Ghosts of crises past haunt ScoMo

Kevin Rudd, whose government was marred by the pink batts debacle, has come out of his obscurity to join the Twitter hordes in their airing of grievances against the PM.

• RFS volunteer who said Scott Morrison ‘not my PM’ is British citizen

Another Christmas may be done and dusted, but that doesn’t mean the ghosts of Christmas past aren’t still hanging around.

Take Kevin Rudd, for example.

Putting on his best miserable ghost costume, the ex-PM couldn’t resist jumping in to attack Scott Morrison for his handling of the bushfires, telling his 1.5 million Twitter followers this week, “16 months in the highest office in the country and now, with a full-scale national crisis on our hands, Morrison needs to stop acting like a marketing executive with a few clever lines. And start acting like a prime minister.”

Er, quite.

A bit rich... Former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd.

Yes, there may be plenty of reason to criticise the way Scott Morrison handled what turned out to be a very poorly-timed and managed family holiday.

Given the events of the past two weeks you can see why other PMs have preferred to take their summer leave up the coast rather than abroad: Not only can you get back on deck in the event of a crisis, but if you’re leading what you believe to be the greatest country on earth, why would you set a bad example by going anywhere else?

But all that to one side, it’s a bit rich to hear Kevin Rudd criticising another PM for tragedy on his watch.

16 months in the highest office in the country and now, with a full-scale national crisis on our hands, Morrison needs to stop acting like a marketing executive with a few clever lines. And start acting like a prime minister.

— Kevin Rudd (@MrKRudd) December 22, 2019

Recall, for example, Rudd’s pink batts scheme which claimed four lives a 2014 royal commission found would not have been lost had the government “done more to protect them”.

As Commissioner Ian Hanger wrote at the time, “In my view each death would, and should, not have occurred had the (Home Insulation Program) been properly designed and implemented.”

And that’s before we even begin to talk about the countless human cost of asylum seeker policy under Rudd.

But, that said, it’s no good letting the past stand in the way of a headline.

Rudd’s tweets followed his earlier attack on Scott Morrison for “steadily shredding Australia’s international reputation as a responsible global citizen” on the subject of carbon emissions.

Because, of course, Rudd’s attempts to solve the “greatest moral challenge of our time” by leading the vanguard of carbon-cutters was so successful on the world stage, and so popular at home.

He wishes.

Scott Morrison handled what turned out to be a very poorly-timed and managed family holiday.

After all, Australians again had the chance to vote for Bill Shorten’s own (admittedly entirely uncosted, at least publicly) carbon reduction plans, and rejected it out of hand back in May.

That’s because they know that for all the talk of “the science”, it’s an indisputable fact Australia could decarbonise and deindustrialize tomorrow and it would not make one jot of difference to our bushfires – not tomorrow, and not next century.

The idea that world-leading CO2 emitter China (about whose carbon emissions negotiating tactics Rudd once had some very colourful things to say) would be inspired by us to shelve their hundreds of planned coal fired power plants is a laughable fantasy.

But let’s not pile on Rudd (or Shorten) too much here.

The former PM’s tweets, enthusiastically quoted and re-tweeted are all part and parcel of a tribal fury that goes well beyond any legitimate criticism of the PM’s holiday plans to an attempt to re-litigate the last election.

Note the way on Christmas Eve, the so-called progressive wing of Twitter (identifiable by “blue drip” emojis in their handles and preferred pronouns in their profiles) worked themselves into a frenzy over a video clip of Morrison visiting with Rural Fire Service volunteers.

In the widely-circulated clip, putout by Network Ten’s The Project, one volunteer told Morrison he was “not my prime minister”.

Predictable hilarity ensued, the volunteer was held up as a hero for sticking it to power, and #NotMyPrimeMinister trended all afternoon.

Only there was just one problem.

The clip was cut to omit a key bit: Jacqui, the volunteer, went on to say that she was a British citizen - and that therefore Boris Johnson was her prime minister.

NPM Scott Morrison with RFS volunteer Jacqui. Picture: Sky News

The same sort of gotcha tactics are evident when one recalls the reaction of the Australian left when Tony Abbott was in parliament – and also a volunteer firey.

In 2013, the left-wing Guardian website ran an article headlined, “Tony Abbott, stop fighting bushfires and start doing the job you were elected to do.”

Fast-forward to 2019, and the Guardian’s headlines are all “Scott Morrison and the Coalition are fiddling as Australia burns”.

Also in 2013, Victorian federal MP Brendan O’Connor also criticised Abbott’s firefighting work, quoting a statement that he was “on my way to Sydney to be on standby with my local fire brigade” and then following it with the hashtag, #standbystunt.

O’Connor, to his credit, later issued something of an apology.

But you do get the idea there’s no pleasing some people.

Or, rather, that there’s no pleasing some people when their side is out of power.

Queensland for example has been suffering for bushfires for weeks, with the southeast of the state blanketed by smoke and the Brisbane skyline obscured by haze.

Yet despite firefighting being primarily a state responsibility, there has been little or no bleating from the progressive left over premier Annastacia Palaszczuks’s decision to take leave to go on a cruise.

Look, there is no doubt that Morrison has, from the moment he clicked “submit” on his leave form or whatever it is prime ministers do, handled what he had hoped would have been a lovely family holiday in a less than ideal fashion.

But it’s also clear that no amount of funding for volunteers (a worthwhile idea) or firefighting equipment (ditto) would stop the left pumping up their #MorrisonMustGo hashtags.

Fortunately for the PM, the fury of left-wing Twitter has only a remote connection to the mood of the nation at large – a point further underlined by the recent UK election results.

But if Morrison (and he still has time on his side) is to learn from this, he must remember that his opponents follow the advice the sharp-elbowed Obama aide and Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel to “never let a crisis go to waste”.

The PM’s challenge now is to not give them that chance.

Originally published as Ghosts of crises past haunt ScoMo