Speaking at the National Press Club last week, with Grace Tame, Brittany Higgins depicted the gulf between her hopes for what might be done and what had been achieved so far. The mass national protest last year, she said, had not been a march for acknowledgment or for media coverage or language: it had been a march for justice.
Sticking with the theme, she noted that the Prime Minister’s language over the past year had been shocking and at times “a bit offensive”. But those words would not have mattered, she said, if his actions had measured up. What bothered her most about his “imagine if it were our daughters” spiel was not that he needed his wife’s perspective to arrive at what should have been an obvious position. “I didn’t want his sympathy as a father. I wanted him to use his power as Prime Minister”.
Illustration: Jim PavlidisCredit:
This was a reminder of the sharp difference between words that can often seem like progress and progress itself. But Higgins was also making a more subtle distinction, one of equal importance: very often we find ourselves talking about the person in the job of Prime Minister – what they’re like, what they feel – rather than what they are actually doing with that job.
This is a particularly interesting idea to consider given the amount of attention given in the past days to the curious fact that Morrison plays the ukulele. Whatever else is revealed in the 60 Minutes episode, broadcast (by the owner of this masthead) on Sunday night but after this article was written, Morrison’s aim in doing it is clear enough: to remind people that he is a person, and about what sort of a person he is.
Some will dismiss such things as flim-flam. But remember that this is, to a very large extent, how Morrison won the last election. He had not been leader for long. There was a logic, then, to the fact his campaign leaned so heavily on the idea of “Scott Morrison” as opposed to “Scott Morrison, Prime Minister”.
As I wrote just after he took the job, he presented leadership not as a matter of belief, but of sensibility. We did not know much about what he wanted to do, but enough of us knew enough about the man to satisfy ourselves we knew what sort of leader he would be. With time, the political importance of Morrison the man has only increased. His government is barely interested in policy. It is ideologically split. What ties it all together, then? Only Morrison.
Which brings us to the great debacle of last week. One political intention behind the government’s Religious Discrimination Bill has been widely observed: to lock in the vote of religious communities who backed Morrison last time. It was also an attempt to look like he was focused on governing.
But a perhaps even more significant reason behind the sudden rush to pass the legislation lies in the shift in voters’ attitudes towards Morrison over the past three years. What started as a kind of trusting boredom passed into confusion, and then suspicion. What did this bloke actually care about? Was he just an empty vessel? This is by now a dominant strain in commentary around Morrison, from across the political spectrum.
Morrison’s religious belief is an important answer to these questions. It was not taken on for this reason: his belief is utterly sincere. But as with every aspect of any politician’s life, it has also, with time, taken on a political purpose, filling an important gap in public perceptions of the man. He might not have clear political beliefs; he will not fight hard for much, if anything; but we at least know he believes in something strongly. His sudden determination to pass the bill, then, is not so different from the 60 Minutes episode: just another way to remind voters of the man behind the politician.
There were many predictions, as the legislation was allowed to slip off the pre-election agenda, that it would now be an important issue in the campaign. But what can MPs say, given they made this promise before the last election too? That this time they really, really mean it? The argument is weakened by the fact they will have to say the same thing about an integrity commission.
This is the potential problem with the ukulele approach. It is possible, of course, that it will not harm Morrison at all. It is clear that those who disliked him at the last election now detest him. They will see the marketing rather than the thing he is marketing, and hate him even more. But Morrison isn’t interested in those voters, and for many Australians the ukulele might still do what Morrison wants: convince them that he’s a regular suburban bloke.
But it is also possible that the voters he wants to reach are not that keen on being told, again, what sort of a person he is. Didn’t they get all that three years ago? One way or another, they have their impressions. Now, with COVID on its way out (perhaps), they want to know what sort of a prime minister he wants to be. “A bloke who plays the ukulele on television” is an answer, but not a very good one.
Oddly, this question has not yet been much asked of Anthony Albanese. Instead, most speculation so far has been: is he a good opposition leader? The government is rightly focused on the first question, and has set about attempting to answer it for voters.
There are three problems with the government’s attempts to date to frighten voters about Albanese. The first is that its own leader provides no useful contrast, having no strong answer to the question himself. The second is that it has too many attacks on Albanese, a muddle rather than a sharp line. The third is that the government’s scares seem to have little to do with Albanese himself – as though it’s engaged in theoretical war games rather than a campaign against a specific opponent. This has meant their attacks feel oddly similar to 2019.
A common criticism of the then Labor leader Bill Shorten was that he failed to adjust his tactics, once Morrison took over as Prime Minister – that he was still fighting Malcolm Turnbull, and his moves no longer worked. Similarly, there is a sense that Morrison still thinks he is fighting Shorten. For someone who so obviously believes that who you are is the most important thing in politics, that seems like an elementary mistake.
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2022-02-13 18:30:00Z
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