Scott Morrison’s miracle win Mark II will be harder to pull off

I’ve seen questions asked about the timing of an old, explosive text exchange being leaked now. More interesting is what motivated it.

Peter van Onselen confronts the PM at the National Press Club: “I was provided with the exchange contemporaneously during the bushfires of 2020, two years ago. But the source did not authorise me to use the text messages until more recently.” Picture: Getty

This week hasn’t gone exactly the way Scott Morrison would have wanted in the lead-up to next week’s return of parliament. He’d hoped to use his National Press Club address on Tuesday as a reset, but that certainly didn’t happen.

Instead the Prime Minister will go into the sitting fortnight forced to dismiss suggestions there are divisions (and rats) in his ranks, and that’s before we get to all the policy challenges (and failures) he’ll be held accountable for. What’s happening in aged care will surely be a focal point.

The looming federal election is high stakes. Whichever major party loses will face serious soul searching, with divisions in its aftermath likely to hit fever pitch. This is common for parties in defeat, but the fallout will be greater than usual for the loser this time.

If it’s Labor, not only will it guarantee the party is out of office for at least a decade this electoral cycle but it will be the second election in a row where Labor has led comfortably and consistently in the polls before going on to lose.

The Coalition is behind 44 per cent to 56 per cent according to the latest Newspoll. It would be a brave commentator to sign Morrison’s political death warrant after his come-from-behind victory three years ago, but pulling off such a win a second time will be even harder.

If that happens it will mean Labor has secured a parliamentary majority in just one of the past 10 federal elections – a poor performance likely to spark a major clean-out in Canberra.

If the Coalition loses, the factional and personality divisions that are just below the surface will bubble up. Electoral success was the reason John Howard was able to maintain control over the Liberal Party and the Coalition for so long. Tony Abbott managed to contain divisions in the lead-up to 2013 on the anticipation of victory, but in doing so he only papered over problems that never really went away.

I’m talking about serious personality differences among prominent MPs, many of whom are still there. And the factional and policy divides that exist from state to state and between the Coalition parties are arguably greater than ever. Mavericks on the right and left will feel free to express themselves in opposition in a way that incumbency naturally curtails.

Morrison is only just holding together those divisions now. There are plenty of reasons his hold is weakening, among them his falling personal support in the polls. Last election the Coalition won because of Morrison. This time it will need to win despite him, unless those personal numbers turn around. Just imagine how much worse the tensions will become in defeat.

It wasn’t that long ago that incumbency during the pandemic looked likely to help, not hurt, Morrison’s chances. Despite missteps along the way, sitting premiers around the country secured their re-elections and most commentators assumed Morrison would too. But that’s no longer a certainty.

Despite Australia avoiding the worst of the pandemic compared with death rates in other countries, the vaccine rollout was botched. While Morrison seemed to overcome those problems and sidestep a serious fallout from failures to plan for better quarantining, Australia’s ultimately high vaccination rate didn’t get followed up with adequate forward planning for what had to come next.

The lack of access to rapid antigen tests was a federal blunder that should have been avoided, plain and simple. It has become a distraction from the government’s need to shift attention to the economy, which is its most powerful electoral weapon given we know voters trust it more than Labor to manage the economy. Josh Frydenberg must be pulling out what’s left of his hair in frustration.

Problems in the aged-care sector during the pandemic are again taking centre stage. Aged Care Services Minister Richard Colbeck remains hapless and his senior minister, Greg Hunt, seems to have checked out early, having announced plans to retire at the election. Morrison has yet to tells us who may replace Hunt if the government can find a way to get re-elected.

These problems of substance for the government are challenges that sit side-by-side with obvious evidence of instability and backbiting in its ranks.

While it’s inevitable speculation surrounding which senior colleague of Morrison described him as a “complete psycho” in a text exchange with former NSW premier Gladys Berejiklian, as I revealed at the National Press Club, trying to weed out who it was is an exercise in futility.

Former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull captured that reality perfectly, and playfully, on ABC’s 7.30 program when Laura Tingle asked him: “Have you got a theory who might be the texting minister?” Turnbull responded: “Yes, I will name the culprit. It was Colonel Mustard in the library with a smartphone.”

More interesting is the conjecture surrounding what might have motivated the leak. In trying to understand that I’ve seen questions asked about the timing of an old text exchange being leaked now. I was provided with the exchange contemporaneously during the bushfires of 2020, two years ago. But the source did not authorise me to use the text messages until more recently. They were provided to me at that time for the purpose of convincing me that there was widespread anger with how Morrison was treating people during the fires.

As you would imagine I regularly checked in trying to convince the source to let me use the texts, given their explosiveness.

I wanted to include them in the book on Morrison that Wayne Errington and I published in March last year but wasn’t given the green light. I tried again in late July last year when interviewing the Prime Minister on Network Ten’s The Project. It would have been a perfect opportunity to press him, with no way out of the discussion. Berejiklian was still premier. But again the source would not release me to do so.

Late last year when it was speculated Berejiklian would contest the seat of Warringah was another perfect opportunity, but again I couldn’t use the texts. The National Press Club on Tuesday was the first chance I had to ask the Prime Minister about the texts since being allowed to reveal them. Using them earlier would have breached the terms on which I was provided with the exchange, which I was never going to do.

The election is likely to be called for Saturday, May 21. It’s not a lot of time for Morrison to turn around his political fortunes, but he has done it before. If history repeats, comeback Mark II will be extraordinary to watch.