A good start, but so little time to shine

Julie Bishop has confirmed Scott Morrison will be beset with distractions until polling day. Like Malcolm Turnbull, she is engaged in legacy protection.

Legacy protectors: Malcolm Turnbull with Julie Bishop after they won the party room leadership ballot in 2015.

Scott Morrison needed to show an improvement in the polls if he was to have any chance of convincing his partyroom their change of leaders was justified.

This Newspoll suggests that he has begun to do that.

How far the Prime Minister can take it in the little time he has is anyone’s guess. But some on his own side would appear to insist that it’s not far at all.

Last night’s60 Minutes interview with Julie Bishop confirmed Morrison will be beset with distractions right up until polling day. With history as a guide, only a fool could have thought it would be otherwise.

Like former PM Malcolm Turnbull, Bishop is engaged in legacy protection. This is hardly unique — although it’s an interesting question how Bishop would have explained the “coup capital of the world” to her foreign counterparts had she won the ballot.

The point for Morrison is not the nature or even substance of the distractions, but whether they drown him out.

The fact Morrison is out of the blocks and already in positive territory in approval ratings — and significantly more preferred as PM than Bill Shorten — suggests he has risen above the nonsense and delivered a message that people appear to be warming to. Labor MPs are in mild shock that he has so quickly gained ascendancy over the Opposition Leader.

But as pleasing as Morrison’s personal numbers might be for him, they will be of little comfort for marginal-seat MPs or, indeed, those who became notionally marginal under the abysmal scenarios portrayed in the first two polls of his leadership.

And this is the other point.

The difference between this poll and the last is that 20 Coalition MPs look set to lose their seats, rather than 30. Seen in this stark light, the latest results are in no way heartening.

At best they give hope that all is not lost for the Liberals just yet.

There is an idea an opposition leader can’t win government without being at least as popular as the PM. But like every other rule broken in the past 10 years of Australian political history, this one is there to be broken too.

The Longman by-election was considered evidence that the celebrity contest of leadership ratings had become increasingly divorced from voting intention.

Shorten was loathed, yet it was the LNP that was smashed.

A two-point jump in the primary vote is important given what Morrison has contended with so far. Of course, it may simply be a correction following the catastrophic first two polls.

The question that will be answered in the next few months is whether Morrison as a popular leader can drag the vote back to a contestable and respectable level.