Ups and downs, but Morrison can hold his head high

Scott Morrison delivers his valedictory speech on Tuesday. ‘On foreign policy and national security, the Morrison ledger is substantially in the black..’ Picture: NCA NewsWire / Martin Ollman

Scott Morrison delivered a magnificent farewell speech in parliament, full of emotion, splendid gratitude, love of family, faith and country, plenty of substance and a brilliant little riff, requested by his daughters, on Taylor Swift album titles. Anthony Albanese’s response was equally generous and gracious.

This is a good moment in our politics. The battle of ideas should be ferocious, the battle of people should be civil and decent and full of human regard. Morrison and Albanese both deserve our thanks for this.

On foreign affairs and national security, Morrison was an effective national leader who leaves a strong legacy. The big failure across the Coalition’s decade in office was in not producing new defence capabilities. But beyond his share of that failure, a failure fully continued by the Albanese government, Morrison had a lot of positive achievements.

One of his biggest national ­security achievements came before he became PM. Under then prime minister Tony Abbott, Morrison as immigration minister secured our borders and put an end to dangerous waves of unregulated boat immigration from the north.

As prime minister, his biggest single foreign policy achievement in my view was not AUKUS, but standing up to China. Beijing made a cold, calculated decision that, using all its coercive power short of military intervention, it would intimidate Australia and force a change of policy on us in a range of policy areas – the ban on Huawei in our NBN, laws against foreign interference, national security limits on Chinese investments in critical infrastructure, closer defence co-operation with the US and a raft of other matters.

The Morrison government resisted this aggression absolutely and pursued policies in Australia’s national interest. I think his government’s language was sometimes a bit too strong, but this was a pivotal moment in our national story. It was the right thing for Australia and it won enormous international respect, not least in Washington.

The AUKUS agreement was also a big deal. For the first time the US agreed to supply nuclear submarine propulsion technology to Australia. The US has only ever done this with Britain. Morrison took the people, and the Labor Party, with him in crossing the nuclear Rubicon. Serious problems and perplexities have emerged around AUKUS, but the initial deal was a big thing. But it’s best seen as a threshold opportunity, not a deal that in itself brings more than symbolic gains. Morrison can’t be held responsible if future governments don’t deliver everything AUKUS promises.

The first big problem with AUKUS is a growing doubt over whether Australia will be capable of receiving a Virginia-class sub in eight years’ time, and whether the US will in fact be willing to sell us one. And the second is that while the deal is meant to give us privileged access to US defence technology, it will also impose on our own defence exports US red tape and controls, which are among the most restrictive, inefficient and counter-productive in the world.

Morrison’s time in government was inevitably dominated by Covid. Initially his handling of the pandemic won him great support, but that ebbed fairly quickly. In truth, Covid was a destroyer of governments all over the world, especially centre-right governments It’s fair to say Australian governments overreacted, but this was entirely understandable and it still gave us among the best health outcomes in the world.

The statistics that claim Australia’s low death rate was actually high compared with some other nations that took less restrictive actions rely on immensely subjective and often utterly misleading baselines from which excess deaths are then calculated.

Morrison did not neglect the South Pacific. He worked hard without achieving universal success. The Albanese government has also worked in the South Pacific, and is also achieving something less than universal success.

Morrison also became an extremely successful Donald Trump whisperer, gaining good results for Australia from the mercurial US president.

Morrison was the first Pentecostal Christian to lead an OECD nation and in general handled issues of his faith pretty well. However, it ultimately became a publicly unpopular feature of his persona. This was partly because Morrison himself was overexposed as the totally dominant figure in his government. But it was also partly because of the double standard under which any conservative, especially a churchgoing conservative, is judged. Every word and nuance has to be perfect from them. And nowadays scriptural references, once mainstream in our popular culture, are portrayed as alien and weird.

Morrison, like other leaders, had his pluses and minuses. But on foreign policy and national security, the Morrison ledger is substantially in the black.