PM is playing a long game with focus on one result

The latest Newspoll, while reflecting the damage to the Prime Minister, continues to show the next election will be a tightly fought contest.

Scott Morrison is banking on vaccine success. Picture: Martin Ollman

Scott Morrison has resisted the temptation to take the gloves off with state premiers who have sought to use the slow vaccination rollout and quarantine failures to mask their own inadequacies.

To do otherwise would be counter-productive as he seeks to play a long game.

In the meantime, he is paying the price, on the basis that the ­issues hurting him politically are ones that are solvable.

This is a Prime Minister who is using his authority to wait it out.

Victoria, vaccinations and ­arguments over quarantine have dominated the political landscape since the budget provided the re­set Morrison desperately needed.

There have been failings across all jurisdictions.

The latest Newspoll, while reflecting the damage to the Prime Minister, continues to show the next election will be a tightly fought contest with the polls running in a relatively narrow bandwidth for the past two years.

With the vaccine rollout running at 140,000 a day, the numbers will be likely up near 10 million by August. Morrison is banking on vaccine success for political insurance.

The problem is at what point does the current dissatisfaction lock in — that is his gamble.

It is too early to suggest that there is a trend developing for Morrison, who has ridden the pandemic wave with soaring approval ratings, but it is clear that the other side is planting the seeds for a core narrative that Morrison has become reactive to issues rather than being on top of things.

Labor now has a strategy focused on bringing Morrison’s numbers down through an agenda derived of grievance politics.

Morrison, on the other hand, will be banking on solving the short-term problems and relying on the enduring issue, the economy, over which he and Treasurer Josh Frydenberg would believe there is no contest. It is a confidence reflected in Labor’s recent reluctance to take them on over it.

The national accounts last week showed Australia as the leading nation among developed economies with an economy now larger than it was pre-Covid.

The thing that will likely determine or at least heavily determine the election outcome will be largely based on how people are feeling about the economy.

The political story of the pandemic has been Morrison’s high app­roval and the lack of the usual relationship between a leader’s popularity and voting intention.

The latest poll, in isolation, could suggest the beginning of a return to normal politics. What is clear though is that Anthony Albanese believes victory can come from pulling Morrison down, which could be a fraught premise.