Andrew Bolt: Will government be fit to fight at election time?

The Morrison government looks like a dysfunctional family clogging up the supermarket checkout with kids in a tantrum for lollies — while an election campaign is looming.

Don’t you love the fight in those Liberal and Nationals politicians in Canberra? They’re full of it – biting and snarling – but there’s one stupid catch.

They’re fighting each other.

It’s extraordinary. Right now the Morrison government looks like a dysfunctional family clogging up the supermarket checkout because the kids are stacking a tantrum for lollies.

Three Coalition MPs are actually on strike against their own government, refusing to vote for its legislation if it does not ban vaccine mandates.

This week, five coalition MPs actually voted against the government and for a One Nation Bill against mandates.

Before that, the Deputy Prime Minister led his Nationals MPs in a very public war against the Prime Minister’s global warming schemes.

The Liberals’ left wing has meanwhile fought to neuter the Prime Minister’s religious freedom legislation.

I get it: debate within a government over what’s best to do is healthy.

But have any of these MPs checked their watch? Time and place, guys. You’re just two or three months out from an official election campaign, and kicking into the wind – six points behind in Newspoll.

Right now the Morrison government looks like a dysfunctional family. Picture: Gary Ramage

I’d excuse some of this fight-fight-fight if I at least saw Coalition MPs fighting Labor and the Greens just as hard.

But no.

True, Defence Minister Peter Dutton was again lethal this week in attacking Labor’s spokesman, Penny Wong, for stupidly suggesting he shouldn’t say we’d side with the US if it was in a war with China over Taiwan.

But the rest? The Foreign Affairs Minister: silent. The Trade Minister: silent. The Attorney-General: silent. The Health Minister: doing a good job on the pandemic after a slow start, but has he put a scratch on Labor?

Where are they all? The Liberals have had virtually nothing to say in portfolios they’ve used in the past to destroy Labor.

On industrial relations: silent. On immigration and border policies: silent. On our finances: well, Treasurer Josh Frydenberg has belted Labor’s Jim Chalmers for his dud predictions on the economy, but even Frydenberg has been on mute these past weeks.

But what can he do? Thanks to the pandemic, the Liberals have racked up bigger budget deficits than Labor ever managed. It’s hard now to warn against Labor’s big spending, after this government spent like maniacs to prop up the economy.

It seems that Scott Morrison does not understand the culture wars. Picture: Gary Ramage

Which leaves the Prime Minister.

Scott Morrison has done well in confronting China. Give him points for also getting Australia through the worst of the pandemic with one of the lowest death rates and highest vaccination rates in the world, and an economy doing better than most. Be grateful that his global warming policies are such pie-in-the-sky useless that they’ll cause minimal damage.

But in the fight against Labor, what are his wins?

Morrison has surrendered fights he might have picked, and probably should.

He’s backing a return to high rates of immigration that people hate but business loves – just like Labor.

He’s given in and backed a global warming target of net-zero emissions by 2050 – just like Labor.

He’s said nothing on free speech, identity politics or the cancel culture that’s grown so toxic that even the Left-wing Nine newspapers on Sunday ran a long article warning that this Leftist revolution was now eating its own.

It seems that Morrison, like so many modern Liberal MPs, does not understand the culture wars or is – scary thought – intellectually incurious. That leaves them too scared to fight, even if they wanted to, for fear of what the ABC and the rest of the media Left would do to them.

Adding to the Liberals’ woes is Anthony Albanese.

Voters might give Anthony Albanese a second look if they’re sick of all the aggro. Picture: Gary Ramage

I’ve long thought the Labor leader was near-unelectable. I like him personally – who doesn’t? – but thought “Albo” lacked the gravitas, even the voice, to be Prime Minister. He’s also from Labor’s Left and was on the wrong side of many past debates, including Labor’s past disastrous border policies.

But he’s smart. He’s softening. Voters might well give him a second look if they’re sick of all the aggro. Most important, he’s so far given the Liberals almost nothing to attack. Can you think of a single Labor policy – even on global warming?

Of course, we’re still in the phony war of the election campaign. Labor’s policies are yet to come, and the Morrison government will be reserving its attacks for early next year.

That leaves little now for government MPs to bite and chew on – other than each other. Will they be fit to fight when the bell rings?

This is Andrew Bolt’s final column for 2021