Scott Morrison wants the nation to trust him – but how can we after sports rorts?

Extract from The Guardian

Australian politics

Katharine Murphy

The prime minister has presented himself and his office as bystanders, but all the evidence points to their deep involvement

@murpharoo

Tue 3 Mar 2020 19.15 AEDT Last modified on Tue 3 Mar 2020 19.18 AEDT

‘Scott Morrison’s whole purpose in constructing his “we were just the freight-forwarders” defence is that he and his office were hands off, that this was all Bridget.’ Photograph: Mike Bowers/The Guardian

Given the intricacies of the sports rorts controversy can be bamboozling, let’s keep this really simple.
Scott Morrison has spent the weeks since the Australian National Audit Office completely eviscerated his government’s administration of the $100m sports grants program presenting himself and his office as a bunch of breezy feedback brokers, just lurking about periodically to give the sport minister a hand.
In this version of events, while the former sport minister Bridget McKenzie lined up the various grants to be rolled out during last year’s election on the now infamous colour-coded spreadsheets – compiling and adjusting the list of projects she proposed to fund, summarised by state, political party and electorate – the prime minister’s office, by Morrison’s account, just passed on various representations from MPs.
Caring and sharing. As you do.
The prime minister’s office was a redirection service, periodically passing on the hopes and dreams of colleagues, and their plucky sports clubs, to Bridget, so Bridget could decide, because she was the decider.

But the facts tell a different story.
The ANAO has revealed that between 17 October 2018 and 11 April 2019 McKenzie and Morrison’s office exchanged 136 emails about the program. Now perhaps this level of traffic is consistent in some universe with hands-off caring and sharing, but, objectively, this is quite a lot of caring and sharing.
It suggests more than a passing interest. It suggests active coordination.

Then we have the inconvenience of records in the hands of the auditor indicating the prime minister’s office actually made things happen. I’ll let Brian Boyd from the ANAO take up the story.
Boyd told a Senate estimates hearing on Monday night McKenzie “maintained the spreadsheet at all times”, but there was a lot of incoming. Sometimes, Boyd said, the prime minister’s office made representations, “but not all of those representations led to a change”.
But at other times those “representations” led to concrete outcomes. “For example, when I referred to one project coming out and one project coming in, in terms of the 8.46am version, that was at the request of the prime minister’s office”.
Let’s repeat that last bit. At the request of the prime minister’s office. Translation: pull this, and insert that, hey presto!
Obviously this is more than representations, take it or leave it.
It is curious if you are Scott Morrison and you choose to reveal the first, the representations, while omitting the second, the outcomes you engineer, when the second component is actually more material.
Morrison’s whole purpose in constructing his “we were just the freight-forwarders” defence is that he and his office were hands off, that this was all Bridget. Let’s call this strategy what it is: inoculation. Fire wall construction.
The trouble for Morrison is every new piece of evidence that emerges tells us this wasn’t all Bridget. This wasn’t even close to being all Bridget. But only Bridget has lost her frontbench spot, and that was on a technicality.
It’s a strange sort of universe where there is a clear documentary trail suggestive of significant alternative facts, but only Bridget faces practical consequences for suboptimal actions, and everyone else gets a self-conferred free pass.
And when I say strange, I mean unfair. I mean wrong. I mean not even close to good enough.
As well as consequences for actions apparently being arbitrary, the sports grants controversy has also unearthed cameos suggestive of a government that is entirely fast and loose with process and convention.
From where I sit, this is deeply worrying. The most worrying thing about it is the complete absence of contrition, and the recurrent tetchy suggestions from Morrison that anyone who dares to call out the fast and loose tendencies is a nit-picker, or a partisan, or a bubble occupant.
A bit like when the prime minister tried to brush off inconvenient questions about whether he tried to get the Hillsong pastor Brian Houston along to a state dinner at the White House as “gossip” and a bubble fixation, before abruptly confirming this had been true all along. Disconcerting – the short runway between gossip and fact.
This column isn’t a piece of advocacy for McKenzie. I’m quite certain she can look after herself.
I recount these facts to make another point, and the point is about trust. Trust matters. Trust is the glue that holds democracies together.
Morrison asks for trust every day that he stands up and speaks to the nation about managing the coronavirus.
The prime minister asks to be believed. He asks people to listen, to follow advice. Implicit in this pitch is words, advice, pronouncements, from the holder of his high office, carry meaning, and they are consistent with facts and evidence.
Being believed, being trusted, is an antidote to pervasive disinformation, and cheap jack demagoguery. It is, in fact, the best antidote we have to these things.
But “trust me, I’m the prime minister” doesn’t work if you then behave in a manner entirely inconsistent with your own request.

So here’s the rub, prime minister. Being truthful isn’t a cause of convenience. Voters have eyes and ears, and they aren’t mugs.