Mainstream voters expect Scott Morrison to stick with sensible policies

Morrison has had a wake-up call on political smugness, but quiet Australians have not abandoned him.

Scott Morrison at the National Press Club on Wednesday. Picture: AAP

Driven by polls, influenced by social media and eager to remain in step with their colleagues, the national political commentariat can sound like an echo in the Canberra bubble. Its members constantly detect and report volatility and drama in a national political saga that actually moves gradually; they see zigzags but mainstream ­voters, en masse, are more ­inclined to snake along, taking time over assessments of policies and leaders.

We are seeing premature evaluation yet again. Scott Morrison went into December seemingly unassailable but over the silly season the media pack has become overly excited about his real and perceived errors and now they say he is on the ropes.

“The country is on the brink of dismissing Scott Morrison as a leader,” pronounced The Sydney Morning Herald’s Peter Hartcher on Sky News this week. “It’s a government with a tre­mendous problem and now the question is whether Morrison can demonstrate the leadership to recover some respect in the public mind and some relevance to the national agenda.”

Some relevance? He won the miracle election in May. The overreaction is obvious and it looks a lot like wishful thinking.

There is a bit of a pattern. Those most aggressive in their pursuit of the Prime Minister and most critical in their current assessments tend to be the same commentators who were most emphatic that he couldn’t win last year — perhaps it is ­entrenched poor judgment or perhaps it is revenge.

Those fascinated by polls more than two years out from an election have focused on the fall in Morrison’s satisfaction rating in Newspoll; as if misreading and over-interpretation of polls hasn’t gotten them into strife ­before. The two-party-preferred split on Newspoll is exactly where it was the week before last year’s election.

Surely pundits would see that voters use polls to send messages. They are not silly enough to think there is a real voting choice before them this far out, so their answers reflect an ­assessment they would like government to receive.

After a silly season summer of bushfire tragedies and intense criticism of Morrison — manic attempts to blame him for everything from the climate to the fires — it is little wonder he lost some bark. And there is no doubt that by trying to sneak off on an overseas holiday he invited some pain.

It doesn’t seem advisable for prime ministers ever to holiday out of the country and certainly they should always announce they are on leave and who is acting in their job. But claims Morrison should have been on duty overseeing what at that stage was a ­series of bushfires in one state were over the top.

As the fires worsened, tragedy struck and the personal and political barbs became more ferocious; Morrison probably overreacted to compensate. His calling out the Army Reserves was useful and greatly appreciated in fire-damaged zones but the idea Canberra must now play a role in bushfire planning and hazard reduction is another worrying addition to the federal government’s overweening reach and further infantilises the states.

And surely yet another bushfire inquiry is superfluous, given we know the areas of complacency — we need more fuel reduction, larger firebreaks, more clearing around houses, stronger focus on personal responsibility and liberty on such matters, and stricter planning controls separating housing and bushland. A broad realisation from residents, politicians, planners, bureaucrats, conservationists and fire authorities is needed that firestorms on catastrophic days have always been with us and always will be (even more often with global warming).

I have written about the inanity of the hysterical attempts to blame the bushfires on climate change; a cynical and opportunist ploy to resuscitate climate policy as a central divide eight months after the “climate election”. To suggest a bushfire threat that has bedevilled this country for millennia, has shaped our ecology and will ­always trouble us can be ameliorated by our climate policies is silly beyond words. So what is the point of raising it?

Morrison visited the heart of the resistance this week when he fronted the National Press Club to try to reset that debate and staunch his wounds over the sports rorts affair. Former Channel 9 reporter Michael Pascoe wrote that the Prime Minister ­“destroyed his credibility” by ­defending Bridget McKenzie.

Protesters wait for Scott Morrison at the National Press Club.

Statler to Pascoe’s Waldorf, former Channel 10 reporter Paul Bongiorno wrote: “The nickname infesting social media — Scotty from Marketing — while delighted in by his opponents will be lethal if it becomes an embedded perception.” This is kinda cute because Bongiorno uses that hashtag on Twitter and is therefore part of the infestation and the opposition.

While the sports rorts affair is a classic case of politics as usual — a resignation from McKenzie would raise more questions than it answered — the Prime Minister must rule a line under it, presumably by instituting new rules that prevent a repetition of such pork-barrelling by any party.

The feral nature of Twitter and the press gallery is routinely misleading. Sometimes it is difficult to remember the reliable calmness of most voters who are too busy to indulge in this nonsense. It is the consistency of mainstream values and judgments that is striking, not their capriciousness. Responses to opinion polls or media trends need to be restrained, delayed and considered, especially in this age of digital coverage and social media. But journalists and politicians often are too reactive, forgetting that in politics things are never as good or as bad as they seem.

As exhibits I offer the journalistic consensus on Donald Trump’s 2016 election prospects, predictions for the Brexit referendum in the same year and forecasts on Morrison’s chances at last year’s election — not to mention misjudgments on major policy issues such as border protection and climate change.

The media/political class gets excited and goes off on a green-left frolic, led by the public broad­casters, social media and the press gallery who, in turn, provoke ­enthusiasm from a broad alliance of politicians, including moderates in the Liberal Party. Yet when the issues are eventually weighed and put to voters, the electorate proves more stable and intelligent than the pundits.

Economic management, workplace relations, climate change, national security and border protection have been the central policy areas in play for two decades. The only time Labor won a parliamentary majority in that period was 2007, when the ­Coalition overreached on workplace relations, Labor promised to be as strong as the Coalition on economic conservatism and border protection, and the ALP’s more aggressive promise on climate was buttressed by severe drought and the Coalition’s ­refusal to ratify Kyoto.

Inconceivably, despite all the evidence and accurate assessments in forums like this newspaper, the media-political class has failed to grasp how badly Labor and the green-left undermined its credibility on these core issues. The Coalition learned its lesson on workplace relations and shelved its ambitions.

But Labor under Kevin Rudd abandoned its commitments on climate change, border protection and economic management before Julia Gillard deepened the crisis on borders and the economy and overreacted on the climate deficit. This is the story of the past five elections and the ­almost fatal misstep by the ­Coalition came when it went with the media/political class zeitgeist, overthrew Tony ­Abbott and almost lost when Malcolm Turnbull took the party to the green-left.

Turnbull’s suicidal spill in ­response to a threat from Peter Dutton and Morrison’s masterful run up the middle allowed the Coalition to reset on mainstream values and win the election on the economy, borders and climate. There was plenty of help from Labor, which opted to join with the Greens and independents to weaken border protection laws from opposition and offered a raft of extra taxes along with extreme and unfunded climate policies.

That’s it. The bookshelves are full of gossipy books about the Machiavellian details but the big picture is policy-based and obvious.

Mainstream voters have not shifted from a desire for strong but sensible policies on the economy, climate change and border security. We are an educated, self-reliant and free people, naturally inclined towards pragmatic, right-of-centre national governments.

It is no accident that Labor’s most successful post-war government came under its most pragmatic, right-of-centre team of Bob Hawke and Paul Keating. And its only other notable victory came when Rudd pretended to be like them.

Morrison has had a wake-up call on political smugness and needs to learn from it. But on the fundamentals of where to position his government on climate, energy, the economy and national security he remains head and shoulders above his ­opponents and critics.