Covid failings give Labor a chance to land blow on Scott Morrison

Labor leader Anthony Albanese. Picture: Martin Ollman

For the first time since the black summer bushfires, thanks to the inexcusable failures on quarantine and vaccination, Labor had a legitimate reason, nay an obligation, to forgo bipartisanship, and go for broke against Scott Morrison.

The regrettable, and in large part wholly avoidable, acts of negligence or incompetence or complacency, with their devastating consequences, have provided Anthony Albanese with an opportunity to inflict significant damage on Morrison’s prime ministership.

If he is able to do that, he will be in with a real chance at the next election. A tweak of tax here, a smaller deficit there, a few billions more or less in spending, will not win it for him. Morrison has so comprehensively occupied Labor’s traditional territory that it has been left with almost nowhere to go.

While this brazen political identity theft by Morrison is causing unease in government ranks and the wider Liberal Party, it has created a dilemma for Labor in how to respond. Me-tooism from an opposition is not a compelling enough reason for people to switch votes in a pandemic.

Taking down the PM is the one clear option left. If you still believe governments lose elections rather than oppositions win them – and it remains largely true – then that has to be central to Labor’s campaign, starting in earnest now. The timing is good for Labor and the conditions are right.

So emboldened is Albanese that he has also struck out on China, accusing Morrison of putting his political interests ahead of the national interest. That fits Labor’s theme about Morrison, picked up anecdotally and from research, about his inadequacies as prime minister.

Morrison’s vow that he will fight the virus while Labor fights him sounds good, but it has a hollow ring given the leaks from quarantine and the lags in vaccination. If Labor can pin the blame on him for the Victorian and subsequent lockdowns, it will reinforce the lingering message from the fires that he has to be dragged kicking and screaming to confront and deal with realities.

Morrison should have foreseen this moment and prepared accordingly. For whatever reason, either arrogance or strategic short-sightedness, he didn’t. Anyone with half a brain knew this thing would not disappear, that it would mutate and wreak more havoc. In fact, within the government, the view was it will be with us until 2024. If we are lucky.

Seeing as he has no qualms about spending money, Morrison could have long ago asked the premiers and chief ministers to give him proposals for purpose-built quarantine facilities. Given his obvious reluctance to assume responsibility for quarantine, he could have told them once they nominated suitable locations that he would fund them, ensure construction could begin immediately, then happily leave the states and territories to run them.

They would have been operational by now, offering another layer of protection to a largely unvaccinated population. When other possible centres (Toowoomba, Avalon) were suggested, Morrison dismissed them on utterly spurious grounds or argued the merits of hotels. Even Jane Halton showed her frustration at the delays in implementing recommendations from her quarantine report to the government last October, saying she was disappointed and perplexed.

On February 1 when he kicked off the year with a speech at the National Press Club, Morrison listed his five priorities. The first he nominated was to “suppress the virus and deliver the vaccine”.

Until the past few days, the suppression strategy which was the most successful was the one supposedly cataloguing and publicising the progress of the rollout. It was always unsatisfactory but it has turned into a bog, full of incomplete, conflicting or inaccurate data that cannot be relied on as a guide on how many vulnerable Australians and their carers have been inoculated. But hey, who’s counting. Well, nobody. Not reliably, not transparently.

Less than three weeks after he had his first Pfizer shot, which kicked off the vaccination program, when it was obvious it was flailing, Morrison declared on March 11: “It’s not a race, right. It’s not a competition.”

Morrison pinged Health Secretary Brendan Murphy for saying it first on March 10, so really all he did was follow the medical advice. Excellent. Perhaps Dr Murphy should take over the prime ministership too.

That same line, which he used like a mantra, betrayed a mindset and encouraged complacency. It’s destined to join “I don’t hold a hose, mate” as emblematic of his leadership. It was delivered repeatedly around the country with the usual Morrison confidence that everything was under control even though it was not.

His hapless ministers and backbenchers felt obliged to parrot the line that it wasn’t a race, they were comfortable with progress and everything was going according to plan. As if solidarity trounces stupidity. Only a few brave souls have shown publicly they are prepared to set him straight, most obviously the Speaker, Tony Smith.

Here’s a tip to others inside the government who are queasy about Morrison’s approach. If the emperor insists on racing around the streets without any clothes, don’t compound the shame and repercussions by joining him. Suppressing discussion about Morrison’s mistakes or denying them will not contain the virus.

In his speech to the joint party room, peppered with references to quiet Australians, Morrison exuded confidence that the blame would not stick. Labor is equally certain his confidence is misplaced, hence its concentration in parliament on the failings.

A few of Morrison’s quiet backbenchers and frontbenchers fear Labor has made headway.

There is no threat to Morrison’s leadership. However, there is growing hope inside the ranks, including among those who couldn’t vote for him in 2018, that Peter Dutton will use his status as a conservative standard bearer and his considerable internal power to quietly at first, then more publicly if necessary, branch out into other areas, including the economy, to at least provide a stronger Liberal flavour to a Labor lite narrative.