Howard’s way: the Scott Morrison renewal is on the right old path

Scott Morrison has embarked on an unapologetic course to return the Liberal Party to its successful centre-right construction under John Howard.

This will be viewed by some as a direct repudiation of the moderate-controlled Turnbull government. Morrison will argue it’s not, but he won’t mind if this is the perception.

Whether or not it works will rest largely on whether he can lead a government that is not engaged in perpetual self-indulgence and self-harm. As long as the current sideshow alley continues, it will be impossible.

Already Morrison is showing signs of the sharp political intuition and pragmatism that served Howard so well. He has been quick to reach out to the Liberal Party base — the forgotten people — even if only symbolically at first, by dumping the policy to lift the pension age to 70. And he has signalled a demonstrably conservative social policy agenda by promising a robust religious protections package.

He has spent three days in Queensland talking to the LNP’s organisational wing to try to bring it back into the tent and offer reassurance that he understands the importance of the state. This is a critical insight into Morrison’s instincts.

While moving quickly to kill off policy cancers such as the NEG, he won’t be rushed into rolling policies out the door for polling sugar hits — having been burnt once before by flying flags with GST reform. A debate on population and immigration is likely to be delayed until Morrison can land on a policy that balances the competing political narratives of urban congestion and economic exigencies.

It will come as no surprise that one of the first texts Morrison received after the leadership spill was from Howard. Morrison called him once he returned to his apartment and they spoke for more than half an hour.

Morrison’s observations of the Howard era are astute: “It was hard to tell where John Howard and the party started and finished.” Howard embodied the Liberal Party and the party embodied Howard. Morrison wouldn’t be so bold as to suggest he could emulate Howard but this is the model: embracing moderates and conservatives yet ensuring the ballast is tipped in favour of the centre-right.

For Labor leader Bill Shorten, Morrison potentially poses a greater problem than Peter Dutton or Julie Bishop. His breadth of portfolios and success in all of them is unmatched among former Liberal leaders. This is a significant problem for Shorten, who will struggle to define Morrison as easily as he did Turnbull. As immigration and border protection minister, Morrison was the architect of stopping the boats. As social services minister, he delivered significant welfare reform. As treasurer he presided over the creation of a million jobs and the best economic growth numbers since pre-GFC days.

Notable in his Albury address this week was Morrison’s acknowledgment of these achievements as being goals set under the Abbott government rather than Turnbull’s.