The PM looks to spend his way back to what should have been an easy victory

For a long time the prevailing political orthodoxy was that Scott Morrison had had a good pandemic and only needed to get Australians vaccinated to roll to an easy election win later this year or, less likely, in the first half of next year. After all, every government that had gone to an election since the start of the pandemic had coasted to victory.

The only fly in this particular ointment was that Morrison's government remained, stubbornly, the only one that continued to poll at level pegging with or even behind the opposition, despite the apparently obvious flaws of Anthony Albanese. Still, who believes polls these days anyway?

Then February arrived and, bit by bit, everything went bad for Morrison. Most particularly, the vaccine rollout.