Backing, not sacking, MPs comes at a cost for Scott Morrison

Scott Morrison at the press conference on Monday to announce Marise Payne as the ‘prime minister for women’. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Martin Ollman

There were several more steps Scott Morrison could have taken to mitigate the impact of the trifecta of scandals that have singed his government like so many lightning bolts from the heavens.

Keeping his ranks stocked with the halt, the lame and the tame was not one of them. Morrison’s reluctance to back, not sack, MPs in strife, no matter the offence, will not improve the core business of providing good government.

His first duty as prime minister should be to respect and serve all Australians, men and women, by surrounding himself with the best possible team he can muster.

The more competent his ministers are, the better he looks. Obviously the reverse is true. He should stop bending his knee to those behind him because he gets heart flutters when he counts the numbers. That can only end very badly.

And while on the subject of respect, he personally should have invited Brittany Higgins to meet with him rather than asking her through the media.

He should have booted those dragging him down, taking the same approach as Gladys Berejiklian and John Barilaro did over the scandalous behaviour of Michael Johnsen, who has resigned from the NSW parliament, then gird himself for an election later this year if they quit. They might even be doing him a favour.

Imagine if this time next year Morrison is still at war with the states over the vaccination rollout and even more women have concluded he is boofheaded.

Arguing he’s simply doing what others have done before him is futile. Ask Julia Gillard how that worked out for her. She was held hostage inside parliament by Craig Thomson, then stalked outside it by Kevin Rudd. In minority government, Gillard needed the vote of the disgraced Thomson, so clung to him for dear life.

Papered over in all the romance of her misogyny speech in parliament is the fact she made it to defend Liberal rat Peter Slipper, who had been enticed into accepting the speakership by Anthony Albanese to consolidate Labor’s numbers on the floor.

Slipper had been caught sending crude, lewd misogynistic text messages to a young man, prompting two independents to threaten to withdraw support for her government if he remained as the face of parliament.

Morrison is not being stalked. His Speaker, Tony Smith, is one of the best in modern times and a million miles away from Slipper. However Morrison’s inability to relate to modern Australia, too often looking like a man out of his time and out of his depth, has drawn unfavourable contrasts with his deputy, the Treasurer, Josh Frydenberg, whom Labor figures now concede could pose a bigger threat than Morrison.

That thought will no doubt increase Morrison’s paranoia levels. Every leader suffers from them. He should do his best to suppress them.

No one today is counting, no one today is even remotely thinking of challenging. His MPs would obviously relax more if he stopped stuffing up, say by not calling Marise Payne the prime minister for women. It was too cute by half, leaving him open to ridicule as the prime minister for men.

Thanks to a penchant for sloganeering, Morrison cheapened the importance of what he was doing to enhance Payne’s role, promote other women, establish a new taskforce designed to give them a stronger voice inside the government and of course to surround himself with a band of Amazons to counter Labor’s F-bomb squad, which has smashed him every day for weeks — F in this case being for female.

Payne, one of the great survivors of Liberal civil wars, is also the only defence minister in decades to move on to something better; however, Peter Dutton will do well in a portfolio renowned as a graveyard for many politicians. Dutton and Payne are pals again. They fell out during the leadership battles in 2018. Dutton says they hugged it out later, shared a wine and got back on track.

Payne shows whenever she fronts she is a very good media performer. Her problem is she doesn’t do it often enough. Linda Reynolds struggled on all fronts. It was a bad combination. Dutton will relish the opportunity to prove himself in an important area, and will make up for the low visibility of national security, an area central to the success of a Coalition government.

Karen Andrews in home affairs was meant to help with that. The bullying allegations against her reported in The Australian, have put a dent in the reboot. So has Amanda Stoker’s appointment as Assistant Minister for Women, which has been criticised by one of Australia’s most powerful women, Grace Tame. It’s not only the men who need empathy training.

Morrison remains hostage to troubled, troublesome Queensland backbencher Andrew Laming, Christian Porter and Reynolds, not only for what they have allegedly done but what they represent.

Unfair or unjust as it might have been, Morrison should have sent both Porter and Reynolds to the backbench. He should have cast Laming to the crossbench. Weeks ago he should have declared a policy of zero tolerance for misbehaviour, then acted like he meant it.

If Reynolds had quit, it might have triggered a factional war in Western Australia to decide her replacement, but if either or both men quit, plunging Morrison into minority government, in a perverse kind of way, given the golden rule that it can always get worse, it would help free Morrison from his pledge to go full term.

He could do what Peter Gutwein did in Tasmania, declare parliament unworkable, then call an election.

So worried are some Labor MPs they even think Morrison might engineer it so that he can go any time after the September football finals.

Morrison has six weeks until and including the budget to convince people to forget the previous six weeks and focus instead on the promise of what lies ahead. If he stabilises, he should think seriously about an election sooner rather than later.