In its cover story on the crisis of conservatism The Economist excoriated right-wing leaders — with Donald Trump as demon-in-chief — and cast Scott Morrison as one of those reactionaries who exploit grievance and betray the true essence of conservative values.
Attacking leaders for their “repudiation” of conservatism, it branded them as “usurpers” who follow in Trump’s path and “are smashing one conservative tradition after another” in tactics designed “to stir up outrage and tribal loyalties”.
Morrison is traduced in the article. The magazine says conservatives should be pragmatic. It continues: “The new right is zealous, ideological and cavalier with the truth. Australia suffers droughts and reef-bleaching seas, but the right has just won an election there under a party whose leader addressed parliament holding a lump of coal like a holy relic.”
Indeed, Morrison is sandwiched in the article between Trump and Italy’s leader of the Northern League, Matteo Salvini, a nationalist and populist who warns about an Islamic caliphate engulfing Europe and who, the magazine reports, has encouraged the anti-vaccination movement in Italy.
Those familiar with the periodic bizarre views of The Economist about Australia may be unsurprised. What is missing in this report is the distinctive politics of each nation. The irony of Morrison’s inclusion as a wrecker of true conservatism is that far from being Trump’s political blood-brother, Morrison is the opposite.
His election success arose not because he followed Trump but because his conservatism, at nearly every point, defied or contrasted with Trump. Morrison will hardly advertise this before his Washington visit where Trump is rolling out the red carpet for him. Trump sees a connection between them, a useful but also a risky image for Morrison.
The President has compared Morrison’s “surprise” win with his own 2016 victory and the Brexit vote in Britain and, no doubt, Morrison’s visit will generate plenty of copy suggesting a Trump-Morrison concord of interests and shared conservative visions.
The real significance, however, of Morrison’s election in terms of global conservatism lies not in his populist duplication of Trump or European reactionaries or the Brexit vote but his adherence to a pragmatic conservatism far more geared to upholding traditions than destroying them. The Economist could not have been more wrong.
Trump, unlike Morrison, campaigned to dismantle the status quo, in his case the Washington establishment. He came as an outside agent to disrupt the system, repudiate internationalism and operate according to a new “America First” rule that meant protection, trade wars, nationalist exclusion and compromise of the US alliance system and global leadership, an agenda guaranteed to create trouble for Australia.
Morrison’s win, against this global backdrop, sent the message from Australia that pragmatic conservative traditionalism is not extinguished. The expected elevation of Boris Johnson as British PM — with his assumed affinity of sorts with Trump and his pledge to take Britain out of Europe — will highlight the different nature of Australian conservatism, contrary to The Economist’s simple-minded generalisations.
Morrison, of course, will not advertise such differences because his interest lies in the best relations possible with Trump and Johnson. But the facts are undeniable. While Trump and Johnson are agents of radical, often dangerous change, Morrison campaigned against dangerous and radical change from the Labor Party and won on this platform. Morrison presented himself as the leader offering trust, reliability and reassurance, hardly the diet of Trump and Johnson. Yet many politicians and media commentators are manifestly confused and cannot grasp what Morrison represents or what drives him.
In the latest Quarterly Essay, Erik Jensen reveals Bill Shorten’s confusion about Morrison. “I don’t know who the real Scott Morrison is sometimes,” Shorten conceded during the campaign. “Is he far right-wing? Is he not? I don’t know. I don’t know.” Shorten, like many commentators, is worried about Morrison’s religion. “I find him a bit hard to interpret,” Shorten said. “I know his Christianity — his Pentecostalism — is very important to him, so — I don’t know how much that is him.”
The progressives seem at a loss. Shorten’s remarks are incredible. If you don’t understand your opponent how can you defeat him? Yet Labor didn’t understand Morrison. For six months it kept running its big-end-of-town rhetorical attack after Morrison replaced Malcolm Turnbull when it was obvious this attack didn’t work against the “common man” Morrison.
The progressives cannot purge their belief that Morrison wants to play the politics of race, religion and security. This is part of their DNA — consider the hysterical claims made about him after the white supremacist Christchurch massacre. Climate change is another trigger. During the campaign a highly emotional Shorten went over the top denouncing Morrison as “a coal-wielding, climate-denying, cave-dweller”.
This reveals an emotional condition of frustrated righteousness that blinds its exponents. Shorten, after refusing to reveal the costs of his own climate change policy, branded his climate change opponents as “malicious and stupid”.
Labor’s problem is that Morrison had a superior and more accurate understanding of the Australian character. Progressives struggle to come to grips with this — it means admitting their view of the country was wrong. The instinctive reflex is denial and they search for a psychological explanation that excuses their failures and blames Morrison. There are several options — that Morrison is a religious freak or a milder version of Trump or too devoid of any vision to run the country efficiently.
Nowhere is this confusion greater than the critique that Morrison won on an unacceptably limited agenda, thereby overlooking the reality that if Morrison had run on a more ambitious agenda giving Labor a better target then he would have lost. After the chaos of previous years it would have been electoral suicide for Morrison to roll out a big reform agenda that his critics now profess to miss. Morrison was astute enough to recognise the obvious.
He ran on trust, reliability and economic delivery. In a fashion typical of John Howard or Robert Menzies, Morrison rejected Labor’s class warfare theme. He decided Australia wasn’t a broken polity, that unlike the US it didn’t have a busted middle class without health insurance or proper school education. He decided the public didn’t want sweeping changes or the vast agenda of taxes and spending offered by Labor.
“This is the thing Australians really baulk at,” Morrison said before polling day. With voter distrust of politicians at an all-time high, Morrison said the public’s attitude was Labor will “stuff it up and won’t deliver on what they promised”. Morrison’s calculation was that the “quiet Australians” had no stomach for grand plans or ambitious reforms — they just wanted economic delivery they could rely on.
Morrison corrected for the mistakes of his predecessors: Tony Abbott was too ideological; Turnbull could not appeal to conservative voters because he was not a conservative. Morrison is a social conservative elected against Peter Dutton by the Liberal Party moderates. The logic of this vote defines his politics — a traditional, pragmatic conservatism tinged with some liberal instincts, spurning ideological aggression but reflecting the Howard legacy of border protection and national security vigilance.
As Morrison said, he will seek to govern “from the middle” while his opponents will be desperate to deny any such successful strategy. Morrison’s model is apparent — restrain spending but back the compassion politics of the NDIS and mental health; support a religious discrimination act but not a religious freedom act; support constitutional recognition but not the voice to parliament.
The trick, of course, is whether he can maintain economic growth without a far more ambitious reform agenda.
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