Dan Andrews and Scott Morrison are heading for a break-up. The bromance cannot last. The ideological gulf between them goes deeper than Aussie rules versus rugby league. The window of convenience that allowed a working relationship to blossom during COVID-19 is coming to a tragic end.
Morrison's office is actively briefing journalists against the Andrews government in order to deflect scrutiny and blame as well as to provide succour to the state opposition. The gloves are off.
Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews and Prime Minister Scott Morrison.Credit:Alex Ellinghausen
There will be mutual relief when normal hostilities resume. They are both effective brawlers and relish a fight. Both have been underestimated by their opponents, internal and external. Both are intensely protective of their ministers. In earlier times, a leader would have jettisoned Health Minister Jenny Mikakos in Victoria or federal Aged Care Minister Richard Colbeck and Assistant Treasurer Michael Sukkar.
That Colbeck and Sukkar survive, and equally Mikakos in Spring Street, is testament to the impotence of oppositions in the current climate. Morrison keeps his wounded pair in their ministerial suite with the active assistance of a vociferous media cheer squad. Mikakos survives because of the sheer heft of the factions in resolving tensions within the Victorian ALP. Neither equation takes the public's concerns into account.
Morrison revived his anxiety over Victoria's Belt and Road agreement with China this week. Straight after the provocative arrests of democracy activists in Hong Kong and a tone deaf performance at the National Press Club by China's second highest diplomat, Morrison was successful in creating a distraction from the deep pile of excrement the government was otherwise wading through.
The continuing internal dysfunction of the Victorian Liberals disclosed in this newspaper was reinforced by the own goal of astonishing arrogance shown by the Aged Care Minister on two occasions in this parliamentary week.
Inexcusably ignorant of his primary responsibilities before a parliamentary committee, he then walked out of the Senate while being scolded by Senator Penny Wong. In so doing, he compounded the perception that this is a government that turns its back on accountability.
The PM made it worse. In an Orwellian moment, he called aged care “pre-palliative care”, and then literally turned his back, slouching in his chair and conveying an air of barely concealed boredom while being asked questions in Parliament. Given he was at the same time calling for Premier Andrews to be more accountable meant double standards writ large.
In Victoria, the people who for generations have owned the Liberal Party are furious that interlopers are attempting to convert it to being the reincarnation of the religious-inspired fledgling party Family First. That experiment failed magnificently in the 2010 election, where Stephen Fielding did not get re-elected despite scoring the same 2 per cent primary vote that saw him secure a Senate seat in 2004. The survivors of that train crash salvaged what they could from the debris and have attempted a reverse take-over of the Liberals in Victoria.
If the Liberals succumb to a tiny rump grabbing control, they will enter unelectable territory. Would the sensible centre of Australian voters be tempted by a political offer that includes re-criminalising abortion, reversing same-sex marriage and repealing the dying with dignity laws? Because those are the non-negotiable foundations that the insurgents propose.
Insurgents? A senior Liberal minister once responded to my private query about the prospects of a compromise on their internal feuds by sharply rebuking me: “You cannot negotiate with terrorists” were the exact words used.
The establishment anxiety over the prospect of a bitterly divided party gifting the next election to the ALP will trigger a blowback against the religious right. This is a battle between the economically conservative but socially progressive “moderate Liberals” or the “wind the clock back” religious dinosaurs.
The Premier showed the effects of fatigue this week, mistakenly assuming that everyone accepted the need for an extension of the emergency powers as much as he, his bureaucrats and advisers did. There clearly needs to be some legal framework for the measures needed but that is no excuse for the attempt to simply ram them through without discussion or consultation.
The news from the Chief Coroner that there has been no increase in suicides this year was very welcome. The testimony that it was the police who wanted hotel quarantine to be run by security guards will undoubtedly be revisited in the future hearings of the judicial inquiry still under way. More relationship counselling may be needed with Victoria Police too, not just between the Premier and the PM.
Jon Faine is a former presenter on ABC 774.
Jon Faine is a former presenter on ABC 774.
https://news.google.com/__i/rss/rd/articles/CBMifmh0dHBzOi8vd3d3LnRoZWFnZS5jb20uYXUvbmF0aW9uYWwvdmljdG9yaWEvdGhlLWFuZHJld3MtbW9ycmlzb24tYnJvbWFuY2UtaXMtaGVhZGluZy1mb3ItYW4tdWdseS1icmVhay11cC0yMDIwMDgyOC1wNTVxOHIuaHRtbNIBfmh0dHBzOi8vYW1wLnRoZWFnZS5jb20uYXUvbmF0aW9uYWwvdmljdG9yaWEvdGhlLWFuZHJld3MtbW9ycmlzb24tYnJvbWFuY2UtaXMtaGVhZGluZy1mb3ItYW4tdWdseS1icmVhay11cC0yMDIwMDgyOC1wNTVxOHIuaHRtbA?oc=5
2020-08-29 13:15:00Z
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