The Power List: ‘Get on with it’ is the heads-up for Scott Morrison in coastal retreat

Scott Morrison’s power comes from the Australian people.

Holly Thomson and Will Humphries at Shoalhaven Heads on the NSW south coast Picture: Nikki Short

Scott Morrison’s power does not lie with his policy advisers. The Prime Minister’s power comes from the Australian people.

How many times has he promised to take his cue not from Canberra boffins, but from you?

Mr Morrison made a point of seeking out those he calls the “Quiet Australians” during a trip to Shoalhaven Heads on the NSW south coast, last January.

“It was not any political visit … just Jen and me and the girls, enjoying the flathead and chips, like everyone else,” he said at the time.

Fellow holidaymakers were nonetheless pleased to be asked about their priorities. Mr Morrison ended up making a bit of a list:

1. People want jobs. To that end, a strong economy.

2. They’re happy to pay taxes, especially for schools and hospitals, but let’s keep the rate reasonable.

3. Migration is on the whole a positive, but we could maybe slow it down a bit? (That view, which comes nowhere near any government’s policy over the past decade, has been in a constant in polls over the same period.)

4. Your religion is your business, as is your sexual orientation. Just please don’t preach to me.

5. A decent country offers a decent welfare system for those doing it tough, but let’s make sure it’s not being rorted.

6. Climate change is real, but let’s not wreck the economy trying to deal with it.

Given Mr Morrison landed upon his manifesto after speaking to people in the beer garden at the Heads Hotel, we decided to head there this week, to see how he’s travelling. Did we say quiet Australians? Ahem! Turns out they have quite a bit of advice for him.

“Bloody oath I do,” says Darryl West. “Just get on with it!”

It won’t be the first time we hear those words. But get on with what, exactly? Mr West was sitting with mates Paul Kay and Sean Fletcher on the timber tables, opposite the beach. Mr West says Mr Morrison would do well to concentrate “on what is common sense”.

“It’s like, nobody minds paying for welfare, until you see it being abused,” he said. “Schools and hospitals, we have to take care of them. But then you see (serial killer Ivan) Milat getting free treatment, and it makes you wonder.”

Mr Fletcher drives a truck. His wife works in a plumbing supplies store. They have three kids. Understandably, he would like to see the cost of living become Mr Morrison’s priority.

“Everyone’s struggling,” Mr Fletcher says. “Childcare in particular. Both me and the missus work. We need before and after (school) care. It’s $300 a week and then you see people on the rock’n’ roll (dole) getting it free,” he said.

John Copeland, 74, is a retired bus driver. He didn’t vote for Mr Morrison’s team — “no way, I’ve been Labor all my life” — but he still gets points for the clarity of his thinking. “Labor only lost because the bloke they put in (Bill Shorten) was unpopular,” he says.

Simple as that? “Simple as that. Nobody could stand him.”

Over at the caravan park, we found the Curtis family: Dion, Brooke and son Jack, 4, who wants a “red-bellied black snake” for Christmas (he’s not getting one). They had just set up the Weber for a “camping test run”, ahead of the year-long road trip they’re about to take around Australia, before Jack starts school. How good is that, as a certain someone might say?

Mr Curtis says Mr Morrison’s challenge is “to find the balance”.

“Yes, we should pay taxes, that’s the price of living in a great country, but they have to spend them wisely,” he says. “Yes, we have to look after people who need a bit of help. But people should take pride in getting ahead by themselves if they can.”

A few sites along, Will Humphries and Holly Thomson, both 20, are settled into folding chairs, with apple ciders in the holders. Both are students — he is studying prosthetics; she is studying to be a paramedic — and both are part-time lifeguards at the Bowral pool.

They don’t have much of an interest in politics, but they are concerned about the environment.

“You see rubbish washing up,” Ms Thomson says.

But they have grown up recycling plastic and using Keep Cups and they figure their generation will take care of things.

There is one shadow on the horizon: house prices. Ms Thomson once asked her parents how much they paid, and she kind of wished she hadn’t.

“It’s daunting when you see how much they’ve gone up,” she says. “But my parents have said, it’s hard in the beginning. You make sacrifices. Then you get ahead.”

Fellow holidaymakers were pleased to be asked about their priorities and, given the Shoalhaven is smack in the middle of Gilmore — the only seat firmly lost by the Liberal Party at the 2019 election — it makes sense that he both took notes, and ended up making a list.

Mr Morrison, in the essay he wrote about the “Quiet Australians” after his holiday, remarked upon the “positive outlook” of so many Australians. To that end, meet Joan Hanchard, 62. She was sitting on a park bench near the rivermouth when we approached. Shoalhaven Heads is her home. She and husband Garry used to live in the Sydney suburb of Campbelltown, before they got robbed.

They decided on a quieter life. They used to sit right here, enjoying the weather, admiring the view. Then he got cancer. She had come here, on this day, to sit and remember him, on their wedding anniversary.

Mrs Hanchard was filled with praise for the care Garry received.

“The doctors, the nurses, you couldn’t fault them,” she says. “They were lovely to us.

‘These few years have been hard. I’m adjusting. But it’s still a good life, isn’t it?’’