Miranda Devine: Winter is coming if ScoMo doesn’t step up

I’ve covered election campaigns since Howard’s landslide, but this is the first PM I’ve watched an orgy with, writes Miranda Devine from the campaign. There are tough questions to face in the battle for Canberra’s Iron Throne.

I’ve covered election campaigns since the 1996 Howard landslide, and Scott Morrison is the first prime minister I’ve watched an orgy scene with.

To be clear, the PM is a huge fan of Game of Thrones, and the much awaited debut episode of Season 8 was airing Monday night while he was in Melbourne. Since a good number of the travelling media contingent also are fans of the gory hit series his staffers kindly organised a private showing for us all on a big screen.

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Morrison wouldn’t be drawn on which character he or Opposition Leader Bill Shorten most resembles, although he did divulge that his favourite character is Jon Snow, true heir to the iron throne. Make of that what you will.

“It’s all politics,” said the PM, avidly watching a show which depicts competing factions driven by regicide, engaging in a brutal battle for survival.

This week Scott Morrison visited the Torquay Bowls Club as part of his election campaign. Picture: AAP/Mick Tsikas

There are no naked wenches or machetes through the head on the ScoMo campaign trail, but there were unscripted moments in the marginal Victorian seat of Corangamite yesterday, where an electoral redistribution has wiped out Sarah Henderson’s 3.1 per cent majority and turned the fast-growing seat notionally Labor.

From an awkward question about Malcolm Turnbull in the semirural town of Drysdale and two unanswered questions about nuclear energy, to the retirement home resident who asked about Israel Folau, the curve balls kept coming.

Christian Labor voter Ken Legg, 72, a new resident of the Vue home at Grovedale, buttonholed the PM when he arrived at lunchtime with a question about a book he’s just read claiming Liberal hero Robert Menzies regarded all his successors as “duds”.

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Legg asked a question suggesting that, if Morrison, a practising Christian, “doesn’t want to be remembered as a dud in heavenly circles, he should stand up for [embattled rugby star and fellow Christian] Israel Folau”.

Good question, Ken. But the PM, surrounded by TV cameras, squibbed it.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison watched the new season of Game of Thrones while on the campaign trail. Picture: Gary Ramage

He played for time, saying he recently had invited Menzies’ daughter Heather Henderson to the Lodge and what an “extraordinary” man Menzies was.

And Folau? “Well, look, Israel, I respect his faith, his strong faith and belief. As one pastor said yesterday, Christianity is the message of love and that is the thing that is most compelling and for me that’s what my faith is always about. We’ve got to respect everyone and speak with care and love to each other.”

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Another good question the PM didn’t answer came at the Drysdale community centre from 70-year-old retired accountant Graeme Smith.

The PM had come to talk about franking credits, and Bill Shorten’s taxes, and replay his favourite line of the campaign: “If you can’t manage money, you can’t manage the country,” but the oldies were more interested in the energy of the future.

Smith asked the PM to consider nuclear energy — which inexplicably was banned in Australia in 1998 — as a zero emissions solution to our power dilemma.

Not even the PM is immune to the popularity of Game of Thrones. Picture: Gary Ramage

There was rousing applause in the packed hall of retirees but under the gaze of the travelling press pack, Morrison studiously avoided any mention of nuclear.

“We’re for reliable power … I’m not fussed where it comes from.”

But the crowd wasn’t going to let him off that easily. Another questioner, Peter Janes, pressed the PM on nuclear energy, clearly a sleeper issue on the Bellarine Peninsula. Again, the PM didn’t answer, instead seguing awkwardly into the Nancy Bird airport in Sydney.

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Fast forward to the Torquay Bowling Club, an idyllic slice of Australiana shining by the sea, where the PM submitted himself to a grilling from the travelling media scrum.

Naturally, there was another question on nuclear energy, seeing as how it was a question he had been avoiding. Would a Coalition government review the ban on nuclear energy?

“I’m yet to see any proposal that has ever been considered that would stack up,” he said.

“Before you consider something like that, you’d need to see the feasibility of projects that potentially could.”

But why would anyone propose a project for something that is banned? It’s a self defeating argument.

Scott Morrison also visited an aged care facility at Grovedale near Geelong. Picture: AAP/Mick Tsikas

We know election campaigns are tightly scripted, but it seemed like a lost opportunity not at least to open the door a crack.

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Nuclear energy is a win-win for a uranium rich country.

It’s been 13 years since the Ziggy Switkowski report on nuclear energy for the Howard government and the Minerals Council has been urging the Coalition to rethink the nuclear prohibition. They say the ban can be reversed with a single amendment to the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act of 1999, to remove four words — ‘a nuclear power plant’.

Since the ALP has expressly prohibited nuclear in its party platform, even the promise of a review would be a good point of difference for the Coalition, allowing itself to pose as forward thinking futurists on energy and Labor as the dinosaurs. Instead, the PM tried his hand at lawn bowls, stripping off his shoes and socks and lobbing a ball casually across the green.

He scored the perfect hit on the far away small white ball, in a move locals describe as “trailing the kitty”.

He’ll be hoping it’s an omen as good as a three-eyed raven.

@mirandadevine