Liberal campaign launch a slow leak of air from a balloon. A hiss presaging deflation

Extract from The Guardian

Australian election 2019

Scott Morrison’s lulling exercise only works if the country is prepared to suspend its collective disbelief

Katharine Murphy Political editor

@murpharoo

Sun 12 May 2019 16.34 AEST Last modified on Sun 12 May 2019 16.46 AEST

Scott Morrison on stage at the Liberal party campaign launch in Melbourne. The PM would rather Australians forget the past and focus on the future. Photograph: Mike Bowers/The Guardian

Campaign launches always deliver clues about how election contests are travelling, so let’s take a look at Sunday.
Scott Morrison’s set-piece event was held in Melbourne, the Liberal party’s weakest link. (Hello Victoria. How we love you.) The second clue was electing to have Sarah Henderson, the Liberal incumbent in the Victorian seat of Corangamite, as the support act to open Sunday’s proceedings.
Why Henderson? Liberals hope she’s got what it takes to survive an anti-government swing in Australia’s most progressive state. Henderson’s role in the campaign drama of 2019 is supposed to be a small talisman holding back the tide.
The Liberals have been sandbagging Corangamite like there’s no tomorrow, hoping she might be one of those “good local members” that Australian voters sometimes choose to save against trend.

As well as playing talisman, Henderson had to set the terms of Sunday’s proceedings. She wanted the assembled party faithful and the voters watching on at home to know that Sunday’s campaign launch was “about the future”, which was handy, because it couldn’t be about the past, could it?
The past is no help to anyone.
Not to Sarah. Not to Morrison.
Not to the volunteers sitting in the Melbourne convention centre watching proceedings on Sunday, the people in the blue T-shirts soaking up the animosity from voters when they go out door knocking. Best, all things considered, to stick with the future.
Before we move on and let Morrison articulate his version of the future, let’s be very clear about Victoria. If the anti-government swing in Victoria is significant next Saturday, then that’s it. Game over. Hence all that psychic energy invested in hello Melbourne, and Sarah Must Not Fall.
Anyway, Henderson stood up very straight and spoke about the future, and the choice between “our prime minister, Scott Morrison, and the Bill Australia can’t afford” – in the process becoming the human embodiment of a tag line from an attack ad. Henderson was, in fact, the warm up act for the attack ads. They got a run.
We got to Morrison after brief cameos from Michael McCormack and Josh Frydenberg, and a video designed to present the Liberal leader as emotional and empathetic, which is a curious newish genre in political communication.
I say curious because just imagine if a female leader tried it; being emotional. The splenetic creatures of the tabloids and talkback would lose their collective minds about unstable women in possession of the Australian equivalent of the nuclear codes. Just imagine the unhinging.
In any case let’s not digress. Morrison wanted to start from a place of emotion. Regular readers know I’m often critical of Morrison, because he generates a target rich environment, but it also needs to be acknowledged this guy is a genuinely interesting politician; interesting in the sense that he thinks about being heard, and what it takes to be heard when people don’t want to listen.
Morrison wanted to connect on Sunday morning, one week out from polling day, so he built his pitch from a place of emotion.

It was Mother’s Day, so he started with a maternal trope – the “surety of selfless love” – and he stitched in anecdotes of his parent’s community service, leading the girls’ brigade and boys’ brigade for 40 years.
The point of the Morrison log cabin story was making it universal, assuming it to be the Australian story, assuming the connection point with like-minded souls.
The Liberal leader wanted to present himself as being capable of delivering the “promise of being Australian”, which was, in his telling, allowing Australians, “quietly going about their lives, to realise their simple, honest and decent aspirations – quiet, hardworking Australians”.
If you were that Australian, the quiet and decent sort, Morrison wanted you to know that he was the bloke for you. Presumably all the noisy and not decent sorts are progressives. Who knows? In any case, let’s not stub our toes against that.
The signature announcement of Sunday morning was on brand with all the messaging – a new home owner deposit scheme to help get first home buying couples get “their first leg on the first rung of the ladder”. Given the late bauble was supposed to be the Coalition’s launch pad for the final week, Labor of course waited all of two hours before matching it.
Back now to Morrison’s lulling exercise, as that was what Sunday principally was. It was so effective in the room that you could actually feel the energy of the occasion draining in real time.
Sunday’s campaign launch was a slow leak of air from a balloon. A persistent hiss presaging deflation.
But that lulling only works if the country is prepared to suspend its collective disbelief, which is what Henderson invited everyone to do at the start, when she declared today was about the future.
The Liberals in 2019 are inviting Australians to forget about the record of the last two terms in government – the record that all Australians have seen with their own eyes.

The ask on Sunday was, please voters – forget the fact that we have been more preoccupied with tearing each other down than we have with building you or the country up. Forget the fact we have, in large degree, wasted our two terms in government – wasted the loyalty of our supporters – because we treated the privilege of government as a seminar and a sinecure.
Forget all the disappointments we actually delivered, forget that we have been self-absorbed and rudderless, and imagine what we could deliver if only you are generous enough to send us back for a third go.
Will Australians go for that?

Frankly, I doubt it, because that kind of suspension of disbelief feels like a pretty big ask – but we’ll all know next weekend.