PM tries to smother fire but it’s a hose he needs

Scott Morrison with Tim Stewart. Picture: Twitter

Scott Morrison may be counting his blessings that he has not been here to face questions on a number of serious matters, but it would have been better for him if he had dealt with them before he left rather than leave them fester.

There is the matter of the Murugappan family, which is only partly resolved. The very least that could be done has been done by allowing the family to reunite in Perth where four-year-old Tharnicaa is recovering from a serious illness.

The government is stalling, hoping interest will fade or that an election will overtake it when it could have been fixed this week with the seemingly obvious decision to allow them to resettle permanently in Biloela. Instead, we have the usual arguments about boats restarting when the world knows it’s the turnbacks that stopped them.

The fact is while several Coalition MPs have publicly urged they be allowed to stay, there is ferocious opposition within the upper echelons of the government. It is reminiscent of the David Hicks saga, which ended with the Howard government eventually, after months of holding out, bowing to pressure from openly revolting small l-liberal voters in inner-suburban electorates and elsewhere to bring the alleged terrorist sympathiser home from Guantanamo Bay prison.

There is a similar vibe around the Murugappans. Ken O’Dowd, whose electorate of Flynn includes Biloela, sided with the community from the beginning, pleading for the family to stay. Now he has been joined by Trent Zimmerman, Katie Allen, Jason Falinski, Bridget Archer, Barnaby Joyce and others. That indicates the intensity of electoral heat felt in the leafy suburbs of Melbourne and Sydney and beyond.

Then there is the matter of the Morrison family’s friendship over many years with a man who has recently become deeply immersed in the dangerous American conspiracy group QAnon. Again, the Prime Minister could have dealt with it weeks ago by standing and answering every single question rather than spinning on his heel and walking away at a press conference after one Dorothy Dixer.

Sometimes the best way to extinguish a fire is not to try to deprive it of oxygen, but to turn the hose on it full bore. Assuming you know how to hold one, mate.

Both issues clouded coverage of his overseas trip, and even that threatened to turn sour when it appeared he had been put in his place by an American president.

Despite Boris Johnson’s assertion Morrison had “declared for” net zero emissions by 2050 to fight climate change — which would come as a nasty surprise to the Nationals — Morrison has thumbed his nose at world leaders by refusing to commit.

He also refused months ago to join them in condemning Donald Trump for inciting deadly riots in Washington in January, and has been a tad presumptuous in claiming to lead the world in the fight against China after deciding in 2019 to follow Trump down the dead end road of negative globalism. He performed what foreign affairs types like to call a pivot only days before arriving in Britain to bury Trump then praise Joe Biden and the virtues of international co-operation that Biden has been championing.

Quelle surprise, Biden was unable to find time in his very busy schedule for a one-on-one with the Australian Prime Minister in Cornwall to mark their very first meeting.

Who called this meeting? Scott Morrison meets Joe Biden and Boris Johnson at the G7 in Cornwall, United Kingdom, on June 12. Picture: Adam Taylor/PMO

From here it seemed like the equivalent of a diplomatic spit in the eye for Morrison when Johnson joined them. Spinning faster than a heavy duty front-loading washer as he sought to counter the poor optics, Morrison first called the meeting unique, saying initially it was a “mutual” decision to have a trilateral, then insisted later it was actually his idea.

That was kind-of true. Except he had wanted both a twosome and a threesome. Biden’s schedule couldn’t accommodate both, so in order to get the main piece of business done on China, it was a trilateral only.

It doesn’t mean Biden has any less regard for Australia, or that he won’t visit Australia later this year. It’s going to take longer for Morrison to be able to spruik about a special relationship every Australian prime minister dearly loves to claim five minutes after meeting the leader of the free world.

That other relationship that has been investigated and reported by media, including The Daily Telegraph, Crikey, The Guardian, and the ABC’s Four Corners on Monday night, has raised legitimate questions about the long friendship between the Morrisons and Lynelle and Tim Stewart.

Before it aired, Morrison described Louise Milligan’s story as a politically motivated slur against him and his family. It wasn’t. If the Prime Minister’s wife employs one of her best friends to work at the official residence, and the husband of said best friend has sunk into the dark world of QAnon, that is a story worth investigating. Especially if the couples socialise.

Four Corners revealed that Tim Stewart’s mother, Val, and sister, Karen, were so concerned about his behaviour and that of his son that they twice contacted the national security hotline, the first time in October last year. Mrs Stewart left her job in December last year.

Four Corners asserted her husband bragged he had got the Prime Minister to insert the coded message “ritual sexual abuse” into a speech, that they celebrated New Year’s Eve together, and were scheduled to be in Hawaii around the same time on the Prime Minister’s ill-fated holiday during the black summer fires.

Morrison has explicitly repudiated QAnon, describing it as dangerous and discredited. Those close to Morrison say Mrs Stewart’s departure from Kirribilli had nothing to do with her husband’s activities and she left of her own accord because Covid meant her work there had petered out. They say Mrs Stewart had a security clearance, security agencies never expressed concern about her employment there, Morrison and her husband were never friends, only “acquaintances”, their conversations were mostly about footy, they never talked QAnon and there was no code in the speech because references to ritualised abuse were “littered” through the royal commission.

We need to hear all that directly from him.