Election diary No. 18: Saturday. 12, March 2022
1 On Monday, 7 March, our Prime Minister used a speech to decry “that we face a world ‘devoid of principle, accountability, and transparency’.”
When he said those three words, my first reaction was to put myself in the position of a journalist at the function and on the list to ask a question. My question would have been threefold as follows:
When in your tenure as Prime Minister have you shown any principle? Secondly, when have you been accountable for your decisions?, and thirdly, when have you and your Government been transparent?
That he would use those three words in that context only confirms the opinion of Sean Kelly in his book; The Game: A Portrait of Scott Morrison. All these things apply to others, not Morrison. On page 349 (of the Apple Electronic version), Kelly writes that:
“When journalists began to challenge Morrison with their reporting columns and their questions, this must have been particularly confronting because of Morrison’s acute understanding of the power of journalists. He relied on them to tell his stories. Now they were resisting. This was the confrontation with the limits of his power that every powerful person hates.
It is unlikely to be coincidence that of the journalists who had made the most piercing critiques and asked the most piercing questions of Morrison had been women: Jane Cadzow, Julia Baird, Laura Tingle. Michelle Gratton, Niki Savva, Katherine Murphy, Samantha Maiden, it seems unlikely they recognised something in Morrison that men, at least at first, struggled to see- or perhaps were blind to, in the way, that Morrison himself is blind to so much.
During those months, this more sceptical view began to spread. Many columns made reference to aspects of the Prime Minister that had been visible for some time. – his lack of empathy, his tendency to manage situations rather than lead, his unwillingness to take responsibility-but that had never quite gained a foothold in the commentary about him.”
The fact is that he is never wrong and seeks to blame others. He never apologises. His callousness and unchristian behaviour toward those who are disadvantaged. His lack of transparency. Enquiries are always by his staff. His incapacity to understand how women think differently from men is a stretch too far. Even the philosophical difference between right versus wrong seems beyond him.
While this article does not critique Kelly’s book, the pages are scattered with references like this throughout. The author puts all the pieces together to show that politics is just a game to our Prime Minister, and he lacks the sensitivity needed to be a modern democratic leader. His lying has become legionary, together with his frequent denials of the mistakes he makes. Evidence shows that he lacks international diplomacy and has cost us dearly.
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Character is a combination of traits that etch the outlines of a life, governing moral choices and infusing personal and professional conduct. It’s an elusive thing, easily cloaked or submerged by the theatrics of politics. But unexpected moments can sometimes reveal the fibres from which it is woven.
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For those who study the minds of leaders like Morrison, whose only interest is his government’s re-election, it is easy to see that his speech was for a domestic audience.
National security has always been a touchy point with the electorate and subject to the most outlandish scare campaigns. This is but the start.
To read Sean Kelly’s is to become more or better informed about the personality and character of the Australian Prime Minister.
2 One of the more pleasing headlines I have read in some time is this one: “Anthony Albanese to embrace Labor luminary Bob Hawke’s consensus style if ALP wins election.” Political historians will argue that Bob Hawke had the most talented ministries of all time. Particularly his first.
It included Lionel Bowen, John Button, Paul Keating, Mick Young, Bill Hayden, Clyde Holding, Gareth Evans, John Dawkins, Susan Ryan, Kym Beasley, Barry Jones and Tom Uren. That’s not a bad bunch to have in your first ministry.
What made them so good was that Hawke gave licence to their collective heads. He believed that as a leader, one of his greatest assets was the ability to delegate. And why wouldn’t you with the talent he had at his disposal?
Anthony Albanese admired Hawke as a chairperson who got the best from his team. So, he will use Hawke’s consensus style politics if he wins the next election, breaking away from the leader who has all authority of recent decades.
Albanese used a speech to a business summit last Wednesday in which he presented himself as a consensus figure with a “renewal” agenda. Albanese also said if Labor wins office in May, he will revive “the dormant national project to create wealth in a way that produces benefits for all Australians.”
Albanese also told Wednesday’s summit Australia needs to end the climate and culture wars and look for collaborative opportunities between governments, trade unions, businesses and civil society around “shared aims of growth and job creation.”
Albanese also said that Morrison’s objective as prime minister has been “to sustain a sense of division,” a division that he had stoked to advance a partisan agenda.
He forthrightly argued that Morrison does not see a legitimate role for the Government in driving economic growth and distributing the benefits.
Because Morrison didn’t believe that the Government had a role to play, he said the Coalition has delivered “a decade of inertia.”
A week before the speech by Albanese, Katherine Murphy, writing in The Guardian, reported that the Prime Minister said:
“The overlay of an uneven global recovery from the pandemic, unprovoked military aggression in Europe, in Ukraine, an energy and commodity price shock, and continued geostrategic risks in our own region – this all creates a highly complex and risky external environment,”
“It’s no place for amateurs.”
Well, he certainly got that right.
This American conservative political strategy of painting everything as black as possible and then pretending it’s only they who have the answers is being duplicated in Australia. Could we fall for it again?
But that is precisely what Morrison is doing. He is diverting attention from his and his government’s inadequacies by fabricating a false sense of security to create fear and xenophobia and position his government as the only option to defend Australia’s national security. This, Morrison hopes, will enable him to stay on as prime minister. He is a desperate man.
3 Here is a snippet to tickle your fancy:
Victoria’s pathetic Liberal opposition party has shifted its stance on climate change, saying it now supports (pay-walled) a net-zero emissions target by 2050. It will take up to the Andrews government on its environmental credentials.
4 “Don’t get too excited by Australia’s rebounding economy – it’s a distorted snapshot of the true picture,” writes Greg Jericho. “The GDP’s 3.4% growth in the December quarter only occurred because in the September quarter the economy shrank by the third-biggest amount ever.”
5 On Wednesday, 9 March, the Prime Minister ended his seven-day Covid isolation and visited the flooded town of Lismore, where a hostile group greeted him. This time, there were no handshakes – just the usual blame-shifting, which has become Morrison’s core crisis characteristic.
I will write more about this day of disaster when I continue my election diary.
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My previous diary entry: In a week when war raged, the climate denialists fumed. Just ask Tony Abbott.
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My thought for the day
One of Scott Morrison’s most outstanding dexterities is his ability to sell his falsehoods and have people believe them. Unfortunately, too many voters consider him worthy of their vote at a time when change is badly needed. Australia cannot afford another term of this dishonest man and his government.
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