At this moment, Scott Morrison is invincible

Scott Morrison has turned being polite and decent into his own form of charisma. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Gary Ramage

To defeat Scott Morrison at the next election, Labor must find a reason for voters to turn against him and the Coalition government. Until the pandemic hit, the economy had been performing reasonably well and the number of unemployed was low by recent standards. In those conditions it is hard to stir a revolution. Of course, the COVID-19 downturn will hurt all Australians and the way they judge the manner in which the Prime Minister handles it will count on election day. So far the country appears to approve.

As I write this, I am watching a Morrison press conference out of the corner of my eye. He has a way of communicating earnestness and honesty in the delivery of every syllable.

My contention that all leaders change and that they all change for the worse is — so far — not applicable to Morrison. He has not allowed the power to go to his head. With his feet firmly affixed to the turf, he has been able to accumulate considerable power. There may be left and right divisions in the federal Liberal Party but these can be masked by the Prime Minister’s image of stability and common sense. The Liberals are well aware of the value of Morrison’s star power, although it is different to the forms of this kind of power we have seen previously.

Morrison is not a character with the charisma of a Bob Hawke or a Paul Keating. He has however turned being polite and decent into his own form of charisma. He is hard to dislike and therefore difficult to campaign against. It won’t be easy for Labor to get stuck into this Prime Minister. No one will believe he is a bad person so Labor will have to show he is incompetent. As I keep saying, Morrison is careful and deliberate about everything he does and says. He is not given to flights of fancy and he is risk-averse. No serious allegation of impropriety will be made against him. He is personally untouchable.

Morrison has carefully selected a front bench of generally colourless colleagues who may not set the world on fire with energetic displays of policy reform, but there are unlikely to be any changes either.

Today’s politics is devoid of real characters. The modern lot conform to a rigid code of being boring. Rather than striving to come up with exciting policies, modern pollies spend an inordinate amount of time and effort in trying to ensure they don’t make mistakes. Caution can become a miserable excuse for doing too little.

Treasurer Josh Frydenberg. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Gary Ramage

Like all successful prime ministers, Morrison is blessed by having a loyal lieutenant. Josh Frydenberg, by any measure, has done very well in Treasury. Frydenberg is a workaholic with a large brain and the contest between him and opposition Treasury spokesman Jim Chalmers will be well worth watching over the next 12 months.

For Labor to win the next election Anthony Albanese must at a minimum make the contest with the PM an even result and Chalmers must do the same with Frydenberg. The focus is almost always on the economy these days and while shadow ministers for education and health might enjoy the odd run in the media, the rest rarely get a look in.

The last time a different focus occurred in an election campaign was 1990 when the environment was the dominant issue. Since then the debate has once again narrowed and sadly one factor that informs how many voters make their final decision is the size of the tax cuts being offered by either side. This is venal and short sighted, but it was ever thus. As Tom Cruise once said: “Show me the money!”

If you look around for ammunition for the opposition, Labor’s cupboard is bare. The ASX is above 6000 points and our dollar has just hit US70c. Unemployment rises will be accompanied by the ready-made excuse of the pandemic. Just what Labor will come up with will be interesting to see. This is hardly the time for big expensive promises and anyone in the Labor Party with a nostalgic, rose-coloured view of the bold experiment that was Gough Whitlam’s government should remember that Labor had sunk to a very low ebb at that point in time.

Anthony Albanese in Marrickville, Sydney. Picture: NCA Newswire/Gaye Gerard

Punters, no matter where they live, will always smell a fake a mile off.

Donald Trump should be very worried about his re-election chances as he sees Joe Biden dominate him in the polls. Neither man is an example of America’s brilliance and innovation — indeed, each is just about guaranteed to fall short of what is expected of him.

At his campaign rallies, Biden has taken to running down the platform from the centre stage to show us he is sprightly as he approaches his 80th birthday.

Trump’s fundamental campaign promise was always false. No one will ever rebuild the smokestack industries featured in Bruce Springsteen’s haunting songs. Springsteen’s anthem, Born in the USA, captures the misery and magnificence of that great nation.

The false promises which did so much for the election of Trump can’t be recycled at this election. Not even someone like Trump, who has a distant relationship with the truth at the best of times, would be game to run a campaign which would remind voters of how little he has delivered compared to what was promised.