For Labor, it was so much ammo for too few shots

Scott Morrison in full flight during question time on Wednesday. Picture: AAP

All of the expectation was on Labor to smash the Morrison government over sports rorts, bushfire failures and leadership chaos within the Nationals in the first combative sitting of the 2020 parliament.

The opposition was faced with an embarrassment of riches: on Sunday, Bridget McKenzie was dumped over her pre-election sports grants conflict of interest; on Monday, Michael McCormack survived a challenge as Nationals leader from Barnaby Joyce; Nat­ionals cabinet minister Matt Canavan resigned to force a new direction; and the latest Newspoll showed a further fall for Scott Morrison’s personal standing after the summer bushfires.

The political dynamic in the “Canberra bubble” had changed: Anthony Albanese was preferred prime minister; Morrison’s authority and judgment had been hit by his summer trip to Hawaii and angry public reactions; and the economic shock of the bushfires and the coronavirus was threatening to derail the Coalition’s cherished budget surplus.

Yet in the end it was almost as if Labor, in a foreshortened parliamentary sitting week because of condolences for bushfire victims, tried to do too much, adopting a scattergun approach that failed to connect.

What’s more, a chastened Morrison moved to correct earlier ­errors by actually saying “sorry” for going to Hawaii when there were bushfires and used incumbency to announce a royal commission into the fires, create a new commissioner to support veterans and implement tougher controls over coronavirus.

Before parliamentary question time, Morrison said on radio he ­regretted he went on the holiday, wished he hadn’t and was “sorry” he did, then listed what he’d done since he was back.

He also said fuel reduction in forests was as important if not more important than carbon emissions in combating bushfires: “We put $2bn into bushfire recovery. We set up a national agency. We’ve got on the front foot over the coronavirus and ensuring we’re keeping Australians safe. We’re just getting on with it.”

Labor was also locked into supporting the veterans’ commissioner to deal with suicide and couldn’t make capital out of the coronavirus.

So Albanese pressed on the “corrupt sports rorts”, queried tardiness on bushfire spending and poked at the Nationals over leadership. Yet like Xerxes at Thermopylae facing the Spartans, there was just too much material to fit into a limited battleground.

Labor’s little bites of everything on offer — except the economy and threats to budget surplus — left the Coalition little worse than it already was, without a clear deterioration on any issue. Of course, Labor didn’t have to do much to make the Coalition look bad.