Freedom fighter Scott Morrison kicks off unofficial election campaign
Scott Morrison effectively fires the starting gun on an election, setting himself up as a pro-freedom candidate after two years of Covid restrictions and admitting his underdog status in the latest polls.
NSW
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Prime Minister Scott Morrison effectively fired the starting gun on the election campaign Monday, setting himself up as the pro-freedom candidate after nearly two years of Covid restrictions and warning of the dangers of a Labor government.
“The Labor Party loves telling people what to do. And the only thing they like doing more than that is taxing,” Mr Morrison said at an event at metal fabricators Baker & Provan in the Western Sydney suburb of St Mary’s.
“I think Australians have had a gutful of governments telling them what to do over the last couple of years.
“And our approach going forward to secure our economic recovery is not tell businesses what to do, not tell customers what to do.
“Our plan is to ensure that they can take the lead, that their choices take the lead,” Mr Morrison said, pivoting from a question on climate change to address the broader issue of Australia’s re-emergence from the pandemic.
While most observers expect Mr Morrison to call an election for May next year after handing down an early budget in April, weeks lost to overseas trips and stints in quarantine have allowed Labor leader Anthony Albanese to steal a march on the government, quietly hitting marginal seats from Queensland to Tasmania.
Mr Morrison, who managed to increase the Coalition’s primary vote support in the latest Newspoll despite remaining firmly behind Labor in the two party preferred stakes, acknowledged his underdog status, which he called “fairly clear.”
“I’ve been there before, on more than one occasion.”
The prime minister also made the case for the Coalition as superior economic managers and cited global supply chain problems and rising inflation in the US as further reason not to give Labor control over the economy.
“It’s very important that we don’t allow the unions on the wharves to do the wrong thing by our farmers and our manufacturers who need critical supplies coming in and they need critical exports going out,” said Mr Morrison, raising the spectre of earlier waterfront disputes which disrupted shipping at various times from World War II onward.
“We need to let business take the lead in securing this economic recovery, not tie them up in more legislation and regulation,” he said.
“Australia’s economic recovery has to be secured by people who have a track record of economic management. Otherwise, you’re going to see petrol prices go up. You’re going to see electricity prices go up. You’re going to see interest rates go up more than they would need to, otherwise.
“And that’s why economic management is so important now, as we come out of Covid. Having secured our help through the pandemic, we now must secure the economic recovery.”
Originally published as Freedom fighter Scott Morrison kicks off unofficial election campaign
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