Opinion: Is Scott Morrison, Liberal Party brand damaged beyond repair

It has been a difficult two weeks for the federal Coalition in parliament, and the polling is doing Scott Morrison no favours. But that doesn’t mean it’s all bad news for the PM in the lead-up to the federal election, writes Paul Williams.

Two bits of bad news topped off a difficult opening fortnight for the federal Coalition in parliament this week.

The first is yet another Newspoll indicating the Morrison-Joyce government is set for a thumping at the coming May election.

The Coalition is still locked at an unwinnable 34 per cent while Labor maintains a solid 41 points. At least the after-preference vote has narrowed slightly, 45 to 55 points to Labor. But that’s still a 6.5 per cent swing and an additional 22 seats for Anthony Albanese.

More worrying is the continuing quagmire of the PM’s personal approval. Today, significantly more Australians (16 per cent) think Morrison is doing a poor job than those who think a good one. But just 6 per cent of voters think that of the Opposition Leader.

At least more Australians (43 per cent) still prefer Morrison over Albanese (38 per cent) as PM, but those numbers have tightened considerably since this time last year when the gap was 35 points in Morrison’s favour.

Polls show that more Australians think Prime Minister Scott Morrison is doing a poor job. Picture: Glenn Campbell

The second bit of bad news is the four state by-elections in NSW. Superficially, these polls might not look too bad. After all, the Perrottet government lost only one seat (Bega) to Labor, and Australians are pretty good at differentiating between state and federal issues. In short, Perrottet’s deepening unpopularity should not ordinarily hurt Morrison.

But these are not ordinary times and it looks very much like the Liberal brand is damaged far beyond the Canberra bubble. In the blue-ribbon seat of Willoughby, for example, the Liberals suffered a 22 per cent swing.

Morrison’s office is painfully aware of that damaged brand. That’s why staffers pulled out the big gun of wife Jenny in a recent 60 Minutes interview. Jenny performed well – so well, in fact, that many would be hoping she were running for re-election – but Australians don’t elect governments on the strength of leaders’ spouses.

Interestingly, brand damage might not be confined to the Coalition this time around, with integrity issues currently swamping the Palaszczuk government hardly going to help the Labor brand in Queensland. The question is how closely will Albanese campaign with Palaszczuk north of the Tweed come April?

But the one bit of good news the Morrison government can take into next week is the Coalition’s forcefulness during Question Time in the House of Representatives.

There’s an old adage in Australian politics that governments still ­winning the rhetorical debate in the House can win any looming election. Labor PM Paul Keating, for example, was certain (when no-one else was) his government would be re-elected in 1993 because he so easily got the better of Liberal leader John Hewson.

“I want to do you slowly,” Keating told Hewson in the House.

While Labor’s current attacks on the Coalition’s alleged “disunity” and “dishonesty” – on everything from damning text messages to Morrison’s apparent flexibility with facts – mean the Coalition isn’t winning in the House, the government’s equally strong assault on Labor means it isn’t exactly losing, either. There’s a chance the Coalition is even overdoing it, especially as government MPs – including the usually more reserved Treasurer Josh Frydenberg – break a traditional bipartisanship in foreign policy to paint Labor as “soft” on China.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison and wife Jenny on 60 Minutes.

The Coalition must also be careful in its accusations that Labor is an economy-wrecker (given the record level of debt and deficit Morrison and Frydenberg have racked up), and in its allegation Labor is soft on criminals after the Opposition’s expressed concerns with a deportation Bill underscoring powers the government already possesses. Just ask tennis champ Novak Djokovic.

More to the point, for a bloke to accuse a woman (Labor’s Kristina Keneally) of being soft on domestic violence borders on the absurd, and suggests the Coalition is desperately clutching at political straws – something voters detest. Just look how Queensland Labor premier Anna Bligh was punished in 2012 for alleging, without hard evidence, corruption in Campbell Newman’s family.

Ironically, Labor faces the reverse problem. Australians love an underdog and, if Labor hammers Morrison’s alleged duplicity too hard, then the beleaguered Morrison could easily become a martyr. It would then be very easy for Morrison to return to a sympathetic “daggy dad” persona Aussies would love to defend.

Labor must remember to play the ball and not the man. In fact, if all sides remember that, we’ll all have a saner and more civilised campaign.

Associate professor Paul Williams is a senior lecturer at Griffith University.