It has played on my mind for months that some readers believe I am too hard on Scott Morrison; that I fail to understand that if the Liberals lose the coming election, Anthony Albanese will be our next leader. And that this alone should be reason to back the Prime Minister.
It reminds me of a message I received years ago from a senior Liberal. “What team are you on?” they asked in response to a column that was critical of the Liberal government. I raise this not to titillate with another round of who-said-it. What matters is that I am not on the Liberal team. Nor am I a Labor-loving sycophant.
Like many voters, I am a small-L liberal and this means holding a Liberal government to account. No government enjoys criticism but they ought to respect it more from a liberal than the demented hit-jobs from the left.
The Morrison government’s biggest failures are twofold. First, it hasn’t understood what good governments do to nourish a democracy, defending basic liberal principles, not only when those values are popular but when they are unpopular too. That is our duty as liberals: to defend values fundamental to democracy so we can hand them on in a healthy state to the next generation so they will learn from our leadership and do the same.
It is that simple. It is also a mammoth task given the challenges to liberal ideas from illiberal forces. I can’t recall the last time a Labor politician spoke about freedom of speech, religion or movement and meant it. I can’t recall a senior Liberal doing this either. And that is why the Morrison government has been a failure as a Liberal government. It is true Labor may be worse. But it will be a fast race to the bottom if we stop expecting Liberals to defend the soul of democracy.
Second, national housekeeping. It seems spending beyond our means is bipartisan policy. Covid demanded some of that spending. But much has been wasteful, thoughtless and political. There is no point bragging about the lowest unemployment rate in years when the country’s borders have been closed for nearly two years.
Tax is not a big point of difference either. Education is the only area where a few Liberal ministers, first Dan Tehan and now Alan Tudge, have shown a point of difference with Labor, fighting for greater intellectual freedom at our universities and reforming school curriculums. But neither of these are Morrison reforms.
Though his colleagues may describe him as “horrible” and a “psycho” and a “liar”, my disappointment with him is less gaudy but no less real. I can’t put my finger on a single important policy Morrison has made his own, where he has chanced his arm in the political marketplace of ideas because he believes it is important to carry people with him.
The gold standard is John Howard and guns, taking on his opponents in the Coalition barely six weeks into his first term as prime minister. Three years into the job, Morrison hasn’t met the bronze level of conviction.
He has alluded to liberal principles breezily when the politics suits. As treasurer he cast aside free speech as an unimportant value. It wouldn’t create a single job, he said. As PM, when a brisk wind for religious freedom blew through the party room he backed a religious freedom bill because some things were more important than economics, he said. He wasn’t wrong. But he is not consistent. And that is not the deal with liberal values. When they are under challenge, they must be defended. It takes solid arguments, personal conviction, all the stuff of a leader to carry the day.
When Morrison describes the aspirations of Australians, it’s like reading a Hallmark card. He never braves the harder stuff, the values a democracy depends on to function. Truth be told, I can’t work out what values excite him politically. Except winning. In some ways he’s the Liberal Party’s Kevin Rudd, only less annoying.
Morrison is a mix of middle management and marketing man. One week he’s handing out a bonus to aged-care staff because the system is in crisis. It won’t fix the crisis but may win a few votes. The next week he’s playing apprentice hairdresser for the cameras, washing a woman’s hair. If Rudd, Tony Abbott, Malcolm Turnbull, Howard or Bob Hawke had done this, I would have said the same: it’s weird and it’s creepy.
Worse than creepy is Morrison’s decision last week to support Mark McGowan’s refusal to open the West Australian border. That stank of cheap politics; Morrison the poll dancer again. No one wants to lose an election. But when freedom of movement is still dead almost two years after Covid arrived, with vaccines, boosters and ample time for WA to prepare as other states have done, surely a Liberal prime minister would make the case for freedom rather than follow the Premier into his hermit kingdom.
Alas, the PM’s position fits an earlier pattern. While it made some sense to close the international border in early 2020 when not much was known about Covid, shutting out Australian citizens from their country is no small matter. Neither was locking Australians inside the country for 18 months. When Australians at home and overseas were fully vaccinated, Morrison remained wedded to his closed border.
I understand many people disagree with me, that many, especially older people, want to feel safe behind closed borders. But I cannot countenance treating citizenship as disposable, even in a pandemic. Citizenship is how the state acknowledges its attachment to its people, and vice versa, with rights and responsibilities in both directions.
The past few months have shown that Morrison does not lead on the bread-and-butter stuff either. It was plain as day that Australia would need rapid antigen tests to replace time-consuming PCR tests. Only when crisis point hit, with people queuing for hours in the heat of summer, did the federal government switch to RATs. That turned into a different nightmare, with people unable to get RAT kits because of a basic failure of government to plan.
Now, aged care is in a crisis, for reasons easily foreseen by the federal government. Many of our most vulnerable people haven’t received boosters. They are locked away from family, from what remains of life, cared for by a depleted, underpaid workforce of carers. We are a First World country, racking up record debt and deficits, yet we skimp on caring for the old?
I’d rather a Liberal prime minister who cuts to the chase to defend basic freedom and who can manage the daily housekeeping too. Keeping Labor out of power made sense when the Liberal Party was liberal and competent.
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