There’s no denying ScoMo earned his right to lead
In the end, Australians voted for what they perceived as the lesser of two evils. And no one can deny Scott Morrison has earned the right to lead the Liberal Party in the challenging years ahead, writes Miranda Devine.
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What an amazing feat by Scott Morrison to turn what Labor and the chattering classes were so confident would be a landslide for Bill Shorten into a miraculous, history-defying victory for the Coalition.
He proved the polls, the pundits and the punters wrong and has saved Australia from a fate worse than death. This was our own revolt of the Deplorables. The forgotten people are forgotten no more.
All hail King Scomo!
Even the exquisitely timed announcement of Bob Hawke’s death on Thursday couldn’t stop the “ScoMentum”.
Now no one can deny that Morrison has earned the right to lead the Liberal Party in the challenging times ahead.
He has been indefatigable. Sunny and optimistic, brim-full of energy during what has been a most relentless campaign, crisscrossing the length and breadth of this enormous country, from Perth to Tasmania to North Queensland and back.
He modelled his campaign on the Aesop fable of the Hare and the Tortoise.
Like the hare, Shorten was so confident at the start of the campaign that he took victory for granted. On Friday he knocked off early, confident victory was his
Morrison, like the tortoise, pressed on, flying into Tasmania at midnight on Friday, for one last pitch for the seats of Bass and Braddon.
He never faltered, showing that slow and steady does win the race.
He was lucky and he made his own luck. Did you notice he won every coin toss at the three debates?
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To his devoted wife Jenny, that was no surprise. She told me he is “just one of those people that’s good at everything… He’s just got natural talent and I suppose he is competitive too.”
You saw it when Morrison travelled around the country, bowling the perfect “kiss the kitty” in Torquay bowls club, drop-kicking the perfect football in WA, batting adequately in Adelaide, scoring soccer goals with schoolkids in Perth. He made it all look deceptively easy.
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Always underestimated, he embodied the values and aspirations on which the Liberal party was founded.
“I believe in a fair go for those who have a go,” was his favourite campaign pitch, making a virtue of his government’s careful economic management and prudent ethos. “And what that means is part of the promise that we all keep as Australians, that we make a contribution and don’t seek to take one.”
Contrast Morrison’s sunny optimism with the surly nastiness of born-to-rule Labor, even with their claws sheathed in the campaign.
You could feel the genuine venom at Shorten’s official campaign launch two weeks ago when Penny Wong derided Morrison and the Coalition as, “small men, small men with small ideas”.
Tanya Plibersek channelled her inner Hillary Clinton, attacking the Coalition and its supporters as “the worn out, run down, backward looking pushers of division” and “sceptics, deniers… flat-earthers [who] cheer on hatred or fear”.
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Shorten hid behind the women of his party during the campaign but his language is just as vicious.
People who disagree with him, whether on climate change or same sex marriage, he condemns as “knuckle draggers”, “cave dwellers” and “haters [from] underneath the rock”
So much for inclusivity.
That has never been the Australian way.
But Coalition infighting is the reason Shorten has come so close to government even though most Australians don’t like him and don’t trust his high tax, big government, wealth redistribution policies, his class envy and division, his radical social change and identity politics agenda.
It’s a profound failure of Liberal politics over the past decade that a program of such radical change could have had even a ghost of a chance at the ballot box.
Morrison had to haul the stinking carcass of Liberal disunity virtually single-handedly through the campaign.
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The “miserable ghost” of Malcolm Turnbull made appearances at strategic moments, whether through his obsessive son Alex’s backing of turncoat independents, his own twitter stream, and probably the Rwanda surprise of the last few days.
Tony Abbott always was in the news, and in a brutal repudiation by his electorate, the former Prime Minister last night lost the safe seat of Warringah he’d held for 25 years. But he was gracious in defeat and said “I’d rather be a loser than a quitter”.
Barnaby Joyces’s egomaniacal interventions during the campaign only reminded voters of what they hated about the ill-discipline and inward focus of the Coalition’s last two terms.
This was the “chaos and disunity”, Shorten and Plibersek harped on about every day. It obviously played well in focus groups, but what hypocrisy from the Opposition Leader who started the regicide contagion when he betrayed, first Kevin Rudd, and then Julia Gillard. Butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth as he shamelessly compared “my united team” with the “Coalition of chaos”.
In the end, Australians voted for aspiration and against dependency.
Along the way they got to know Morrison, the supremely competent accidental PM, gifted to the Liberal Party, despite itself.
They liked what they saw, even though they remained angry at his shambolic party. He worked to win them over, seat by seat, booth by booth, mullet by mullet.
Cometh the hour, cometh the man. Given the chance, he will heal the brokenness of his party and prove to be one of the nation’s greatest Prime Ministers.
devinemiranda@hotmail.com
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