Scott Morrison should follow Gladys Berejiklian’s lead

NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian with Prime Minister Scott Morrison. Picture: AAP

Easily the most highly regarded politician in Australia, and deservedly so, is NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian.

Berejiklian is not perfect. She has made mistakes, although none life-threatening, and in any case her string of fine qualities has compensated handsomely for them.

She works hard, she is disciplined, intelligent, unpretentious, mature, moderate, tough, efficient, has a quiet sense of humour, is a decent person and is uncomplaining. What’s not to like? Especially the last bit about not whingeing.

No whingeing about being picked on because she’s a woman, or for having her appearance picked apart.

She just gets on with it, proving herself first as transport minister, then as treasurer, now as leader who won, by dint of her own performance, a difficult election.

The example she set, with the help of a strong, experienced campaign team, showed the boys in Canberra how to do it and importantly proved that it could be done.

Soon after the election she moved to correct an anomaly and to decriminalise abortion.

She used political capital early, knowing it would arouse wild passions. She rebuilt her stocks by quietly resuming governing.

When the fires hit NSW, she made a point of being there, every day, standing next to the fire chief, Shane Fitzsimmons, supporting him and allowing him to do his job. She visited affected communities. Her embraces were accepted. No one refused to shake her hand.

The royal commission into the bushfires, seen in NSW as a “get Gladys” exercise by hostile forces inside the Scott Morrison camp, could work against her, but right now when her name is mentioned, many people don’t say they like her. They say they love her.

Not all of them of course; not those on the far right, or a few inside the Morrison government, but enough of them and across a broad spectrum to make you wonder about her and what, with the big 5-0 approaching, she will do next.

Berejiklian, born in Manly Hospital, the daughter of Armenian migrants, is a classic Australian success story which can travel well beyond the NSW border.

She insists she has not been practising for something else, maintains she will run again as Premier because she so loves the job she is doing now.

It won’t stop the subterranean chatter surrounding her, in the perennially wildly popular parlour game played by politicians and political addicts of what would happen if the leader went under a bus, partly sparked by Mike Baird’s resignation from the NAB, which in turn prompted speculation about whether he might run for the federal seat of Warringah, to retrieve the seat lost by Tony Abbott last year to independent Zali Steggall.

The Baird option to replace Abbott in the seat, as a stepping stone to the prime ministership, was flagged years ago, but is no longer alive.

So if the Liberals want to reclaim the seat in the near future, then have their first female prime minister if Morrison falls or is pushed under a bus, or he decides he needs to spend more time with his family, then Gladys would be a near-irresistible option.

Given her experience and her temperament, it would be a step up, not a leap.

If she can survive and prosper in the viper’s nest that is NSW politics (and it is no secret she and Morrison are not friends) she can wrangle the beasts in Canberra. Unless of course the moderates freak out again and feel they have to sacrifice her like they did Julie Bishop to block Peter Dutton. It’s stuff like that which would make Berejiklian pause. That plus all the briefing against her emanating from Canberra, makes you wonder if that and the chatter about her shifting to federal politics could possibly be connected.

Morrison’s friends might be few but they are very committed and always alert to opportunities.

Also let’s be clear. There is no desire to shove him in the path of a heavy, fast-moving vehicle, unless he massively misjudges or mishandles the economic and health responses to the coronavirus.

As the black summer now threatens to turn into an even bleaker winter, as the first recession in 30 years looms, Morrison has been slowly rebuilding his standing in responding to COVID-19. At pains to show he is in control, questions still remain about whether the government has moved fast enough. They will only intensify if Australia slips into another catastrophe.

Were borders closed quickly enough? Was the health system properly resourced and organised to deal with testing, much less a mass outbreak. Should sporting events have been cancelled and schools closed? Was the stimulus package big enough and properly targeted? Have there been too many mixed messages about what we should or shouldn’t be doing?

Regardless, how much trust do people have in what they are being told? Did the government show it was capable of doing more than one thing at a time or did it take its eye off the still traumatised bushfire victims.

The economy was barely growing before this. According to the government, growth has been better than expected, and higher than comparable countries. That does not equal good.

Should the government have undertaken structural reforms sooner, as the Reserve Bank governor Philip Lowe advised in a speech last August when he warned monetary policy had done its dash?

Morrison has to puncture the panic everywhere from supermarkets to sharemarkets. It is a health issue as he says, however one with potentially profound consequences for the economy which he has acknowledged and elevated by saying it could be worse than the GFC. A big-bang approach, followed by an address to the nation, as I suggested on Sky on Sunday, is the way to go, backed by bold structural reform a few weeks later in the May budget to deal with the next shock because there certainly will be one.

Using an unfiltered 10 minutes, across all television channels in prime time, to speak to people ­directly, could help inspire confidence and spread calm, move to clear up the mixed messages, and deliver a few of his own about the nature of the risks Australians face to their health and their jobs and what the government is doing to mitigate them.