Tom Minear: The dangerous flaw emerging in Scott Morrison’s politics

The next election is just four months away, and the PM is running out of time for solutions as a potentially fatal flaw emerges.

Scott Morrison has never been the kind of prime minister to worry – at least not publicly – about his legacy.

He’s not one for soaring speeches or expansive visions. His ideology is not liberalism or conservatism – it’s pragmatism. To his enemies, he’s just Scotty from marketing.

There is some truth in that criticism, but it ignores the remarkable success of Morrison’s method. He has long been underestimated as a politician, even after he came from the clouds to claim the nation’s top job and then produced an election “miracle” to hang on to it.

In a recent interview, Morrison described his approach to governing: “My attention is solely on fixing the problem. I find that if you fix the problem, the politics takes care of itself.”

More often than not, that works for him. But with the next election just four months away, a potentially fatal flaw is emerging in Morrison’s logic. What if his solutions are outweighed by problems, and voters care more about who got them into trouble than who fixed it?

A potentially fatal flaw is emerging in Scott Morrison’s logic, months before the election. Picture: Gary Ramage

Since the beginning of the pandemic, the conventional wisdom has been that if it still feels like a crisis when Australians are asked to vote, Morrison will be almost unbeatable. Labor wanted clear air to explain their vision, knowing voters prefer incumbents in uncertain times.

But the longer than pandemic drags on and the closer we get to the election, the more this line of thinking falters. If the polls are to be believed – a big if after 2019 – Anthony Albanese is now in the box seat to win in May.

For Morrison, this summer was supposed to set up his re-election. He overcame troubles in the vaccine rollout, he convinced the premiers to reopen, and he was ready to deliver the best Christmas present to Australians: freedom. Some MPs were convinced he would call an election after Australia Day and romp to victory in March. Then Omicron showed up.

The PM promised to keep working the problem, while arguing the country had no option but to move on from lockdowns. He is right about that, and critics accusing him of “letting it rip” ignore how Labor premiers lined up with Morrison to enable Australia to live with the virus.

Supermarket shelves are bare as Omicron sweeps the nation. Picture: Ian Currie

The difficulty for Morrison – and pollsters and punters alike seem to agree it is more a problem for him than the premiers – is that Omicron has made living with Covid a living nightmare in a way most Australians did not expect.

Dozens are dying every day. There are hundreds of thousands of active infections.

Businesses are shutting their doors because so many workers are in isolation. Events are being cancelled.

Supermarket shelves are bare. Economic aid has been cut back because lockdown rules are not in place. Hospitals have far too many patients and too few staff.

Before Christmas, many Australians would not have known anyone who had Covid.

Now, it would be almost impossible to find someone whose life had not been touched by the virus. And it’s not just those getting sick – it’s non-Covid patients turned away from hospitals, frontline workers forced to do double time during their holidays, couples whose weddings have been cancelled by venues with no workers.

While Melbourne is not in lockdown, many are choosing to stay at home during the holidays. Picture: Ian Currie

This is not all Morrison’s fault. We are still in the grip of the pandemic, after all. But by building his political narrative on promises of safety, security and freedom, the PM becomes more and more exposed as more and more Australians do not feel safe, secure and free.

This is underscored by the disastrous – and avoidable – breakdown of the testing system.

State and federal authorities were somehow unprepared for soaring case numbers to paralyse labs processing PCR tests, ruining their utility to enforce isolation rules and identify contacts, and they failed to stock up on rapid tests last year and prevent a manic RAT race.

As always, Morrison has rushed to act as the problem-solver. But Australians spending hours in testing queues and hunting for rapid tests can’t understand why he didn’t prevent this from becoming a problem in the first place.

When Morrison suggests testing is a state responsibility, he appears to be dodging the blame.

Furious Serbian tennis fans march along Collins St during the Novak Djokovic visa saga. Picture: Getty Images

And when he says rapid kits were always free for Covid cases and contacts, he sounds completely out of touch with reality.

Tens of millions of tests will soon be available, another problem solved for the PM. But as a Labor strategist argued this week, the government can only reset itself so many times before there is no oxygen left for its preferred political messaging.

Even Morrison’s apparent home runs have come with a hitch. JobKeeper was marred by profitable businesses cashing in; the AUKUS deal was tarnished by France’s retaliation; kicking out Novak Djokovic became a messy legal battle instead of a decisive action.

Omicron won’t be the last of Morrison’s problems, and he is running out of time for solutions.

The government hopes his campaign skills will cut through as the head-to-head contest with Albanese sharpens. Labor sees that risk, but unlike 2019, Morrison is not an unknown quantity. He has a legacy for voters to judge – and Albanese is betting they won’t like it.

— Tom Minear is Herald Sun national politics editor