayed his closest colleagues and supporters. Dutton — who must now know he or Josh Frydenberg should have tried to seize the prime ministership last year in an effort to avert catastrophe — owes no loyalty to his former leader. Yet, inexplicably, he is refusing to take the opportunity to push a deeply unwelcome presence in his ranks out the door.
Indeed, under Dutton’s current strategy, Morrison would remain in Parliament until such time as he decides to leave. How long will that be? Possibly longer than everyone expects. To the extent they were before this, no corporate doors are now likely to open to Morrison; would you want this man with his track record on governance (not to mention leaking to News Corp) on your board? With the international coverage his multiple ministries scheme is receiving, how many speaking gigs on the international rubber chicken circuit will be available?
So there he will sit, on the backbench, a reminder of what is now seen as an appalling era of incompetence, rotten governance and the trashing of political norms. And Dutton will implicitly be endorsing it by backing Morrison to remain.
The answer from John Howard, most explicitly, is that the opposition doesn’t need a byelection right now, suggesting it might lose a safe seat, or it would undermine the chances of the NSW Liberal Party in March next year. But that’s short-term pain; despite the big swing against Morrison in May, Cook is still relatively safe, and its voter profile is less amenable to the appeal of a teal-style independent than coastal suburbs to the north. And even in the worst-case scenario of losing the seat, the opposition is already in an electorally dire position for 2025. If it can’t regain a seat like Cook at a general election its chances of returning to office are slim to none anyway.
The alternative Dutton is opting for is long-term pain, with every day Morrison remaining in Parliament a reminder of his crazy time as prime minister and how Dutton was a senior minister in all that mayhem.
And who knows what else might emerge about Morrison’s time in the top job in the months to come? A man capable of deceiving his colleagues on such a grand scale might have done a lot of other things as well that have yet to come to light. Time for Dutton to wield his authority as leader.
Should Dutton give Morrison the boot? 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.
Those Coalition politicians (Dutton, Joyce, Howard in the last 24 hours, for a start) who insist this is all in the past and nothing to fuss about out are as dangerous and delusional as Morrison. They are openly displaying contempt for the essential principles of our system of representative democracy. They refuse to recognise or discuss the real issue and instead divert attention by banging on endlessly with variations on ‘no law was broken’, as though that is the beginning and end of it, the only test of acceptable conduct in public life.
Of course this is the also the standard way the Coalition excuses its other egregious rorts and scandals, no matter how bad, how unethical, how damaging to public confidence: in the Coalition’s cosy world all is well if nobody has been convicted of an actual crime.
Let’s not make the mistake of thinking that Morrison’s assault on our constitutional system is sui generis. Those who defend him are the same kind as him and tainted with the same lack of principles.
Hear, hear!!
You named and shamed some conservative stinking turds there…
In a delicious dose of Schadenfreude, what I find most amusing is the fact that News Corp flack and Coalition cheerleader Simon Benson was instrumental in setting the cat amongst the pigeons with his revelations in his co-authored memoir “Plagued”.
This is the same savant who, on the 5th April 2020 episode of the ABC Insiders, stated “Scott Morrison is emerging as one of the most capable prime ministers this country has seen for a long time”
No sure how that savant-like prediction is working out for Simon. I usually associate that sort of foresight with Paul Kelly……Oh yeah that’s right…..
Scotty is a plague on the Opposition which is now a putrid carcass.
Excellent quotation. I’ve been wondering how Morrison was foolish enough to reveal his secret ministering, and whether those who published the revelation had any notion how it would be received. Perhaps the scandal would have remained hidden indefinitely if Morrison had not been lulled into a false sense of security by the mindless grovelling sycophancy of Benson, and the sycophant was too dim to suspect his hero might have revealed anything dubious.
What did Simon Bensons squeeze know and when ? Surely she would understand the implications of snottys actions..
When people start asking what the hell went on here it is a standard coalition response to attack people for being concerned about the past. We should remain concerned about the past because it is also our present. We need to know what happened and fix it for the future. Reject the coalition response.
