Jen Morrison’s transformation from reluctant starter to political warrior
The adrenaline-fuelled energy of Scott Morrison’s campaign turned even first lady Jenny into a political warrior, writes Sharri Markson and Miranda Devine.
Jenny Morrison was the reluctant starter.
The Prime Minister’s wife, who has been open about finding politics less fascinating than her husband, was initially uncomfortable being thrust into the spotlight and didn’t want to be away from daughters Abbey, 11 and Lily, 9, for too long.
But, during her husband’s barnstorming campaign, she warmed to the role.
“Whatever he wants me to be at, I’ll absolutely be there,” she said in Launceston halfway through the campaign. “I just have to be mindful of the girls”.
And, soon enough, she caught the political bug.
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“She got quite competitive towards the end,” one insider said.
Jenny, 51, a former nurse who fell in love with Morrison when they met at age 12, said she was able to see more of her husband on the campaign trail than she had in recent years: “I quite like that I actually get to look at him and see what he’s doing.”
When she wasn’t with the PM, she kept him grounded with twice-daily phone calls or after-dinner FaceTime chats with the girls as he jetted around the country.
Also keeping Morrison grounded was a WhatsApp chat group specifically for the campaign that he called “ScoMo Reality Check”, which included his closest mates and advisers. There are about seven in the group, including consultant and former journalist David Gazard, Morrison’s conference president Scott Briggs and his former chief of staff Sasha Grebe.
Bill Shorten’s emotional press conference about his mum was described by many commentators as the moment the Labor leader won the election. But Morrison, uncertain of how it was playing out in the “real world”, asked his mates in the WhatsApp group what they thought.
Briggs replied that it was only a major story in the Canberra bubble, while Grebe didn’t even know that any such press conference had happened.
It was a good barometer for Morrison, to see what was cutting through from the campaign.
The Liberal marginal seat track poll on the night of Shorten’s press conference did not show a lift for Labor while Morrison’s own numbers improved.
“Those who knows Scott best and aren’t seeing every item of research can put a very different overview on it,” one source said. “Leaders quite often tend to surround themselves with people who were equally involved in the campaign as they are.”
Morrison has five or six groups on WhatsApp.
Another, comprising his best friends from university days, was dedicated purely to jokes and banter — a politics-free zone — and it fired off all day.
It gave Morrison some light relief on the campaign trail, but the group is understood to avoid any risqué content.
Gazard’s business partner “Johnno” is understood to be the butt of a fair few jokes but “everyone cops it”.
Gazard, who worked for John Howard, Peter Costello and Tony Abbott, says Morrison is a “pretty normal, grounded guy doing the most demanding job”.
“He came into the parliament in 2007 and shortly thereafter we were together watching the news. There had been a display of some self-indulgent carry-on from a parliamentarian at the time and we were discussing the drivers of it,” Gazard said.
“Suddenly he turned to me and very seriously said: ‘If you ever see me do anything like that, I want you to slap some sense into me, OK?’
“He hasn’t lost touch with friends and colleagues and community members and his electorate’s mood. ”
While John and Janette Howard joined Morrison in the green room at Sydney’s Sofitel Wentworth hotel on the night of his win, Morrison and Turnbull have not spoken since his election victory.
The former prime minister did not even call his successor to congratulate him, sending only a message and a short tweet of congratulations the next day.
Their once-close relationship is understood to have cooled, in part over the former PM’s son Alex Turnbull’s decision to fund independent candidates running against the Liberal Party.
“The kindest possible way you could phrase it is he wasn’t trying to help Scott win, but his close friends were concerned he was borderline working to make sure Scott lost,” an insider said.
“There was concern the whole time about Malcolm and what he was going to do.”
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