Dominant Scott Morrison rules the roost as Labor falls for Coalition’s rope-a-dope tactics

It’s elbows out as Scott Morrison greets Anthony Albanese at a parliamentary service at St Christopher’s Cathedral in Manuka. Picture: Getty Images

Scott Morrison has sailed through the first parliamentary sitting day and question time of 2021 with his personal standing riding high in the polls and unmarked by Labor or Anthony Albanese.

The only political problem the Prime Minister faced was dampening a fevered excitement from his own side about holding an “unlosable” election as soon as possible.

Morrison and his ministers dominated Labor, answering opposition questions briefly and dismissively while rolling out the Coalition election agenda of fighting for lives and livelihoods against the pandemic.

What’s more, while seemingly above party politics as he seeks to deliver the vaccine and the economic recovery, Morrison accused Labor of not being an opposition but turning into a “fight club that can’t agree with itself”.

Scott Morrison and Anthony Albanese face off for the first time in 2021. Picture: Getty Images

As Morrison told his Coalition colleagues on Tuesday, his National Press Club speech on Monday was an agenda to “win the election” based on having to “win” every day this year. That agenda builds on health success so far, the return of 700,000 jobs lost last year, no new taxes, more services and a pragmatic energy and climate change policy.

Having settled a sort of Coalition peace on climate change with an aim to cut energy costs, keep mining jobs and “preferably have zero net emissions by 2050”, Morrison is putting pressure on Labor’s new frontbench team to perform.

He’s also using Labor’s history on climate change and tax to declare that if you can’t find “how” to reduce emissions through technology, the only answer is a tax. “The Labor way is always through higher taxes,” he said as he hooked into a Labor history of a carbon tax and $380bn in new taxes at the last election.

Even the once soft target of Angus Taylor as Energy Minister has developed a new calm and authority as he delivers a brief on keeping costs and emissions down. Cornered on climate change and energy without a medium-term 2030 target, Labor tried to pursue pay cuts in the Coalition’s new industrial relations changes being opposed by the unions.

Morrison said he was interested in creating jobs and getting people back into work as the Coalition dismissed pay cut claims as “desperate and untrue”.

As the new economic pandemic tsar for Labor, Richard Marles’s first question about “pay cuts” was dismissed briefly as “not correct”.

After campaigning through 2020 for more parliamentary sittings — a chance for an opposition to call a government to account — the first sitting of 2021 was another lost opportunity for Labor MPs, who are falling into the trap of being seen to be looking after their own jobs.

There was even an edge to Albanese’s message of thanks to all those who had wished him well after a serious car accident when he declared twice he was up to his job and “fitting fit”.

Things look bad for Labor but the opposition can and will recover. It’s just that each lost day makes MPs on all sides expect an election this year, despite Morrison’s clear declaration in question time that the poll will be next year, and that puts more pressure on Albanese.