After the 2019 election, we’ve lost our obsessive fixation with polls, which is perhaps a good thing. But they’re very poor right now for the Coalition, no more than 16 weeks from election day.
Even the best poll for the Coalition, run by a Coalition pollster and used by Nine, has the government in trouble. Roy Morgan polling has the Coalition facing a landslide defeat. Prime Minister Scott Morrison has started the year as he ended it, blundering and stumbling from one debacle to another. And Labor is refusing to release any policies that might interrupt Morrison while he’s stuffing up.
So how can Morrison turn things around in less than four months? This week we present a mostly serious list of suggestions for the prime minister to come home with a wet sail in 2022. Today’s is:
Get out of the media bubble
Morrison loves to invoke the Canberra bubble about any subject he finds inconvenient, but perhaps doesn’t realise he’s a prisoner of a much worse bubble — that created by News Corp.
In the world of Rupert Murdoch, the government is performing well, Morrison is a great leader, and whatever occasional mistakes are made are trivial compared with the successes of the government.
It seems Morrison’s key inputs about what’s happening in the real world are skewed by the explicit determination of outlets like The Australian to support the government.
But you can’t perform better if you think you’re already performing well. And one of the most important drivers for better performance by public officials is knowing they are being held accountable by the media. When the media don’t hold you accountable, you lose a key incentive to perform well, even if they’re not telling you how well you’re doing.
And it’s not as if other outlets are making up for the fantasy world created by News Corp. Nine newspapers — chaired by a Liberal elder, run by a former Liberal staffer, populated by stenographers — appear to have responded to Morrison’s complaint that they are too tough on him not with proper scepticism but a lovefest of photo galleries, one-on-one interviews and video tributes.
When the people who claim their watchdogs of the powerful tell you how well you’re doing, any politician will be inclined to believe them. We all prefer good reviews to bad reviews. But Morrison needs to hear what’s really happening in the world — and quickly.
For Pete’s sake, don’t give this execrable rabble calling itself a government, any ideas for getting re-elected. That’s the last thing this country needs.
Yes they need to be gone. Corrupt, unaccountable and totally incompetent; and a complete policy vacuum.
If left to run a chook raffle, having been given the chook and the tickets, there would be no tickets left, no chook and certainly no money forthcoming, merely a smirk.
Our very own Cheshire cat – no substance or discernible form, just the smirk visible hanging in the air.
Salmonella- a strong possibility.
You know the government is bad when an informed conservative commentator like Alan Kohler calls the Morrison government a subsidiary of the coal industry. Check the New Daily.
Don’t worry, they’re too insular and convinced it is their god-given right to pay attention. The most likely reaction would be either to condemn that advice as blasphemy, or to pray for the souls of their critics. As compassion doesn’t seem to be on their to-do lists, I wouldn’t bet on that one.
It’s OK – Speers and Insiders is back this week so that will sharpen them up. Nothing like some hard-hitting criticism from Phil Coorey, Cameron Stewart and James Campbell to set them back on their heels.
Thank heavens we still have the female cohort among our scribes – Tingle, Murphy, Taylor, Davies, Remeikis and, for the moment at least, Savva.
Re Nein Media – it lost credibility when it lost Michael Pascoe, Michael West, Mark Kenny and Katharine Murphy, and hired David Crowe and Rob Harris from News, and hired a bunch of callow interns.
Oh God yes! Maybe Speers could get Barrie back on to give him an idea about how to do it!
Or abdicate in deference to a full-time Tingle?
And Paddy Manning. Where is he now?
You forgot to mention the absolute darlings of the Murdock empire: Credlin and Panahi.
It’s unfortunate for both of them that they are so hopelessly partisan they can’t see through Morrison and his inept Government
Are you sure it’s unfortunate for them? Isn’t it a condition of their employment?
Credlin was at least as responsible for the idiocies of Abbott’s term as PM as was the Wrecker himself.
Well said. Although you left out Chip le Grand, who is anything but. Like most of the Nine crew, he spent umpty years dialling M-for-Murdoch.
Indeed, Cap’n. My apologies – Homer Eugene le Grand (Chip, cos Scooter and Bubba were already taken) is straight out of Virginia (Blacksburg, on the border of West Virginia), with 25 years at the Murdoch College of Lies before Costello and Chessell recruited him.
Why on earth would you want to give advice to Scotty and the rest of this dysfunctional government. We need to be rid of them not give them another term.
Some of them do deserve a Term – in prison.
He will lie , pork barrel, benefit from grateful mining companies and leaders of marginal fruit cakes who have helped deliver “miracles ” at previous elections and any dirty trick available.
He will also use millions of dollars of taxpayers money to claim ownership of significant climate change initiatives others have planned and partly delivered.
All dirty tricks will be on the table
Even if he wanted to, I doubt Scotty could take your advice. He doesn’t seem to be able to distinguish between an image, an announcement, a pose, and actual achievement.
Did you like the way that the UK secretary of state Liz Truss went in to talk up how good Smirko was.
What gullible fool he is, of course he is a great man, one who buys junk, ancient designed nuclear submarines on the never never from “Our Mother Country”.
I asked this question in another forum on here ” Did the same rules apply to whomever this idiot was, were the Djocovik rules applied equally” ?
The way Boris Johnson is looking over in the U.K whatever was said at aforementioned meeting might be as useless as a ash tray on a motorbike!