PM truly believes God is on his side

Scott Morrison and his wife Jenny on Easter Sunday 2019 at the Horizon Church (Hillsong) in Sutherland. Picture: Gary Ramage

The last thing Scott Morrison did before he went to the Liberal Party meeting that anointed him leader and prime minister was to pray in his office with his very good friend and fellow believer Stuart Robert. Or brother Stuie, as Morrison calls him.

Robert told me later that they had prayed that righteousness would exalt the nation. As Morrison left his office, he also asked his young receptionist, Mel, to text his family to ask them to pray for him.

These events were recorded in my book Plots and Prayers, detailing Morrison’s ascension to the leadership. The title was deliberate. First, it highlighted the importance of prayer and faith in his life; and second, it named the people who plotted and planned Morrison’s strategy, including voting for Peter Dutton in the first ballot in ­August 2018 — thereby boosting Dutton’s numbers and ensuring Malcolm Turnbull could not ­survive — as part of his tight-knit prayer group.

The Prime Minister’s religion, his belief, shared by his followers, that he is guided by God and has been chosen to do God’s work, has been thrust into the spotlight again thanks to revelations of a surreptitious visit to the Gold Coast to address the Australian Christian Churches conference on April 19. There was no official alert before the event from his office or a transcript after.

Twitter, which Morrison told the conference carried the work of the “evil one”, has been abuzz with it ever since. The log of his VIP jet travel was published on Twitter last week. After the Rationalist Society of Australia, which on its website lists former High Court justice Michael Kirby, former Labor foreign minister Gareth Evans and former Australian of the Year and epidemiologist Fiona Stanley as patrons, posted the full grainy video of his speech on Monday night, it broke through into mainstream media.

On its Twitter account, which has 2142 followers, the society urges people to “support reason over prejudice, science over superstition, evidence over blind faith”.

The Prime Minister has ample reason to believe in the power of prayer. The night before the 2019 election, he texted his deputy, Josh Frydenberg, saying the result was “in God’s hands — I believe in miracles”.

Before that night, as he told last week’s conference, after what he described as a tough week in the campaign, he had sought a sign from God that he was still with him. He got it during an impromptu visit to a gallery for coffee before a scheduled event on the NSW Central Coast. With him was the local member, Lucy Wicks, also a member of his prayer group and a key player in his leadership bid.

“And there right in front of me was the biggest picture of a soaring eagle that I could imagine — and of course the verse hit me,” Morrison told the conference.

“The message I got that day was, ‘Scott, you’ve got to run to not grow weary, you’ve got to walk to not grow faint, you’ve got to spread your wings like an eagle to soar like an eagle’.”

What Morrison saw as an ­unmistakeable divine sign was a limited edition print of a photo taken by the gallery owner, Ken Duncan, called “Soaring Majesty”. Morrison had been to this gallery before. In 2013, again to help Wicks, he attended a breakfast there for Pentecostal pastors. Duncan, also a member of the Pentecostal church, describes himself as “an average photographer with a great God” but his wife Pam says they were not there when Morrison visited.

All politicians use whatever connections they have to support their lives or help their ­careers. And this is one network vital in so many ways to Morrison’s future. It is only a small percentage of the population, but it is a deeply committed one and in 2019 it delivered for him in what was a tight election.

During the last campaign, Morrison took the unusual step of inviting media to film him and his wife, Jenny, praying inside a Pentecostal church. Labor believed that the images of the Prime Minister praying and swaying, eyes closed, would be a turn-off for voters.

Maybe it was for some, those who recoiled from having a “Bible-bashing bastard” (as key Labor figures described Morrison to me) as prime minister. However for others, for all people of faith, it was a signal they would be both welcome and safe with him.

There were large swings to Morrison in seats with high Christian populations. After suffering a swing of 7 per cent against him in his electorate, largely because he voted for same-sex marriage when most people in his electorate voted against it, Chris Bowen urged Labor to find ways of speaking to people of faith.

It has been happening quietly. Before its recent virtual national conference, Senator Deb O’Neill organised briefings for church groups to take them through the party’s platform to reassure them there was nothing there to cause them any problems.

Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese, a Catholic, has trod gingerly. While saying he respected peoples’ religious beliefs, Albanese emphasised to the ABC’s Fran Kelly the importance of the separation of church and state, then pointedly took issue with Morrison’s conviction God was with him: “I think that the idea that God is on any politician’s side is no more respectful than the idea that when someone’s sporting team wins it’s because of divine intervention. I think that, for me, that isn’t appropriate.”

While Labor will not match Morrison’s promised religious freedom bill, they will remind churches of Morrison’s failure to deliver it. Labor knows the lion’s share of the vote of believers will go to the Coalition, but it would be happy to shift even a small percentage of believers.

Like those worried about the lack of a robust commitment to climate change or the abandonment of citizens in hellish conditions or the intolerable number of Indigenous people dying in custody and who ponder what God would make of the treatment of his planet and his people.

If they decided Morrison was skimming, rather than soaring, it could make a difference in the next election, which looks to be as tight as the last one.