James Campbell: Coalition U-turn indicates voters have had enough of Scott Morrison

How can a government that performed well during Covid be facing ejection? Especially one presiding over full employment? The obvious answer is the public has turned on Scott Morrison, writes James Campbell.

From the polls and their coverage it would be easy to see last week as the moment when it became clear we were in for a change of government.

The signals coming out of the government camp at the end of the previous week was that “Albo isn’t up to it” would be the final message of the campaign.

Instead, on Friday, we had a reboot of the prime ministerial image, with the admission that, yeah, he’d been a bulldozer during Covid, but a man can change.

Labor are convinced the U-turn must have been ordained by the research showing he is toxic to large numbers of voters.

The government, on the other hand, is keen for us not to read too much into the shift, saying the plan was always to go positive.

Scott Morrison in Victoria on Saturday. Picture: Jason Edwards

What is indisputable is the PM has been spending more time in seats where the government is in no danger of losing, which suggests they’re struggling to find places where he is welcome.

Bizarrely, considering the state of the polls, some government MPs say things feel better on the pre-poll hustings than they did in 2019.

The higher up the government you go, the more this Zen-like attitude seems to grow.

So they either know something the rest of us don’t, or 10 years in the back of a big white car have left them with little insight into what is actually going on.

One has to wonder how much of this confidence, or disbelief, comes from incredulity that they could be losing to a Labor campaign that has been the most incompetent in living memory.

Surely, they must be thinking to themselves, voters can’t really be going to chuck us out for a guy who can’t be bothered learning the unemployment and RBA cash rates?

Anthony Albanese in Darwin on Saturday. Picture: Sam Ruttyn

If the polls are right, in seven days we will enter the Albanese era, and another truism of Australian politics — that Labor only wins when it has an exciting leader and a big program for change — will have bitten the dust.

What’s more interesting is how the other side may have managed to lose it.

How can a government that by any reasonable measure performed well during a once-in-a-century crisis be facing ejection?

Especially one presiding over full employment.

The most obvious answer is the public has turned on Scott Morrison. It just doesn’t seem to matter what he says, a large enough chunk of the populace seem determined to go with anyone but ScoMo.

But sometimes in politics, the reasons people give are not the real reasons.

In Morrison’s case, I suspect the public’s antipathy is not so much about anything he is or has done, it’s just that he’s been in charge during two years we all want to forget.

Which isn’t to say the government hasn’t made strategic errors.

In hindsight not even trying to define Albanese until this year was a huge mistake.

Likewise, while you can argue the rights and wrongs of creating national cabinet, in retrospect it’s clear that even with the best will in the world elevating the importance of the premiers would have the inevitable effect of diminishing the authority of the Prime Minister.

Then there’s the campaign itself.

Seriously, it’s hard to believe no one could come up with a better slogan than “Life won’t be easy under Albanese”, which manages the rare feat of being both memorable and underwhelming.

The weather vane ad is even worse. In the real world we change our minds about things all the time. Why do people in politics think it’s such a big deal? It’s also an odd charge for a bloke to make who once cradled a lump of coal in parliament and now says he wants to move to net zero.

I could be wrong and a second “miracle” win occurs for the Coalition next Saturday — in which case I’ll be the first to say I never doubted it for a minute.

Originally published as James Campbell: Coalition U-turn indicates voters have had enough of Scott Morrison