One month in, ScoMo’s looking better than ever

WHEN it comes down to it, people vote with their hearts rather than with their heads, and Scomo is winning Australians over one genial moment at a time, writes Miranda Devine.

TODAY is the 30th day of the reign of the 30th Prime Minister of Australia.

So how is Scomo doing?

Remarkably well, judging from the positive reaction to his forays into suburban life, from supporting besieged strawberry farmers by sunnily tweeting recipes of his wife’s strawberry pavlova to his deceptive prowess at kicking a football through the goalposts with the Big Marn on the NRL Footy Show.

“I’m just good old Scomo, the Sharks supporter” he says.

He makes people feel good.

And when I interviewed him last week, there was barely a thorny issue he shirked or hadn’t found a new way of framing to his advantage.

Since his ascension he has managed to deflect questions about why Malcolm Turnbull was replaced, simply because he was not the assassin. (In fact, he is the first Prime Minister without a leader’s blood on his hands in living memory).

That allows him to boast about the record of the government and keep the best policies without seeming a hypocrite.

“This is our government,” he said. “I’ve been in this government for five years. I was the Treasurer. I was there when we stopped the boats. I was there when we balanced the budget …”

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has wasted no time in getting down to business. Picture: Kym Smith

“This is our government. We’ve been going for five years and we want to keep going because our polices have been working. Our economy is strong. Unemployment is down … This is the result of the policies of our government and our government is looking to continue the policies under my prime ministership”.

End of story.

On immigration, where Morrison’s previous view as Treasurer was against cuts, he has reformulated the problem into one of “managing our population growth.”

He has assigned Alan Tudge, “Tudgie” as “minister for population and congestion busting”.

“Population growth is a lot like rainfall,” says Morrison. “It could be pouring in Tasmania and no rain at all in Tamworth so average rainfall is a pretty useless statistic. And the same is true for population growth. It’s been very strong in Melbourne, it’s been very strong in Sydney. But in places like Cairns or WA or Adelaide or the Northern Territory, they want more people. So, we need to get the people where they need to be, and we need to slow it down in the places they don’t need to be”.

Easier said than done. But as a former immigration minister he points out that, while migrants on permanent visas can live where they want, they are the minority.

Twice as many newcomers are on temporary visas, mostly foreign students, of whom there are currently almost 500,000. With no cap on visas there has been an exponential rise in the past five years of foreign students who are here less for our brilliant universities than in pursuit of permanent residency.

Morrison makes the analogy of ten extra people on a bus: “about four are on a temporary visa, like an education visa, about four were born here — that’s natural increase, more births than deaths. And just two out of that ten are permanent migrants.”

“Temporary migration is a real issue and with temporary migration you can have policies which ensure that disperses better than is currently happening. We have regional universities who would love to have more of those students. We’ve got some levers to pull there.”

On energy policy, Morrison won’t pull out of the Paris climate treaty because it will make no difference to power prices and because he says Australia keeps its commitments.

On the culture wars, the government will soon deliver its response to the Ruddock report, commissioned after the same-sex marriage survey to address concerns that No voters would face discrimination for holding a religious view of traditional marriage.

“I’ll be delivering strong religious freedom protections for all Australians”, he says.

On gender ideology in schools he is clear: “The family is the key building block to any society. What should never happen is teachers or others in the school system come between the child and the parent when it comes to dealing with these issues”.

As a former salesman, Morrison specialises in the sort of authentic, common sense, feel good politics that Australians have missed since the Howard era.

In just a matter of weeks, Morrison has begun to win around many Australians. Picture: Kym Smith

When he kicked goals on the NRL Footy Show, which reaches voters in crucial seats in NSW and Queensland, the show’s Facebook fans were impressed: “Might get behind old mate now”, “finally a PM that can drop it on the toe”, “Not the flick but he can kick”, “better than Mal’s sporting attempt”, “we know stuff-all about him but he’s got a mean flick pass so he’s probably better than the other rejects that try to run the country”.

Morrison has appeal as Suburban Man, hardworking, humble, a “daggy dad” married to his childhood sweetheart with commitments he honours and neighbours he gets on with.

He calls himself “a boy from the suburbs”, a “mortgage-belt Liberal”.

And he’s lucky. He asked Australia to pray for rain and rain came, even if it wasn’t enough to bust the drought.

A minor faux pas over a Fatman Scoop song he used in a social media post turned into triumph after the American rapper invited him backstage to a concert in November. Talk about freed advertising. Gen Zs with zero interest in politics suddenly know who Scomo is.

For all the earnest waffle from the chattering classes, when it really comes down to it, people vote with their hearts rather than with their heads, and Scomo is winning them over, one genial moment at a time.