It’s now clear Scott Morrison is incapable of ever delivering effective change on the treatment of women within his own party, within parliament or across the country.
He doesn’t understand the issues, and he continues to regard them as a problem of political management. Very likely, he can only understand them as a problem of political management.
The history of Morrison’s political management is that, at some point, it becomes clear that it is only political management. And like a classic case of diminishing returns, the gap between the announcement and the disillusionment about its lack of substance has been reducing over time.
The months it took it to become clear that bushfire funding wasn’t reaching victims became the weeks before it was clear his promises about vaccines were false, then the days before it was clear his promise to find out what happened in his office regarding Brittany Higgins would never be delivered.
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Yesterday it was down to minutes — the gap between Morrison’s purported Damascene conversion to understanding and wanting to address the toxic cultures women face, and his spiteful get-square with a journalist using what turned out, by his own admission, to be fake claims about sexual harassment in News Corp.
Press gallery journalists had barely started devising their introductions to the exact articles Morrison and his office were seeking yesterday — about his tearful mea culpa and crucial change of heart — before they were astonished that a glass-jawed prime minister was throwing around what was supposedly confidential information about a harassment complaint in a public forum for the purposes of attacking a journalist who’d offended him.
The harassment complaint was completely fictional. Within minutes, Morrison’s own office was backing away from his claims, and by late last night — too late for the morning paper editions — Morrison had apologised to News Corp for lying about its staff.
It still wasn’t enough for some journalists, who are today pondering whether Morrison will back up his words with actions, and whether he will be believed. But the entirely performative nature of Morrison’s statements yesterday had been clearly displayed, yet again. His mea culpa and tears were more political management.
All it took to expose it was one relatively innocuous question about whether Morrison had lost control of his staff. Morrison demonstrated that the loss of control was a lot closer to home than his staff, and confirmed that his only focus is on political management.
You can’t simultaneously argue you want to create an environment in which women feel safe and respected and then weaponise harassment complaints to score points off those trying to hold you to account.
There’s something else just as troubling as Morrison’s inability to see this issue as anything other than about political management: Morrison’s reflexive instinct to lie.
Morrison’s repeated lying about matters big and small and the fact that he is far beyond other politicians in that regard has been remarked upon before.
But Morrison’s first instinct whenever he feels threatened, or whenever he is angered, is to lie. Yesterday he justified his claims about sexual harassment at News Corp by verballing the journalist who offended him, Andrew Clennell of Sky News, who, he said, had claimed sexual harassment didn’t happen in media companies.
Clennell said nothing of the sort — as Morrison well knew. But Morrison said it anyway, right in front of Clennell and the other journalists who’d heard perfectly well what he’d said — that workplace cultures in media companies were better than those of Parliament (they could hardly be worse).
A man who can only see political problems to manage with media stunts and endless announcements, and whose base instinct is to lie, even when it is clear he will be shown to be a liar, can’t be a competent prime minister. And he certainly can’t lead cultural change.
The stench from the Morrison government grows ever worse. And contributing to it now is a whiff of political mortality around Morrison himself.
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For more than twenty years I have seen Australia’s politicians get away with lie after lie. Morrison is an extreme but not unique example. Why, for example, after Iraq, should anyone ever believe a word that John Howard says? And yet this crime is somehow flushed down the memory hole. I could recite a long and depressing litany of mendacity but it hardly seems necessary.
Is it unreasonable to want a Prime Minister who is as good as their word? How good is Scott Morrison’s word?
To answer your last sentence – his word is worth nothing, nada, zip, zilch.
And they wonder why we don’t trust them when they REALLY need us to!
Australia really did take a terrible turn for the worse and go down the rabbit hole of sh*t holes some decades ago…but hey, the property port folio prices went up… and what chance has a decent accountable democracy have against a profiteering rising tide of inequity & inequality ?..The answer to that ?.. another country in an other time, with another sense of history of itself,perhaps ?
Absolutely spot on Bernard. Could not have put it better myself. You get what you ask for. Sometime ago I said I would not shed one tear for whatever Morrison’s morons and shysters impose on Australians. You all had a very clear choice last election to take Australia down an entirely different more fair and humane path. The imbeciles (mostly Queensland throw backs to the stone age who could not see past their narrow self interest and selfish ‘aspiration’ (greed) have placed us in our current position with a moral vacuum and slimy grub of a PM and a ‘sick joke’ of a ‘government’ in charge I hope the fruitcakes who voted for this pile of trash enjoy the ‘fruits’ of their victory. You deserve everything that is yet to come your way. More and more services cut and degraded, zero concern regarding climate change, a less progressive tax system and hence growing inequality, stagnant wage growth, subsistence unemployment benefits, growing casualization of the workforce, greater restrictions on personal rights and freedoms, reining in the press and the list goes on. Ain’t life great I have always had a soft spot for the old adage “what goes around comes around’. Morrison, Porter and the other low life in this government who like to cry out for justice in the Porter affair might finally be getting a dose of what they deserve – to be exposed as the power crazed moral bankrupts that they are. Then again maybe there is some truth in the oft mentioned view that only people of a certain level of intelligence should be given the grave privilege of voting. Had this been the case in the USA last November roughly 73 million Americans would have been denied the vote. Those who voted for Morrison clearly fit into this category why would you possibly think that anything would change under this pack of trash? Just more of the same it was as clear as day.. I have been trying to think of a good joke to use on this pathetic excuse of a government. The 1993 legal drama “Philadelphia”, comes to mind. Remember when Tom Hanks asks Denzel Washington;
“What do you call a thousand lawyers chained together at the bottom of the ocean?” Answer: ‘A good start.” Just make the required changes for it to apply to the Morrison government.
