After a year mired in Covid-19 hell, Scott Morrison sets his sights on a political resurrection

Health Minister Greg Hunt is congratulated by Scott Morrison after he delivered his valedictory speech in parliament on Thursday. Picture: AAP

The chaotic end to the 2021 parliamentary year is not any strict guide to the eventual outcome of the 2022 election.

Parliament ended 2021 in the same way it began – fractious, overshadowed by Covid-19, MPs’ attendances limited and fractured, claims of sexual assault, blame-shifting over coronavirus quarantine and vaccination, and Scott Morrison and Anthony Albanese locked into personal attacks. Yet all the mess, the economic oscillations, the Prime Minister’s fall in popularity, and Labor’s lead in the polls are still not yet enough to declare that the Coalition will lose the election after parliament resumes in 2022.

Simply too much has happened in the past year for any political judgment to be made about an election that must be held in only a few months but still seems an eternity away.

The government’s disruptions and its disunity in the final parliamentary sitting weeks can’t entirely be erased with Morrison’s sweeping dismissal of mere “parliamentary games” – but nor can it be encapsulated in the Opposition Leader’s claim of the Coalition “losing the ability to govern”.

Opposition government services spokesman Bill Shorten in parliament on Thursday.

After two weeks of Coalition senators and MPs crossing the floor to vote against government motions or bills, the deferral of key election promises such as the Religious Discrimination Bill, or the voter identification proposals, parliamentary procedural blunders, an ascendant opposition, the standing aside of one minister and retirement of another, there is too much mess to sweep under the chamber’s green carpet.

Yet Morrison used the last sitting day to try to look and build beyond the setbacks of 2021 to look forward optimistically “through the front windscreen”, not the rear vision mirror, and offer economic and psychological recovery in 2022 as Australia “stays safely open”.

When Albanese asked whether the parliamentary floor-crossing and delayed legislative agenda showed he had “lost the ability to govern”, Morrison responded simply: “No. No.”

He then went on to accuse Labor of being obsessed with parliamentary “games” and ignoring “the issues in the forefront of people’s minds at home around the country who are concerned with their health and wellbeing”.

“Labor plays games in this place while we focus on what is happening out there across the country,” he told parliament.

The soon-to-retire Christian Porter on the Coalition backbench. Picture: Martin Ollman

After being accused of “having difficulty with the truth”, Morrison warmed to the theme, accusing Labor of “trivialisation and cheap gotcha moments more interested in slurs and sledges”.

Morrison, Josh Frydenberg, the departing Greg Hunt, and Peter Dutton tried to stick to positives and forecast a better year in 2022 for jobs, housing, industry, national security and dealing with Covid-19.

This is the heart of the Coalition’s re-election strategy: move beyond the travails of 2021, emphasise the clear successes of 2021 in global pandemic responses and, most of all, promote what is going to be a strong economic recovery without the effect of lockdowns in Sydney and Melbourne suffocating spending and work.

In pre-pandemic times, this might be judged little more than a Hail Mary strategy based on a slim hope from a side that looks beaten, but the impact on the public mind of all the ramifications of the global pandemic change the equation.

The entrenched geographical and regional differences between the states, and within the states, the impossible-to-judge influence of premiers on the federal campaign, and general anxiety about change in uncertain times have all been enhanced and turbocharged.

Morrison’s decision to limit the parliamentary sitting weeks next year is evidence he recognises the “games” simply can’t be dismissed; it also reinforces his chance to reset the political debate. Parliament is important to the politics of 2022, but the pandemic and its response is more important politically.