Scott Morrison sets battle lines for election fight

Scott Morrison has set up an election fight on the economy, pandemic management and national security, as he launched a blitz of marginal and target seats in NSW and Victoria.

Scott Morrison visits electrical engineering company Ampcontrol in the NSW Hunter Valley with Liberal candidate Brooke Vitnell, centre. Picture: Adam Taylor

Scott Morrison has set up an election fight on the economy, pandemic management and national security, as he launched a blitz of marginal and target seats in NSW and Victoria while he remains shut out of key electoral battleground states.

The Prime Minister – who intends to run his full term and hold another budget before the election – said Australians should re-elect him on his economic record and standing up to those who “counter our interest”.

Mr Morrison, who is barred from entering Western Australia, Tasmania, Queensland and South Australia due to Covid-19 restrictions, on Monday visited the Labor-held NSW Hunter electorates of Paterson, Shortland and Newcastle, which are target seats for the Liberal Party.

He will spend the rest of the week selling the government’s economic, national security and energy credentials in Victoria, where the Coalition is trying to hold on to Melbourne seats including Chisholm, and reclaim the Labor-held seats of Corangamite and Dunkley.

Mr Morrison, who has effectively begun a six-month campaign with an election due by May, said that during the pandemic Australia had boasted “the strongest economic performance of almost any country in the world”.

“There’s only been one recession in the past 30 years because of that pandemic here in Australia, and we’ve got 1.4 million people in jobs since we were first elected,” Mr Morrison said. “The unemployment rate now is down 0.6 per cent. We’ve managed to maintain our AAA credit rating, one of only nine countries to do so in the world. And we’ve done that with one of the lowest fatality rates in the world, and we’ll end up with one of the highest vaccination rates.”

Amid clashes with France over the scrapping of the $90bn submarines contract and ongoing tensions with China, Mr Morrison said the Coalition has “had the strength to stand up to those who would seek to counter our ­interest”.

“You’ve got to have the strength to do those things. And our government has the strength to stand up for Australia and, ­importantly, do the right things by our economy that keep people in jobs,” he said.

The Prime Minister in campaign mode in Newcastle. Picture: Peter Lorimer

The Australian understands next month’s Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook will reveal the government’s election spending priorities, including more detail on agreements with the Nationals to win their support for the government’s net-zero emissions by 2050 plan.

Mr Morrison on Monday unveiled Brooke Vitnell, the wife of his long-time staffer Julian Leembruggen, and Nell McGill as his candidates in the coalmining seats of Paterson and Shortland.

After resisting pressure from Britain and the US at the COP26 summit to commit to phasing out coal-fired power by 2030, Mr Morrison said the NSW government should approve new and ­expanded coal mines if they met “the environmental regulations” and were commercially sound.

“There’s certainly no suggestion that there’d be any sort of taxpayers’ money to subsidise those things,” he said. “Where there are commercially viable projects that meet all the environmental guidelines and regulations and planning arrangements, then I don’t see any reason why they should be withheld.”

Speaking at the Port of Newcastle, the world’s largest coal export terminal, Mr Morrison said his net-zero target was “not going to be achieved by legislating jobs away”.

“It’s not going to be achieved by forcing people to do things. It’s going to be achieved by getting the costs of the technologies that change the world, down. Not by putting the cost of other things up.

“You don’t have to put electricity prices up to get emissions down. You don’t have to sell out your economy and the jobs in your economy to get your emissions down.”

UK climate change committee chair Lord Deben on Monday said Mr Morrison’s low-emissions strategy was just a “whole series of words”.

“You cannot go forward without signing up to eliminating coal. We can’t go on using coal, and Australia does really have to come to terms with (it),” he said.