Scott Morrison has his boot on Labor’s throat – while pretending they’re in government

Extract from The Guardian

Scott Morrison

The prime minister actively devalues the institution and eco-system to which he owes his position

Katharine Murphy Political editor

@murpharoo

Sat 19 Oct 2019 06.00 AEDT Last modified on Sat 19 Oct 2019 09.06 AEDT

Mathias Cormann and the prime minister, Scott Morrison, who has crashed through every roadblock put in front of him. Photograph: Lukas Coch/AAP

We are going to get to Scott Morrison, and parsing his methodology, but I want to start with a bit of insight that flew below the radar in a busy week for political news.
The Museum of Australian Democracy has been spearheading important research by political scientists about trust in politics, and this week it released the results of a recent survey of federal parliamentarians. The results revealed an appetite for institutional reform on some fronts, but the most interesting element for me was the resistance among our MPs and senators to opening the political system up to direct input and influence from the public.
The superficial takeout from this insight would be this: politicians are type A power junkies and they don’t like sharing, so participatory democracy concepts like citizens juries are always going to struggle.

But if you dig into the survey results a little deeper, what comes to the fore is anxiety, not overweening arrogance. The perception is voters don’t have a good grasp on how the system works and there is concern that media disruption increases scope for misrepresentation. There is a desire in the political class for more civics education as a corrective to promote engagement and better political literacy.
It makes sense that Australian politicians are worried about how entrenched disengagement impacts their business in the age of Brexit, where a rash moment of participatory democracy in the shape of a national referendum triggered a profound institutional crisis which is not yet resolved.
But now I’m drifting away from Morrison, and we need to get back to the prime minister, and what he’s doing, and why. The point of me flagging the MOAD stuff is professional anxiety about disengagement and its consequences sits at the heart of Morrison’s prime ministership. It’s important to grasp he’s a product of his age.
I spent time this week watching Morrison thundering away at the dispatch box with parliament back in session, watching him work, trying to pinpoint exactly how he is different from his predecessors.
The first thing to observe is he speaks predominantly to disengaged voters. Apart from the empathy offensive underway in the bush on drought (which on some internal views is cunning crowding out of Nationals and on other views helping Nationals) Morrison doesn’t need to rally or mollify the base, at least not yet, because he has one palpable advantage: he is not Malcolm Turnbull.

Morrison doesn’t need to waste energy signalling to engaged fellow travellers that he is one of them, as Turnbull had to do more or less constantly, eroding the life force of his prime ministership genuflection by genuflection, because they already know that. He can focus his energy on courting the people who aren’t tribal and aren’t listening, the swingers who decide the outcome of federal elections, speaking simply, yet vividly, in an effort to capture their scant, reluctant, attention.
The other thing Morrison does is cast Labor as the government, while laying a personal claim to the prime ministership. Morrison does this constantly. This is a genuine innovation, presenting simultaneously as a prime minister both in power and in exile. It’s the next iteration of his solo act during the election.
Shortly after sunrise each day, Scott launches his valiant quest to prevail against the forces of Labor recklessness; the same quest, over and over, like it’s Groundhog Day, because with all the disengagement and disruption, you have to keep grinding away with your G-rated picaresque until enough people see it.
Morrison wants to project himself as the prime minister, because incumbency is bankable currency in times of anxiety – just ask Paul Keating, who saw off John Hewson even though there had been a major recession. Like 1993, 2019 is an anxious time. The economic orthodoxies that have underpinned the post-war world are shaky, and serious weirdos ululate at the apex of governments.
So Morrison wants you to know he’s in The Lodge, large and in charge, but he also wants you to worry that his incumbency might be transient; that someone might take it away. Morrison as a human is tactile, and he wants you to be tactile too. He’s a hugger, and he wants a hug back. He wants something more durable from you than abstract bystander regard. He wants you to buy-in, to make a commitment. It’s important to him, to be with him and not against him, or worse, indifferent.
Morrison’s daily quest manifested this week in a bodice ripper about him saving Australia from Labor simultaneously applying billions in new taxes and unleashing a reckless burst of panicked stimulus that would destroy the budget. Given we were in absolutely no danger of any of that happening, it seemed strange that the threat had to bloom in technicolour from the bear pit, but it did.
There are two possible explanations. The first is this is what government is now, either in democracies or in autocracies: build your own reality, create your own facts, and anchor this consequence-free environment with the constant suppression of your opponents.
The second possibility is less nihilistic fortunately. Perhaps Morrison is just working overtime to prevent any buyers’ remorse taking hold in the community post 18 May, with the IMF this week issuing yet another warning that the economy is in trouble.
Prime ministers castigating their political opponents isn’t new, but Morrison’s ratios are. John Howard, the inveterate culture warrior, was the master of government being an exercise of “us” and “them”. But Howard’s government was always present, and assertively so. Morrison is 80% Labor 20% government (and that’s generous frankly).
Morrison not only keeps his boot on Labor’s throat, he also torches the apparatus around him to try and prevent the opposition clambering up again if he gets a sudden leg spasm. By torching, I mean all the propaganda about the “bubble”.
Morrison actively devalues the institution and eco-system to which he owes his position – which just seems like so much faux everyman blather to propagate the populist projection of elites versus the rest – until you watch Labor trying to get a grip on the institution to help hoist itself off the mat, and then you clock the arson is actually more extensive.
This was particularly evident this past week. With voters fretful about the economy, Albanese attempted to use the power of the parliament to invite a debate on the issue, so the government might be pressed to articulate its own plan rather than just distract.

Morrison responded to this by signalling this garden variety request was the most risible thing anyone could have suggested. Imagine suggesting a deliberative process in the parliament when the government was busy doing stuff. Far too busy for all this bubble business, like debating a plan, or even articulating one, beyond we’re not panicking, if we need stimulus, at least it won’t be crap like Labor’s.
So if we snapshot Morrison this week, we had the prime minister who was in government probably, but mostly keeping Labor out of government, disdaining the institution which gives him his status in an effort to be relatable to people who don’t have time or inclination to tune in, while laying the ground for possible pump priming of the economy by declaring pump priming is terrible except when Scott does it.
Morrison won an election doing this stuff, and post-election, he’s adjusting the formula to try and expand his mandate.
I have no doubt Morrison can win doing what he’s doing, having seen him crash through every roadblock put in front of him. But I’m left pondering the flip side of the new political normal our prime minister is busy creating.
I get how you win by defamation, hugging, doing as little as possible lest it prove controversial, setting fire to the building and blocking the exits, but I have three questions, and I’m enough of an optimist to believe they still matter.
How do political leaders build themselves up in the new environment?
Is it even possible to build up, or is politics now just polarisation and spectacle?
And does Morrison have any interest in finding out the answer to these questions?

• Katharine Murphy is Guardian Australia’s political editor