Opinion
Scott Morrison

What informs our unexpected new prime minister? A year hidden among the Pentecostal faithful gave me some insights

When Scott Morrison announces that he’s standing behind you, you might want to make sure his hands are empty.
It was only a week ago that then-treasurer Morrison was hugging Australia’s Liberal party then-PM Malcolm Turnbull at a media call and pledging allegiance to his embattled captain. Asked if he himself had any leadership ambitions, the member for Cook responded: “Me? This is my leader,” and embracing the man, “I’m ambitious for him.”
Turnbull had survived a leadership vote against rival Peter Dutton, 48-35. Less than a week later, Turnbull was finished and Morrison’s slimmer margin of 45-40 had seen off Dutton and he became PM.
 Australia’s new PM: who is Scott Morrison? – video
Morrison’s established political character is thus. As immigration minister in the Abbott government he took to Australia’s brutal policies towards refugees and asylum-seekers with vim. In 2014, he was condemned for his “callous disregard” for detainees – video surfaced of him “directly threatening” those seeking sanctuary from fatal persecution elsewhere. As social services minister in 2015, he convinced the Greens to support an over $2bn cut to the pension in a welfare-shredding spree. He opposed marriage equality and refused to vote with the popular will after the resounding “yes” vote in the postal survey.

"Morrison is a proud and public worshipper at the Horizon Church, which, like Hillsong, is Pentecostal"

He is a neoliberal and as treasurer he has governed neoliberally. Wage growth in Australia is stagnant, underemployment is rife. One of his earliest speeches was to condemn welfare recipients as the “taxed nots”, yet the policy he was most committed to pursue was the $65bn tax cuts for corporate Australia, including $17bn for the banks – the banks that are now recommended for criminal charges, from a banking royal commission Morrison described as a “populist whinge”.
Who is such a person to lead this country? Well, if his own propaganda’s to be believed, a very holy man. Morrison spoke of his “personal faith in Jesus Christ” in his 2008 maiden speech, in which he also thanked pastors Brian Houston and Leigh Cameron of what has been described as a “money machine”, the Hillsong Church, for their “great assistance” to him. Citing Houston as “a mentor”, Morrison is a proud and public worshipper at the Horizon Church, which, like Hillsong, is Pentecostal, and similarly an “American-style mega-church ... where the gospel of prosperity is preached in an auditorium that can accommodate over 1,000 evangelicals” as described in a 2012 profile of Morrison in the Monthly.
Drilling down into what constitutes the “prosperity doctrine” of these Protestant sects provides some context for neoliberal Jesusing, Scott Morrison-style. Walking away from materialism is something we humble Catholics understand as a “counsel of perfection” – Christ’s instruction in Matthew 19:21 is literally “If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.” But the theology of megachurches like Morrison’s inverts these values. Here, the message is that earthly riches result as a recognition of God’s favour. It’s an apologia for wealth and privilege and delivered with some pomp – as I learned when I spent a year hidden in his mentor Houston’s Hillsong congregation.
Yes, in a collection of carefully chosen pastel outfits, I squatted among the Hillsong faithful for a year, researching a “Christian drag” act cabaret. To hear Morrison espouse his own faith associations is to be reminded of megachurch marketing techniques – the deliberately chosen, good-looking “greeters” deployed to lead the nervous and the lonely to their seats, rock stadium theatrics concurrent with a “collection plate” that took your credit card details, and hand-on-heart gestural sermonising of the prosperity doctrine’s seductive heresies. The biblical pretext cited for material wealth as a sanctification of a blessed elect was provided by bible passages like Joel 2:23-25 and Proverbs 3:10 that my own tradition reads in the precisely opposite way.
The idea was to parody my discoveries, but there’s little one can add to scripts that read “Speak your faith, start seeing miracles ... Owner of your first home! Best-selling author ... Businessman who is prosperous and fruitful! Speak it into being! Speak it into being! Speak it into being! Amen!” – which is authentic Hillsong, by the way. An arena-show marriage of God and mammon was affected with triumphal choruses, syncopated clapping, marching drums, and always – always – the exhortation to consider wealth as an earned blessing of niche piety, something within reach if more donations were handed over, more church-brand merchandise bought. At a service’s conclusion, business directories were handed out. The encouragement was strong that God’s favour should remain in-house.
“You cannot serve both God and money,” said Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount. “The best form of welfare is a job,” said Morrison as treasurer, when shown that his own 2015 budget punished the poor most of all.
The political corpse of the last person to enjoy a similar pledge from Morrison is presently rolling down the Parliament House hill with multiple stab wounds. Australians have every right to analyse just what informs our unexpected – and unelected – new leader’s gall.

• Van Badham is a Guardian Australia columnist