A swing and a miss
Scott Morrison’s marketing instincts are failing him

It is a strange day indeed when an Australian newspaper columnist appears to be hitting the same talking points as the Labor Party. Labor’s message this morning was all about what Scott Morrison had missed yesterday: leader Anthony Albanese said the PM “completely missed the moment” by refusing to attend the March 4 Justice rally outside Parliament House, while frontbencher Tanya Plibersek told the ABC Morrison continued to “profoundly miss the point” with his comments about protesters not being met with bullets. Australian columnist Janet Albrechtsen echoed their criticisms in her list of ways to “fix the work culture in Canberra” for the national broadsheet today. Morrison, she wrote, “misses the point every time about what is required of him”, comparing his decision to ask wife Jen about rape allegations to his claims he doesn’t hold a hose and isn’t the police commissioner. While The Australian – and Albrechtsen herself – continues to act as the defence (and the attack) for Attorney-General Christian Porter, even the Murdoch media had to admit that Morrison is stumbling over this one politically.

Morrison and his team spent much of today’s media appearances and Question Time struggling to re-frame yesterday’s tone-deaf comment about protest marches and bullets (“not far from here, such marches, even now, are being met with bullets – but not here in this country,” he said, words that Albanese said conveyed “not so much a tin ear as a wall of concrete”). Albanese took the lead in QT, hammering Morrison over the comments and their timing – attacks Morrison tried to deflect back at Labor, accusing the Opposition of “unworthy slurs”, “egregious misrepresentation” and partisanship, “[which] I have become very used to, as the Opposition Leader does on such sensitive issues.”  

Whatever Morrison might try to accuse Labor of (and accuse he shall), the fact of the matter is that the outrage over his recent comments goes far beyond the Opposition benches. Why did he make them? Why couldn’t he have simply walked outside to meet protesters yesterday? Why was his office reportedly backgrounding against Brittany Higgins, as Labor’s Catherine King asked in Question Time? Why did he not seek the solicitor-general’s advice before declaring there would be no inquiry into Porter, as Plibersek asked? And why can’t he grasp the profound level of rage women are feeling? 

The dossier detailing allegations against Porter is not the only thing Morrison hasn’t read here, with the prime minister either unwilling or unable to read the room. He might want to consider some market research on this one, and fortunately for him Guardian Australia has just completed some, with the latest Essential poll revealing that a majority of Australians think the attorney-general should face an independent inquiry into whether he is a fit and proper person to remain in the job. In his analysis, Essential Media director Peter Lewis has raised the spectre of the Female Liberal Voter Who Might Change Her Vote, noting that even Coalition-voting women think that the Canberra allegations are part of something bigger, splitting with their male counterparts. Morrison’s greatest strength (marketing) fails when it has to be used in conjunction with his greatness weakness (empathy), just as we saw during the 2019–20 bushfires – the last time the Coalition fell behind on Newspoll’s two-party preferred vote, as it did again on Sunday. 

Morrison knows he walks a treacherous path here, reportedly using his address to the joint partyroom meeting today to compare where the government is at now to the Kokoda Trail (perhaps not unlike the treacherous path women have been walking everywhere they go since time immemorial). According to Sky News political editor Andrew Clennell, Morrison told the group that “we are on a narrow path, we have to look after each other and focus on what matters”. 

It’s not the first time he’s used the analogy, Guardian Australia notes, having made it in February to describe the vaccine rollout. That is certainly a path that grows more treacherous by the day, with medical groups criticising the government over delays and uncertainty, saying eligible recipients are currently being turned away due to the lack of an online booking system, days out from the launch of the next phase. Vocal Coalition senator Matt Canavan and former Coalition MP Craig Kelly have now both jumped on the fact that European countries are halting the use of AstraZeneca – which makes up the majority of Australia’s vaccine supply – calling for Australia to suspend it too, in opposition to the government’s stated position (the World Health Organization is appealing to countries not to suspend it, while our own Therapeutic Goods Administration has released a statement addressing the concerns, reiterating that “there is no indication of an increased rate of blood clots”). Morrison may not be held accountable for Kelly anymore, but Labor certainly took up Canavan’s comments, with health spokesperson Mark Butler saying the government needed to speak out against them, and using his media address to note that the rollout itself is “fast becoming a complete mess”. Not unlike the government’s response to the transformative moment sweeping the nation.

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