Miranda Devine: Morrison confident momentum has swung his way

The PM sharpens attacks on Anthony Albanese in poll’s final hours as his strategists grow increasingly confident momentum has turned in his government’s favour, writes Miranda Devine.

Scott Morrison is sharpening his attacks on Anthony Albanese in the final hours of the election campaign, as his strategists grow increasingly confident the momentum has turned in the government’s favour.

With the front pages full of pictures of the prime minister accidentally tackling a little boy on a footy field in Tasmania on Wednesday and pulling off a miraculous barrel roll to spare the kid getting crushed, Morrison was nursing a slightly sore shoulder but was in a buoyant mood yesterday when he visited the western Sydney Labor stronghold of Werriwa.

He was keen to talk about Albanese’s latest gaffe, when the Opposition Leader tried to explain away the record low 3.9 per cent unemployment rate by mistakenly claiming Australia’s borders are closed.

“They’ve been open since last November,” Morrison said in astonishment. “But the fact that he didn’t even know it took me back to that first week, where it’s not that he just didn’t remember precisely (the unemployment rate). He had not the faintest idea. He has a very limited range of policy interests. And as a prime minister, you can’t.”

Buoyant mood... Prime Minister Scott Morrison.

Morrison’s biggest worry if Albanese became prime minister is the country would be “rudderless … because he just won’t be able to command the detail to manage a whole of government agenda.”

Morrison says Australia is facing economic headwinds, with rising inflation threatening to push up interest rates “so managing and getting the balance of your economic policies right in that environment is incredibly important. If you get that wrong and you just sort of make it up along the way and if you don’t understand how all the pieces fit together, and you spend more money than you need to, as they are going to … this is why I’m concerned.

“They are removing the disciplines that we’ve put around the budget.”

Polls show Australians rate the government superior to Labor on the key issues of managing the economy and national security, and Albanese’s campaign, when it comes to his economic credentials, has been marked by a series of disastrous gaffes, from not knowing the unemployment rate, or the cash rate to flubbing details of his own NDIS policy.

On any objective measure, Australia came through the pandemic better than most comparable advanced nations, both on fatality rates and economic indicators. Yet the government that produced that stellar result is perilously close to losing Saturday’s election, according to published polls.

Morrison’s explanation for that is that “the last two years have been really hard and frustrating and exhausting. And fatiguing. And we’re the government.”

Morrison’s biggest worry if Albanese became prime minister is the country would be “rudderless”.

“Look, I get that, and I certainly don’t take it personally. But let’s think about the next five years.”

The next five years are full of incredible opportunity for Australia, he says, at a time of global food and energy shortages, thanks to our bountiful natural resources and growing advanced manufacturing sector.

Morrison’s future “vision is a disruptive world [that] has been heavily hit by the pandemic and an Australian economy that we’ve invested in heavily to see come through intact and stronger. And today’s unemployment rate at 3.9 per cent demonstrates that strength, compared to other countries around the world … which means we’ve got a real chance to make some ground over the next five years.”

But he warns an economically incompetent Albanese government would “drop the ball”. On national security he also sounds a warning on Albanese, a one-time hard left radical.

“It’s a very short walk from Jeremy Corbyn’s position to his. A very short walk, as much as he might pretend otherwise.”

He calls Labor deputy leader Richard Marles’ connections with China “surprising and concerning”.

“Who’s got the most to lose in the world if there’s an assertive Chinese government, coercing the entire Indo Pacific region to their will? Where do we end up in that scenario? Not well.”

Morrison identifies his two greatest achievements as the AUKUS nuclear subs agreement he cemented with the US and the UK and the Quad leaders dialogue he revived between India, Japan, the US and Australia, “which have most significantly changed the balance in the Indo Pacific in the last five years.”

In this last week Morrison’s wife Jenny has joined him on the campaign trail.

Meanwhile, an Albanese Labor government would be consumed by social engineering concerns such the Minister for the Republic promised by Albanese and a First Nations foreign policy pledged by his Shadow Foreign Minister Penny Wong complete with an “Ambassador for First Nations peoples”.

“They’ll have all these things and they’ll be very, very focused on them. Meanwhile, who’s looking after the economy? Who’s looking after national security.”

In this last week his wife Jenny has joined him on the campaign trail, where she says she has met the same warmth from the public as in 2019, although she has been kept away from media. He calls her “my foundation … She’s with me because she’s an enormous source of my strength. We’ve been together since I was 16. Our life is a partnership.”

Asked to define his values, Morrison says: “I live it. I’ve been married for over 30 years. I believe in family. I believe in community; I believe in personal empowerment of people so they can make their own choices and have individual responsibility, but they also have community responsibility to each other.”

Here is where he identifies the biggest difference between himself and Albanese. “He thinks the government is the answer to everything and I think you (Australians) are.”