Anthony Albanese has upgraded his attack on Scott Morrison’s truthfulness and integrity, but the Labor leader is going to have to upgrade his arguments if he hopes to prove the Prime Minister is loose with the truth, arrogant, unaccountable and drunk on power.
These are grave allegations, serious charges and politically potent claims for Albanese to make as an Opposition Leader in parliament and will backfire if he fails.
There will be some who will automatically and slavishly believe bad things said about Morrison but there has to be some substantial truth and some clear-cut examples of lying if Albanese is to make real ground on the Coalition.
What’s more, the sudden image Albanese is trying to create is at odds with a large number of voters who just preferred Morrison as Prime Minister at an election, and part of the argument sails closely to Bill Shorten’s damaging error of judgment in using Morrison’s religious beliefs politically.
After failing to construct their own damaging characterisation of Morrison before the election, Labor frontbenchers are out in force declaring he’s loose with the truth, refuses to answer questions, is misleading the public over drought, damaging Australia’s foreign policy and aligning himself with Donald Trump.
On Tuesday morning, Albanese declared that “the Prime Minister is loose with the truth. Scott Morrison tells half the story, not the whole story.”
The prime example of truthful laxity was that half the federal funding for a new dam in NSW was actually a concessional loan — a fact Morrison embraced as he went back repeatedly to his claims that the Coalition was committing to building dams.
Albanese and Labor Senate leader Penny Wong continued to accuse Morrison of making relations with China worse because he “attended the Ohio campaign rally for the re-election of President Trump”.
Morrison was also accused of being loose with the truth and refusing to be accountable because he won’t say whether he asked for a Hillsong pastor to be invited to a White House dinner in his honour.
This is fairly thin justification for the Labor frontbench to launch a personal attack on Morrison’s integrity and his competence as a Prime Minister on the global stage, including press conferences, television appearances and a formal parliamentary speech.
After the rebuke of the May election, Morrison’s clear public support and the danger of another religious backlash, some Labor MPs fear it’s all going too hard, too early and lacking the necessary tone for such a delicately poised task.
After all, an Opposition Leader standing in parliament effectively accusing the Prime Minister of lying needs to have some weighty evidence and a grave presentation free of too many Twitter and pop culture references, funny as they may seem.
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