Only the populist conservatives could have turned Australia’s belated vaccine triumph, with near world-beating vaccination rates, into a shameful and humiliating fiasco for the Morrison government. The Australian public has responded magnificently on vaccines. High vaccination is the key to economic reopening and Scott Morrison’s re-election strategy. The nation’s two-jab rate is at 85 per cent while NSW has hit 92 per cent coverage.
But ideological conservatives are unhappy; their revolt is senseless, indulgent and irresponsible. In the annals of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, this week’s effort by conservative rebels warrants a special place. Its significance, however, runs deeper – they are ready to promote their own principles against their government’s policy and threaten a legislative strike of sorts to extract concessions.
The Morrison government is being held hostage by its own side. So much for stable, competent and reliable government. The symbolism is powerful: the rebels have aligned with Pauline Hanson’s bill for the federal government to intervene, confront the premiers, overturn state vaccination mandates and deny funds to a state body or business that requires full vaccination for entry.
This revolt is merely the latest manifestation of the fracture within conservative politics in Australia and across Western democracies as it searches for new meanings and aggressive tactics to combat the tide of progressivism, with Trump populism an element embedded in every centre-right party.
The rebels want to obliterate a policy now widely practised – only for a temporary period – in most states and enjoying strong public support. Most people are comfortable with the security of having to show their vaccination document as the condition for entering a cafe or restaurant. The demand of the rebels that the Prime Minister pass a law to overthrow state health mandates is electoral madness and would drive Morrison into a totally unnecessary and disastrous war with ALP premiers.
In her speech promoting the bill Hanson undermined the vaccination process, claimed Australians were part of a “grand experiment”, asserted there must be no discrimination against the unvaccinated and declared “if you don’t support my legislation then you don’t support Australian democracy and freedom”.
For 12 months the populist conservatives have raged against lockdowns and border closures, demanding that Morrison confront the premiers – now they have a legislative lever to punish him. The irony is it comes when the damaging, long-delayed vaccine rollout has surrendered to the success of soaring vaccination rates. This is sabotage by a movement consumed with frustration and convinced Morrison is not of its tribe. Here is the ultimate meaning.
Hanson’s bill was defeated 44-5 yet she scored a win. Conservative rebels began to form a bandwagon and the government has been disrupted. Five Coalition senators crossed the floor to support One Nation (whose two senators supported the bill but were unable to vote). Two government senators, Gerard Rennick (Queensland) and Alex Antic (South Australia), have threatened other bills unless Morrison takes action on their demands. Coalition MP George Christensen said he would join them.
Morrison rejected Hanson’s position. “We don’t run an autocracy,” he said, playing down the revolt. While Morrison averted a legislative showdown over net zero at 2050, the showdown has come over vaccines. The timing could not be worse for him. He is caught in a bizarre pincer movement over vaccines at a time of his maximum vulnerability this term.
Morrison is under frontal assault from Labor over his character in an attack that is gaining traction while the populist right has staged an assault from his rear. As a transactional leader focused on centre-ground politics and policy Morrison has failed to deliver the red meat the conservative base demands. Its anger has been boiling for months, with net zero being its most recent source of agitation. Morrison is under pressure from the full waterfront of the populist right – Hanson, Clive Palmer’s party, Campbell Newman, conservative populists and his own Coalition rebels – now embracing rejection of vaccine mandates as a sacred principle of freedom.
The critical issue is whether the populist right still will align with Morrison at next year’s poll or bring him down. Morrison needs preferences from these minor parties to be re-elected and his remarks last week reflected this reality – he said he wanted discrimination against the unvaccinated to come to an end.
Eventually, of course, it will. Everybody will finish in the same boat. But in the meantime the ALP premiers, still supreme in their domains, have got another card to play against Morrison – they are champions of banning the unvaccinated from a host of locations and events in the cause of driving up the vaccination rate. And on all the evidence this is a popular position.
The long-established Morrison government policy is support for vaccine mandates for health, aged care and disability workers. Beyond this, the government does not support vaccine mandates – it says business should make its own decision – thereby leaving open a hefty policy difference between Morrison and most of the states.
The politics are obvious. The more Morrison emphasises this difference to try to pacify his conservatives, the more Labor and its premiers are going to target and punish him. For Morrison, this is a pincer trap. The election moral is clear: don’t highlight this difference on vaccine mandates – it won’t appease the conservatives and it will only provoke ALP premiers on an issue where Morrison won’t win.
This is just part, however, of the research-driven Labor assault on Morrison’s character, accusing him of deception, lying and double talk – the message being you can’t trust him and you can’t re-elect him. Consider the situation: Labor has had success in branding Morrison while the government has hardly branded Anthony Albanese at all.
The easy orchestration between the ALP premiers and federal Labor has worked like a dream – the frightening dilemma for the government is how to combat this in the campaign proper beyond the Howard method of turning trust back on to Labor as an economic competence test.
Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews accused Morrison of chasing the votes of extremists, anti-vaxxers and proponents of violence. This was a baseless sledge but won traction. Morrison’s condemnation of violence and threats was unqualified but his expression of sympathy for protesters opposing repressive controls was exploited by Labor and the media to argue he was playing both sides.
The lesson for Morrison is to avoid fights with the premiers during the campaign. Yet in a campaign where Covid and vaccines will be frontline issues it is fatuous to think the premiers will ignore him. French President Emmanuel Macron effectively branding Morrison a liar has given that claim lots of momentum and seems to have affected Morrison’s performance.
Morrison is now a prime minister facing character assassination and that, in turns, becomes a test of character. Labor thinks it is getting under Morrison’s skin and that his emotional responses will only bring him undone. Morrison is facing a trio of challenges – how to manage the personal assaults, keep his own troops together and find the narrative to turn pressure back on Albanese.
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