The mystery of Morrison

The winner of this week's Twitter poll for a blogging subject was “How Scott Morrison can win the election” but I’m not going to write about that or at least not in the way I thought I was.

I still think he will win the election, and have even put money on it, I'd like to say it was a lazy $50 but all my money has to work very hard to keep me in the lifestyle for which I am accustomed, Aldi pot noodles ain't getting any cheaper!

The problem with predicting anything about Morrison is it almost impossible to say with any certainty what he will do tomorrow let alone between now and election time.

To paraphrase Winston Churchill, he is “a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma, neatly packed in an Aldi shopping bag" 

OK, do I get my check from the Land of Chocolate now?.

Morrison has been an MP since 2007 and prime minister since 2018 but he remains, to me at any rate, opaque in terms of what his beliefs and motivations are.

There is, of course, his often professed Christianity but it seems he talks about that in different ways according to the audience.

Searching for any guiding political philosophy is like trying to secure a foothold on a vertical polished shiny black marble surface.

Morrison is a man who once brought a lump of coal into parliament to tease climate change activism but now promises Australia will meet net zero emissions by 2050.

Even looking at his maiden speech, which might be normally considered a type of mission statement for a new MP, gives an impression of him touching all the expected bases but not landing any one in particular.

He quotes the Bible twice along with anti-Apartheid socially left-leaning clergyman Demond Tutu,  and the internationally renowned authority on Africa, Bono.

So in terms of understanding Morrison's key or core beliefs I came away from the speech having still not found what I am looking for.

The strongest call-to-action comes near the end where he urges Australia increase foreign aid because it is "the Australian things to do".

Since 2013 his government has cut foreign aid but even when they did increase it they wanted that kept a secret.

In an interview Morrison granted, for interestingly the less-than-friendly turf of The Guardian and the Quarterly Essay, Katharine Murphy finds him to be a shape-shifter who focuses purely on outcome from no fixed starting position.

“I’m a problem-solver. They say good policy is good politics – well, actually, good problem-solving is even better. That’s what I mean by suspending ideology – you’ve got to find the right answer,” Morrison says

Former Labor flak Sean Kelly called his Morrison political biography The Game, suggesting that for the prime minster politics is basically a contest to be won.

Kelly, according to The Conversation (OK, I haven’t read his book), argues Morrison worked hard to be a “blank canvas” in the public eye until he settled on the persona of the suburban “good bloke down the road”.

This accords with Murphy’s observation that Morrison relentlessly tests and refines his messaging, “working through iteration after iteration” until he hits on a winning formula.

That’s what marketers, especially in today's data-driven environment, do.

They use market research to test and refine slogans and images while ruthlessly throwing out what doesn’t work.

It’s no surprise that of all the insults thrown at Morrison the one that has best stuck, and apparently annoys him, is Scotty from Marketing.

Marketing is largely what Morrison did before entering parliament.

He promoted tourism for both Australia and New Zealand tourism and he left both jobs under a cloud, or perhaps a long white cloud in the case of his Kiwi appointment.

Morrison's pre-parliamentary career is somewhat unusual for a Liberal leader in that most of the major jobs are lobbying, party political or public sector ones, although swap in union roles and this would be par for the course for modern Labor.

Commonly former Liberal PMs often came from the law or some other profession and in the case of Malcolm Turnbull pretty well all of them.

What you can say for Morrison’s "problem-solving" or game-playing political approach is he finds a way to win.

Despite being thrashed in the pre-selection vote for his seat of Cook he eventually claimed it after the result was overturned. 

Allegedly this happened with help from the Labor party.

Morrison somehow emerged triumphant from the last Liberal leadership spill despite not even being one of the initial candidates.

To follow this up he won the “unwinnable election”.

What emerges from these episodes is a persistent theme or claim of Morrison employing intermediaries to do the unsavoury bits, giving him what the CIA might call “plausible deniability”

Which brings me to his prospects in the next election.

I previously thought he would pick up the growing mood for governments, as he put it, “to step back and for Australians to take their lives back” and neatly pivot towards this to win.

However, Morrison is nothing if not consistently inconsistent.

He recently supported, albeit in a fairly hands off fashion, the WA Premier's, who some unkindly call Bungle McBungleface, dismaying backflip on re-opening borders.

This week I also learned from a reliable source, that Morrison secretly believes in vaccine mandates despite sometimes saying otherwise.

He has form in making vaccines mandatory from introducing the “no jab, no play or pay” policy.

It is starting to look as if Morrison is once more allowing others, the premiers, to do the unsavoury work while he tries to maintain plausible deniability and avoid upsetting local sensibilities.

This still allows him some room to move the other way if it seems Covid measures are not working or have grown too unpopular.

This is a leeway Anthony Albanese does not have as Labor is congenially committed to big government solutions.

While I believe the same is true of  Morrison he characteristically has given himself more latitude to back off and reverse course if that is the way to win the "game".

Winning and being prime minister seems to be all he believes in or perhaps that is what he believes has been ordained for him.

As with the vote I ran on Twitter, Morrison finds a way to win even if that means you might not get what you think you voted for.

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