Sam Dastyari: ‘ScoMo is a dead man walking’
THE latest Newspoll is only one problem facing our new PM. It doesn’t end well for modern leaders — perhaps Harold Holt had the right idea in not coming back out of the ocean, writes Sam Dastyari.
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HIDDEN in today’s Newspoll is an ominous scream reminding all political leaders: “one day you will wake up dead”.
It’s not directly in the numbers — although 56-44 against the Government is catastrophic.
It’s quieter than that. If you hold the news story right up to your ear you can just hear the screams of the all careers, ambitions and dreams that are being crushed.
Welcome, Prime Minister Morrison, to the brutal reality that your leadership, like all leaderships, will end in sadness and failure.
It will be swift, and impossible to change. The grim reaper of Australian political reality hangs in the background — just waiting to strike.
Malcolm Turnbull: dumped. Tony Abbott: dumped. Kevin Rudd: dumped (and lost an election). Julia Gillard: dumped. John Howard: lost an election, and the humiliation of losing his own seat. Paul Keating: record loss. Bob Hawke: dumped.
It doesn’t end well for modern Australia’s leaders. Perhaps Harold Holt had the right idea in not coming back out of the ocean.
I was taught this once by an old man on Pitt Street in Sydney.
Neville Wran was shouting to me across the street about murder. He was old, possibly 85. No longer the spritely campaigner that dominated NSW politics as Premier for over a decade in the 1970s and 80s.
I was then in my mid 20s. So I thought I already knew everything, and this whole interaction was a nuisance.
(Labor had just dumped Morris Iemma or Nathan Rees as Premier of NSW in a late night parliamentary coup. It’s hard to remember which one, because rolling leaders was becoming a bad habit. “The NSW disease,” as the then-Premier of Queensland, Anna Bligh, put it. This was before the whole country had caught the epidemic, and it simply became “politics”.)
Walking down the street in Sydney, Neville was unmissable. Alone, dark brown suit, yellow tie on a white shirt. Allegedly fashionable in a different era.
“They used to have to kill you,” Neville told me. He was never one for small talk.
“What?” I thought, wondering if he was OK. It was before 8am, and, then, a respectable NSW Labor Party official, I would save my talk of murder until lunch (preferably a Chinese meal on Sussex Street).
“They used to have to kill you,” Neville repeated, clearly annoyed that I wasn’t paying attention.
“They used to have to kill you … but now you just wake up dead,” he concluded.
“Sure,” I replied, and kept moving, wondering what on earth he was talking about.
A few weeks ago, Neville’s old business partner, Malcolm Turnbull woke up dead. Politically finished; a feather duster. From the Prime Minster of Australia to a man trying to dodge paparazzi on the streets of New York.
Sure, you can point to polls, and policy bungles. I could tell you the warning signs were there, coming from a restless conservative flank in the Liberal Party. Or from shock jocks, who were constantly demanding his head. There was a lot of noise, but there is always a lot of noise. But when the guillotine came, it was fast, and final.
The former heir apparent is also dead: Peter Dutton. The focus is now firmly on the au pair saga, but that’s only one sideshow. His problem isn’t just that, or any possible constitutional issues surrounding eligibility, although that will likely get dragged out until the election.
It’s not even that his own colleagues are now openly leaking on him, although when you try and fail to knock off your own leader for yourself, what do you expect?
(I suspect Peter Dutton hasn’t watched The Wire, but he should. “When you come for the king you best not miss,” we were told by Omar Little, a character who made a career of outsmarting his many foes. The HBO TV series about ego, crime and poverty in the US city of Baltimore will teach you more about politics than a 3 year degree at any Australian university.)
No, Dutton’s problems aren’t his colleagues. The electorate is his problem, and they are likely to get him first. Holding his seat from here on in is the challenge. When he wakes up the day after the election he will be there, like the rest of them, wondering how it all went so wrong.
Bill Shorten is alive. Six weeks ago, we were all told he would go to sleep on the night of the by-elections, and he would never wake up the next morning. That his own party would finish him. Replace him for another. I never believed that would happen but the by-election results put that to rest. The reaper moved on for Malcolm instead.
And that’s the reality of Australian leadership. Forget the international visits, the ego hit from standing at the lectern in the Prime Minister’s courtyard. Forget the private plane, or the specially plated cars.
The reality is that for all the glam and glory, Prime Minister Morrison knows what he will become.
He knows what the Newspoll is telling him. He can hear the screams even if you and I can’t.
The next ex-Prime Minister of Australia always can.
Sam Dastyari is a former Labor Senator for NSW.