Good life’s a Shire thing in Morrison’s vision of the future

In the hours after a historic election victory, Prime Minister Scott Morrison took a moment to share his plans for Australia with those closest to him. For him, it seems there really is no place like home, writes Miranda Devine.

After his victory speech in the Sofitel ballroom on election night, Scott and Jenny Morrison and their extended family rode the elevator up to a suite on level 5 for a private celebration with staff and friends.

There, tired but elated, the Prime Minister gave his last, but most illuminating, campaign speech of 2019.

He revealed a vision for Australia that was warmer and more all-encompassing than the simple economic mantra he hammered through the campaign.

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Morrison’s vision is for the rest of Australia to become more like his beloved Shire.

The Sutherland Shire, which the Morrison family calls home, might be the butt of jokes from eastern suburbs snobs but Shire denizens couldn’t care less because they regard it as “Godzone” country.

Morrison’s speech has not been reported, as only one journalist was present and was sworn to secrecy. But the PM’s office has now given me permission to report what was said.

As staffers streamed into the room and his wife chatted animatedly with family on a nearby couch, Morrison sat quietly on a club chair. Alone amid the hubbub, he allowed himself to savour his triumph. He had the look you see in the locker room after a hard-won game: Utter exhaustion, elation and a moment’s private contemplation.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison took a moment after his win with his wife Jenny and daughters Abbey and Lily to celebrate where he calls home. Picture: AAP/Dean Lewins

Then, at 12.40am, the PM rose to his feet, thanked his team and paid tribute to his electorate of Cook, whose heart is the Shire.

“You don’t get to do this job unless I’ve got that job as the member for Cook,” he said. “I haven’t been in the Shire for a little while. The last time was when we beat Penrith.

“And when Jenny and I went there today … it was just nice being at home and going past Rob’s cafe and seeing familiar faces and having their well wishes.

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“That community for us is really important. It defines who we are. It’s how we live. And we sort of like to take what we know in the Shire and try to give it to the rest of the country.”

So, let’s find out what that means for those who don’t know the egalitarian collection of suburbs south of Botany Bay, 26 kilometres south of the CBD.

Where better to start than the Prime Minister’s favourite places. Two minutes up the road from his modest, single-storey brick home in Port Hacking is the Lilli Pilli patisserie cafe, where people line up all day for his favourite meat pies. Next door is the IGA where Morrison sometimes picks up groceries on his way home from his electorate office in the Cronulla mall, a nine-minute drive through the residential streets of Caringbah South and Woolooware.

When creating his iconic ‘Where the Bloody Hell Are You?’ Tourism Australia ad, Scott Morrison looked no further than the Shire in casting then-local Lara Bingle. Picture: supplied

Boats, trampolines and P-plates abound in this peninsula, bordered by Cronulla Beach, Botany Bay and Port Hacking and which leads eventually to Kurnell, Captain Cook’s first landing place.

The Shire has special significance as the birthplace of modern Australia but in typically humble fashion it doesn’t make a big deal about it.

Kids in helmets still ride their bikes on the wide streets of Morrison’s neighbourhood, where birds tweet in the trees. People walking dogs stop to chat with neighbours.

The country town feel extends to extraordinarily courteous motorists. Tradies drive past after work with surfboards on top of their utes. The car demographic is more Holden and Kia than Mercedes and Range Rover.

On the nearby Lilli Pilli Oval preschoolers learn gross motor skills with big orange balls.

At the Vintage Cellars down the road, Corona beer is the most popular local tipple and next door at D’lish cafe no gluten-free is in sight.

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The only visible sign of disorder is graffiti above an empty shop on Burraneer Bay Rd, but it is neatly confined so that the wall next door remains unblemished. Even vandals in the Shire abide by unspoken social norms. The Cronulla race riots of 2005 are a distant memory.

There are tennis courts, sports ovals and surf shops, as you get closer to Cronulla Beach where pint-sized grommets race into the waves after school, even in the freezing cold.

The latest Census data shows the PM’s patch has a fairly homogenous Australian-born population (72.5 per cent compared to the 65.5 per cent NSW median). The most common ancestries are English, Irish, Scottish and Greek, which is five times the NSW average.

The PM and his family have proudly called the Shire home for years. Picture: AAP/Dean Lewins

It is Australia’s second largest Bible Belt, with Christianity the largest religious group at 72 per cent.

The most common household is a couple with children, higher at 48.3 per cent than the national average, as is the proportion of two and three-vehicle households.

Two-thirds of residents work full time and there is a higher proportion of working parents than elsewhere in the country, along with a higher rate of home ownership and median monthly mortgage repayments of $2500.

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Real estate experts describe the Shire as “aspiration at large”.

The median house price is $1.75 million but ostentatious displays of wealth are rare. (Unless you head across the peninsula to Sylvania Waters, the Gold Coast of the Shire, but that’s another story).

The neighbours on one side of the Morrisons have upgraded to a two-storey dream home, while the houses on the other side remain, like his own, in their original state — neat, tidy and unpretentious.

The Shire-isation of Australia will have Lefties reaching for their smelling salts. But it is Morrison’s way of making us “relaxed and comfortable” again.

@mirandadevine