When Morrison started campaigning in 2019, most people expected him to lose. Even more people expected him to stop campaigning after the election, at least for a few weeks. But Scotty being Scotty, he couldn’t afford to stop apart from a brief holiday in Hawaii.

I guess that’s what he found so perplexing when he copped all that flack about: the next election is ages away and if I don’t take a break now, when will I get the chance? I mean, it’s not like I can actually do anything to help. When told that Prime Ministers normally did things like go to the affected area and offer moral support he was off before you could say photo opportunity. Unfortunately, he wasn’t prepared for the video showing him forcing someone’s hand into his: it was meant to be a still shot and we’re out of here!

The fear for me is that Morrison is like Covid. It was a terrible thing that upset lives and people just didn’t know. how to deal with it, so after the horror of all the ways it changed what we perceived as normality, a lot of people decided that the best thing to do was ignore it and hope it didn’t affect them personally.

The Coalition government – which stretches back to 2013, no matter how Morrison tries to tell us that they’re just warming up and good government starts next term – have made so many mistakes that the election will be over by the time I list them. Yet somehow they manage to obscure what they’ve done by talking about Labor.

Take Robodebt! The various defenders suggest that the practice of income averaging had been around for thirty years. This is true, but in the past, it was just a way of identifying which people needed to be examined more closely. This would be like the police getting a description of a suspect, then arresting the first person they found over 190cm tall with brown hair and holding them in custody until they could prove their innocence, and then arguing that all police use descriptions to identify suspects.

Yet after Robodebt, Morrison was happy to assert that Christian Porter was “an innocent man” because of the well-accepted idea of the presumption of innocence. Of course, Mr Porter is entitled to this presumption, just as those receiving Robodebt letters were.

Tomorrow people will be voting and the polls are tightening and I know that a lot of people are thinking, “We’ve seen this movie before and we find it all a bit too predictable and silly. I mean, why does that person run into the one place where there’s no help?” 

So, here we are again. Last time Labor were ahead in the polls and the betting markets. The party that was elected to get debt and deficit under control have doubled the debt and have produced nothing but deficits, but wait: Good news! Next year we’re back in black. Awesome, we told you we were good economic managers.

This time we have a similar scenario, except that it’s unemployment that’s the good news. It has a three in front of it and businesses can’t get enough workers. See, we’re the good economic managers!  Let’s ignore the fact that a shortage of workers is a sign of inefficiencies in the economy, just like a shortage of jobs is, but let’s ignore that because look, Labor are going to add $7 billion to the one trillion we’ve racked up. Fiscally irresponsible and you’ll all be broke. 

I could point out here that this is the equivalent of me getting very upset with my partner and calling her fiscally irresponsible when she puts two coffees on the credit card after I’ve just spent a thousand dollars on a guitar because I thought I’d like to learn to play one day.

However, I suspect that at least some people are more cynical. I suspect that at least some people are more concerned with the cost of living. I suspect that at least some people understand that the person they thought was a daggy dad is really a snake-oil salesman who turns around and says that he isn’t delivering what you paid for because it wasn’t what you thought it was. I’m thinking integrity commission here, where Morrison promised one, but constantly calls ICAC a kangaroo court which ruins reputations of people by asking them questions publicly and how is that fair when all they’ve done is lie to the public and use taxpayer funds in ways that people would find dodgy. Totally unfair.

Much has been made of the fact that Morrison has steered clear of the so-called moderates and the suggestion has been that he realises that he’s electoral poison in those places, but there is an alternative possibility: He actually believes in miracles and he doesn’t care about these electorates, believing that God will deliver the seats he needs with candidates like Katherine Deves. Actually, after Scotty bulldozed that kid (“fault on both sides” according to Stuart Robert), did anyone ask her if she has a view on men playing sport against little children or is it only transgender people that she has a problem with?

Whatever worries Labor voters may have, they should rest assured after Morrison told us that he didn’t introduce the integrity commission legislation because Labor opposed it. On that basis, it seems that whoever wins the election the only legislation brought before parliament will be things that Labor supports!