Scott Morrison makes a small target and one very hard to attack
When it come to state politics the women are doing well. Annastacia Palaszczuk and Gladys Berejiklian are unassailable from within and without. The Queensland Premier is the most highly educated of all the premiers. She is a graduate of the prestigious London School of Economics. She is blessed with a wonderful common touch. If you walk along the Townsville Strand with her, you can only be impressed by the fans who come up to her, and that is virtually everyone who passes her, and the easy manner she has to deal with the fame and popularity. The NSW Premier is equally popular and successful. She is lower key than her Queensland counterpart but that works really well for her.
Of course incumbency never hurts either. When the key to the biscuit tin is yours and yours alone, you have great power. The distribution of patronage can never be discounted. Bob Carr once offered me the chairmanship of Taronga Zoo and Dubbo Zoo but sadly I was forced to decline as I was given the choice of that or the Sydney Olympic Board. I knew Sydney would not see another Olympics in my lifetime.
Mark McGowan’s popularity in Western Australia really is quite remarkable. In the recent state election he drove the Liberal Party vote down so far they were reduced to three lousy seats. The ignominy and shame of that result will haunt the Liberals, but whether it will be sufficient to reinvigorate that very ordinary lot remains to be seen. McGowan’s massive majority should produce real reform as there is no upper house in that parliament to restrict or hamper him. My earnest hope is he will look at the massive water resource that his state has in its north and find a way to bring that water south. Israel has shown the way in converting virtual desert into truly productive land. McGowan can afford to dream big dreams. The electorate would love to be inspired by a politician in the manner of a Hawke, Keating, Howard or a Wran.
Scott Morrison in some respects is above politics. He has a likeability factor which is second to none. He is the neighbour who would always lend you the lawnmower and not harass you if you are a bit tardy in returning it. His wife Jenny is a formidable force in herself. She is a qualified nurse with a keen observant eye. He would have been grateful that Malcolm Turnbull imploded because he would not have enjoyed knifing him. Wisdom is born of patience and time and the PM is a patient man. Morrison has turned good old fashioned decency into a potent political weapon. Anyone who has observed him closely would agree to buy a used car from him. You know he would not sell you a dud.
The speculation that the PM might call an early election seems way off the mark to me. There is absolutely no reason to have an early election, so he would have to concoct a fairy story which would fool no one. He is a one-off as a politician because he would not know how to lie. Delivering lines he does not believe in, and doing so earnestly, is beyond him. That is what has made him what he is today — voters feel that he can be trusted. Therein lies Labor’s biggest problem. Undermining that trust will not be easy. There is no great record of broken promises to which to refer. Morrison is very hard — maybe too hard — to attack.
He is expert at presenting himself as a small target. He is a manager not a reformer. He works on the basis that Australians are wary of change, so he offers none. If Josh Frydenberg can cook up another big pot of tax cuts, while still giving the appearance of fiscal discipline, then once again the Coalition will go into an election with a head start.
Oppositions can only promise and hope to be believed, while governments can deliver promises and prove their worth. At this stage of the electoral cycle it is very difficult for Anthony Albanese and other frontbench opposition MPs and senators to be heard. No one really wants to listen, which gives incumbents a big advantage.
Albo will be reluctant to make big political announcements at this stage of the electoral cycle, so he is doing what he does best. He is touring marginal seats, particularly in Queensland where Labor always hopes to win seats but continually has those forlorn hopes dashed. Only Hawke could break through in Queensland, but the seats Labor won could not be held beyond one or two elections. It is not easy to replace retiring members or win back seats that have been held over several elections.
One-on-one Albo is very warm and very convincing. The Liberals try to paint him as a firebrand leftie but anyone who knows him knows he is a part of our society we should always respect. Raised by a single mum in a tiny inner city flat in Sydney’s Camperdown he is the epitome of the working class boy who worked his way up. That is what has given him his resilience. It’s what makes him a warrior. It also explains his sensitivity to anyone who is suffering. He has such an easy time establishing a warm rapport with anyone less fortunate than himself.
In a party accustomed to leadership challengers no one would dare to try and depose him. Lunching with him is not the normal lunch with a pollie. He doesn’t spend his time bucketing those he doesn’t like. The rank and file of the party love him so Kevin Rudd’s rules on selecting leaders suit him down to the ground. I have never believed these rules matter all that much. A motion of no confidence in the leader is every bit as fatal as a vote to unseat them. Any leader who had lost the confidence of the parliamentary party could not continue. Their position would be terminal.
Leadership challengers are ugly and divisive but if you think your leader is not up to scratch you have no alternative but to plot their demise. My involvement in two political assassinations established a less than flattering image for my good self. Moving against Bill Hayden set Labor up for a record ten years in government. The second prize awarded to Hayden was the Foreign Ministry, a job in which he excelled. Hayden may have been the loser in the challenge to Hawke but his career blossomed none the less.
It is always a good idea to avoid the unpleasantness and bloodshed involved in a challenge but if you can’t talk them out, you get out the Howitzers and blast them out.