Samantha Maiden: The deciding factor in this election, if Labor wins, is a vote against Scott Morrison

Few people in the Liberal Party think that Scott Morrison is a good guy, writes Samantha Maiden. Across the aisle, the troops have a different view of Labor’s leader.

Three years ago, Scott Morrison cemented his reputation in the Liberal Party as the political equivalent of a heart defibrillator.

He brought the Coalition back from the dead. The Prime Minister won the 2019 election campaign against the odds and the pollsters’ predictions.

The narrow path to victory he defined led the Liberals out of the wilderness and into the oasis of an unexpected victory.

And, of course, before all of that, Scott Morrison outsmarted Peter Dutton to snatch the leadership from under his nose in 2018.

That tells you a good deal about his skills as a strategist and tactician and his ability to surprise and crush his opponents.

In terms of his own power within the party, the 2019 election gave Scott Morrison something that simply being elected leader doesn’t always confer – authority.

When you save your colleagues from opposition, in some cases even save their seats, they owe you. They may not like you, but they owe you.

And that gives you enormous power as a prime minister. Sometimes it is a dangerous power.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison with the Minister for Employment visit Western Sydney Jobs Fair. Picture: Jason Edwards

It makes you think you can go to Hawaii and take your kids on a much-needed holiday when the country is on fire. It whispers in your ear that you should tell punters “It’s not a race” when your opponents ask about the vaccine rollout.

It tells you not to worry about ordering those rapid antigen tests for Christmas. Why would we need them anyway when people can just wait in line for a PCR? Right?

And in those moments, your authority and power start to ebb away. Imperceptibly, so much so you don’t even notice.

Authority is hard to win and easy to lose. In politics, as in life, authority must be earned. It cannot be conferred. It is secured only through hard-fought victories and by acts of courage. It is bestowed by the demonstration of leadership.

Sometimes, it is also earned through struggle and resilience and the getting of wisdom. But it is not created by longevity alone.

Witness the performance of Labor leader Anthony Albanese during the election campaign. He is one of the parliament’s longest serving MPs and yet at times has struggled to control the travelling media pack.

Like a relief teacher being terrorised by the year 8s, you need to start the way you mean to go on.

All the signs are that he will win the election, despite the fact that authority has been in short supply both internally and externally.

That tells you that the deciding factor in this election, if Labor wins, is a vote against Scott Morrison.

That’s why the Labor Party wants to keep the focus on him, on his holiday to Hawaii – “I don’t hold a hose, mate” – and the vaccine rollout – “It’s not a race” – and his tone-deaf reactions to women.

Interestingly, the rebellion he faces politically is dominated by women and brought to life in the form of the female independents running in Liberal-held seats.

Many are exactly the sort of women the Liberal Party should be trying to attract, instead of the circus act of Katherine Deves, who while photogenic and articulate, brings with her the beating ugly heart of 6000 weird tweets on transvestism and “surgically mutilated” trans teenagers. Once again the Prime Minister thinks like a state director – looking nice isn’t enough. Meanwhile, the Labor leader is trying to rebuild authority. His early gaffes took the Labor Party from a majority government to the brink of minority in that first week, according to those familiar with Labor polling.

He was gutted. His colleagues were furious. He vowed to do better and then got mowed down by Covid.

What the Labor leader does have internally, however, is something that Scott Morrison doesn’t have.

Opposition leaser Anthony Albanese. Picture: Sam Ruttyn

His colleagues genuinely like him and think he’s “a good guy”. Nobody in the Liberal Party, or very few anyway, think that Scott Morrison is a good guy.

What many think of him has already been made public in the fusillade of leaked text messages from his colleagues – a psycho, a bully, a liar. The psycho claim seems a little harsh – he’s generally even-tempered – although the other claims seem to hold some truth, depending on the day.

So they think he’s an effective guy. And they don’t like him very much.

The danger is that, among voters, Covid has killed incumbency. Voters no longer want to be reminded of that terrible time or the political leaders on television every day during that period.

Most in the Labor Party do like Anthony Albanese, even if they wondered during that first week if he was going to lose them the election.

For that reason, they were prepared to forgive him the nerves of the disastrous first week of the campaign. If he wins, Anthony Albanese won’t have the authority you might expect, in part because of those wobbly early performances.

Not yet, anyway. That will depend on what he does and also how he treats those not in his inner circle.

All of the concerns raised by some in the party after the untimely death of Kimberley Kitching haven’t disappeared. They are still there. If he wins, they will need to be healed and dealt with or they will undermine his authority from the start.

Originally published as Samantha Maiden: The deciding factor in this election, if Labor wins, is a vote against Scott Morrison