Morrison is a man of the people but with no firm policy convictions

As we witness Scott Morrison’s contortions on climate change, no one should kid themselves that he ever tried to hide who he was. Remember the lapel pins? At his first cabinet meeting as Prime Minister in 2018, he gave each of his ministers an Australian flag lapel pin. He explained he’d been wearing one for years because “it reminds me every single day whose side I’m on. I’m on the side of the Australian people”.

It was an empty stunt. The Liberals had been roiled by personal animosities and left-right battles for years, with Tony Abbott and Malcolm Turnbull scrapping and then Peter Dutton getting in on the act. Desperate to show voters he was on neither side of any divide, Morrison roped his ministers into his gimmick, handing out lapel pins around the cabinet table as if he was manning a booth at a trade show.

The Prime Minister gave all his ministers an Australian flag lapel pin.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

For most of his colleagues, tired of the instability, Morrison’s biggest selling point was that apart from being a devoted Liberal, he had no fixed philosophical address or firm policy convictions. That was why they made him leader.

Morrison’s detractors long ago latched on to the derisive “Scotty from Marketing” appellation to decry the Prime Minister’s addiction to announcements in place of policy. It’s a clever moniker, but it identifies the Prime Minister’s past vocation – his “what” – rather than who he really is. He is in essence a salesman, and, so far, an effective one.

For a born salesman, it’s always about the deal. A true salesman is never selling just one product. Sure, there’s the good or the service being peddled but the most important product a salesman is selling is himself. He needs you to believe in him. It’ll kill him if you don’t. He’ll say what he needs to say in the moment, unashamedly, to win you over and close that deal. For that reason, it doesn’t pay for him to have too many fixed beliefs of his own. They just get in the way of the sales job.

I’m not putting down people who sell for a living. My late father had a gift for selling and spent the latter half of his working life doing it. That kept a roof over my head as a kid. My most substantial job before I entered journalism was as a travelling salesman, persuading poor, unsuspecting service station operators that they just had to buy spark plugs and fan belts and other stuff they probably didn’t need. And a lot of journalism relies on presentation and self-promotion, so my hands aren’t squeaky clean on this subject. Then again, I never set out to be prime minister.

The Prime Minister’s second vaccination in March was a media opportunity.Credit: Edwina Pickles

Few, if any, prime ministers in recent memory have so thoroughly imbued their government with their personality and modus operandi as Morrison has. When absolutely necessary, individual ministers will be front and centre in the media, such as Greg Hunt during the pandemic. But the best salesmen work solo; most ministers, even quite senior ones, largely remain hidden. The government is the Scott show, as it was at the official 2019 election campaign launch, with just the PM on stage with his family as supports.

On the way to victory in 2019, Morrison argued for all he was worth that an active climate change policy with a 2050 net-zero target was dangerous. He’s telling a different story now, free of embarrassment because he can’t get away with the old argument any longer, although we can’t be sure that his new approach will deliver anything substantial. Clearly, he’s never held a firm, passionate position on the subject.

Early this year, he came under attack for his apparent cluelessness on the issue of sexual violence against women. He’s also an agnostic on his own code of ministerial behaviour and, it’s seemed since early 2020, on how to respond to a pandemic. Remarkable though all this was, should it have been surprising? There’s scant evidence that he’s ever seen the practice of politics as much more than a series of transactional activities.

Every salesman wants the deals to get bigger. The PM’s biggest so far is the AUKUS arrangement. For him, it’s a beauty, putting him on the global stage selling old wine in new bottles by tying us more closely to the two countries that have protected us since Federation. It also has an extraordinarily long timeline for delivery that ensures Morrison won’t be around as PM should it turn out to be a calamity. And there’s that say-anything principle at work too: if the French didn’t know they were going to be double-crossed, that’s on them. The mugs didn’t read the fine print!

Scott Morrison with British PM Boris Johnson via video link at the announcement of the AUKUS pact in September.Credit: AAP

Thirty-eight months after he became prime minister, Morrison has already occupied the nation’s highest political post longer than Turnbull, Abbott, Julia Gillard, Kevin Rudd and Gough Whitlam. Let Turnbull have his Snowy Hydro 2.0, Rudd his NBN, Gillard her NDIS. The Prime Minister has one election win and his props – his lump of coal, the now-retired baseball caps, the Tim Tams for Boris Johnson, his Australian flag facemask. And his lapel pin.

Shaun Carney is a regular columnist.