True. Still, it is interesting to consider the benefits of entirely abandoning all concerns about the past. There would be no more inquiries into anything, given that inquiries are always looking at the past. There would be no more use for courts of law, either civil or criminal, as they are just as guilty of obsessing with the past. What a lot of time and trouble that would save us! Nobody could ever be judged on their record for anything. We might still have news but it would only report what is happening today with no reference to yesterday or anything earlier. We would all, so far as possible, be like the apocryphal goldfish with its 5-minute memory. Wouldn’t that be nice?
Now why do Coalition politicians in particular want this?
Is there a single member of the LNPs who is not an ongoing gift to Labor
Bridget Archer.
Possibly Karen Andrews, but you’re in trouble after that.
And she is no longer in Parliament.
She is!
Puppet master Howard reveals himself. The man of no principles. Who single-handedly declared Australia to be at war with Iraq for no reason other than to toady to George W Bush. The man who would tell any lie, regardless of national security, for his own political ends. Fixated to the exclusion of all else on the sanctity of the Liberal Party, and waging some sort of holy war against anything that threatens even a single blue seat in Parliament, regardless of morality, ethics or honour. Blind to the malevolent effect he exerts by eroding, then destroying, public trust in the institution of our government, he has coached successive Leaders of his party to believe that to win they must abandon what is right. And that winning is all there is. Which has now come to be true in the sense that, having lost, they stand exposed – with nothing.
Yes.And both loved arrogating ‘Australian-ness’ to themselves – though it seems to me both were light years away from even that silly, jingoistic notion, of ‘Australian-ness’, that is. Hi Vis my arse.
But the irony is that the right-wing, religious Right culture that Howard started rolled the most popular recent Liberal PM – Turnbull. So it’s not just about being in government – they only want to be in government to push their ugly agenda.
The question is who is modelling himself on whom – Howard or Mitch McConnell?
Thank you, drastic, for your oh so eloquent, accurate and powerful description of Howard and his influence.
“Blind to the malevolent effect he exerts…”
If I could add, it feels like a malignant tumour which just keeps on growing and inflicting damage on whoever and whatever it touches year after year after year.
Howard, IMO, helped in the purge of so many Liberals by wandering around seats in which Morrison was already toxic, espousing his ridiculously out of date opinions and insulting the Teal Independent candidates. Thank you John Howard! Thank you also for showing up on 7.30 to inadvertently show just what is important to so many senior Libs: keeping Lib seats at all costs.
He’s sitting there on the back bench collecting some $217,000 for sitting there with his smirk doing nort. What is he doing for his electorate? What has he ever done for them? As a taxpayer I want him gone. The money paid to him could hire two ECU nurses.
The guy who doesn’t hold a hose is now being paid over $200,000 p.a. by taxpayers not to do “day-to-day politics”.
Yes. Silly to keep him there especially if the motivation is to hang onto his seat. They are powerless anyway, another lost seat cant make it much worse, but keeping the on-the -nose Scummo there will keep the smell hanging around till the next election when the cost could well be fatal to the Libs and Nats as entities. I think they are going extinct anyway. This will make it quicker.
The Liberals yes are headed for extinction, but not the Nationals. The Nats never lost one seat at the last election. Rural Australia votes National like it’s a badge of honour, including the 1500 dairy farmers who went to the wall under the LNP, and that’s not going to change for a very long time. Farmers are on the corporate welfare gravy train, just like the fossil fuel industry, $1-10 billion for the farmers and $10-12 billion for the fossil fuel industry and they certainly aren’t going to change their votes and give that away.
The Nats, in their current guise, are certainly moving towards irrelevancy, though. They have burned their constituency for the fossil fuel industry.
Former constituency
The Nats may not have lost a lot of seats but they lost a lot of votes. They now have very few safe seats, and if Tony Windsor equivalents turned up in some of the remainder, they’d be toast.