Scott Morrison tells Australians that we have nothing to lose but our chains

A manufacturing plant in Western Sydney is the latest place where Prime Minister Scott Morrison has tested out his election messaging, writes James Morrow.

Scott Morrison has been in campaign mode pretty much since he got back from Europe, road testing messages like so many electric cars.

But it was at a local manufacturing business in St Mary’s on Monday that he really took them out for a spin.

No longer was the prime minister just about lockdowns or Dan Andrews or the broad principle that we must never take our freedoms for granted again.

Instead, Mr Morrison took the issue right up to Labor: We’re for freedom, he said, they’re not.

We will let you run your business as you see best. They will manage the economy for their union mates.

Taking questions from reporters, even answers about American inflation or making trains locally were deftly spun around to underline this difference.

It’s the closest Australians have come in some time to a proper contest of ideas, and it threatens to backfoot Labor as the party of the technocrats and managers who made life in this country so dreary these past 20 months.

Still, there’s danger in the freedom agenda.

Post-lockdown revellers in NSW, where Mr Morrison needs to pick up seats, will likely respond well to the message.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison still faces some problems before next year’s election. Picture: NCA NewsWire / David Crosling

But in WA, where internal polling is said to be dire, appeals to liberty are sure to fall flat among those who want no more freedom than a mask-free weekend in the Margaret River.

And plenty of Australians will still harbour a grudge over being kept locked onshore for 20 or so months and will credit NSW’s Dom Perrottet for bringing the hated quarantine regime to an end.

Mr Morrison has the Coalition’s record on economic management to be proud of, but he will still have a tough job to convince some sceptics that he means it, and others that freedom is worth fighting for at all.