Everything you say ‘Lionheart’ is true, however I suggest the reason this lot were voted in by the likes of the ‘Queensland throw backs’ is because of the massive impact of the Murdoch media’s constant attack on any progressive moves to address climate change along with the disgrace of Palmers $80 million advertising splurge to ensure he can get his Queensland Coal mine up and running. BUT ALSO Labor has lost it’s way
I live in the middle of Qld “throwback country”and concede you are right. The people around here thought Joh’s government seemed so honest and god fearing. Not a lot has changed.
that nice Mr Abbott was given the arse but climate change is still crap!
Ah Lionheart, why only go back to the last election?
“You all had a very clear choice last election to take Australia down an entirely different more humane path”.
We also had that opportunity during the Whitlam years (1972 – 75) & look how we treated him, much to our eternal shame.
Then again what chance did he really have up against powerful vested interests, who are now calling the shots, with Rupert as their Trojan Horse?
One thing I can be sure of is that this dereliction of governance would not be happening under Gough’s watch!
Quite frankly the quality of those elected is determined by the quality and makeup up of the electors.
LNP or Labor in power the future looks bleak.
My advice for what its worth – Suck it up!
I think it is more the quality and makeup of the information and who controls it , as Brunner 1 suggests.
Blame Queensland if you like but any state returning two or three more Labor (or Greens) candidates than they did would have changed the government. The swing here in WA wasn’t enough to change our representation. State and Federal issues are seen differently but the demolition of the WA Liberals in the State election may have its echo in the next Federal election. The Federal Liberal leaders who joined Clive Palmer in challenging McGowan’s border closures will not be able to campaign here and some Federal WA Liberal MPs supported their challenge.
The Liberal collapse in WA was in two stages: A huge swing in 2017 that left them with 13 seats in a House of 59 long before any COVID crisis and then the final destruction that leaves them now with 2 seats, ending their status for now as a Parliamentary party. A factor in this is the dominance in the party of fringe charismatic Christian groups leaving voters who are not part of that fringe uncomfortable with electing candidates with those views. These are groups similar to the one espoused by the Prime Ministel.p.r. The leading Liberal in about 7 members who look like keeping their seats in the Upper House of 36 seats was interviewed on ABC Perth on Monday and appeared to have forgotten nothing and learnt nothing. He kept repeating words like “passengers and underminers” and welcomed the fact that the electoral losses had weeded out these useless members so the party could now rebuild itself in a more constructive form. He pointed out several times that the Prime Minister’s fringe religious views were not a hindrance to his performance and electoral success (as we see today) so the same success was possible in WA. If he’s right I might spend what remains of my retirement in another country.
Come to think of it, when the border was closed I was in another country!
“Ministel.p.r.” Don’t know what happened there. Minister.
Actually Rais, Scott Morrison himself supported Palmer’s case to the high court regarding border closures. In fact it was Liberal Party policy to support the case, until he saw how electorally stupid it was.
I assume you are referring to the Self-Funded Retirees (who all relocate to QLD mostly from NSW and Victoria BTW) in Queensland that disagreed with the ALP’s changes to Franking Credits and consequently voted LNP last election as Stoneage Throwbacks? Every individual throughout Australia that voted LNP bears responsibility for the election of this odious Limited News Party Government.
I could be mistaken but you do not seem to be a fan of this shower.
The only way the lawyers on the sea bottom is if they were kept company by an equal number of economists.
Just think how much better off society would be if both species could be eradicated!
Phil Coorey will back him up and say whatever Scummo tells him to say.
Or Chris Uhlmann, who was lined up to throw the Dorothy Dixer at Scummo’s press conference, asking what advice he would have for young women thinking about politics. Pure theatre.
Which begs the question:’how many of the Canberra press cabal are private school ‘Christian’s’ sympathetic to the marketer?’
How do we vote for politicians who lack common sense? These sorts of issues really are a no-brainer – all one needs is common sense to be able to talk about these. Is it that these people never had common sense, or is the common sense lost as part of what it means to join the political machine? I’m truly stunned at how badly this is going for Scott Morrison.
Of course his first instinct is to lie.
Lying got him to the highest office in the land. Except for the likes of Crikey, The Guardian, and occasionally back in the day the Fairfax papers (less so now under 9news), he’s never called out for his lies.
why change a winning formula?