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ANGE:

From Schwartz Media, I’m Ange McCormack. This is 7am.

Scott Morrison has left the building.

The former PM was known for his finely crafted personal image - a Dad from the shire who loved rugby league.

But his career was more notorious than that. From being the minister who forged ahead with Robodebt, to proudly displaying a trophy for ‘stopping the boats’, and famously saying he wouldn’t hold a hose during the bushfires.

Today, author of The Game, Sean Kelly on Scott Morrison’s final speech, and whether he really won or lost at the game of politics.

It’s Thursday, February 29.

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ANGE:

Sean, Scott Morrison's political career has wrapped up, and obviously there's interest in looking back at every former prime minister. But as someone who wrote a biography on Scott Morrison, why is he personally worth studying?

SEAN:

For me, the really fascinating thing about Scott Morrison was and remains, his position as the peak of a kind of trend in our politics, I think, for a number of decades now, politics has slowly been divorcing itself from substance. Or, if you like, the performance of politics, has been slowly divorcing itself from substance. And I think you really saw that come to a head with Scott Morrison. You saw it in the way he became prime minister. You'd laugh every time you saw him pop up somewhere else, you know, in a hairdressers or wearing a high vis vest or whatever it was. It was Scott Morrison cosplaying different jobs in the Australian economy. And I think that sense of performance as something that politicians can do without any reference at all to policy, to actually getting things done is a terribly bleak point for our politics to have reached. But that is the point that Scott Morrison recognised, if you like. Recognised the opportunity that was there and walked through that door.

ANGE:

Really lent into that performative thing.

SEAN:

Absolutely.

ANGE:

And Sean, when a prime minister leaves, we actually often don't get to see their last word in great detail. They often leave by getting, you know, voted out or backstabbed, and that's kind of it. But this week, Scott Morrison did get a chance to have his last word.

Audio excerpt – Speaker:

“I give the call to the honourable member for Cook.”

Audio excerpt – Scott Morrison:

“Well thank you. Thank you Mr Speaker. And thank you to all those who’ve joined us here in the chamber today.”

ANGE:

What did his final speech in parliament tell us about how he wants to be remembered?

SEAN:

That’s right, he got his last word, we got to observe it and he got a fair bit of time to prepare for it. So, you know, it's quite a considered contribution, whether or not you like what he said.

Audio excerpt – Scott Morrison:

“You know, as politicians we know that we are the tip end of the spear. Yet behind us, there are so many we are supported by. They are incredible, dedicated, professional, intelligent, loyal, good humoured, sacrificial, amazing people who, for reasons that I suspect never cease to amaze all of us, and it certainly humbles us, choose to commit themselves to the causes we have identified and seek to champion as members of this place.”

SEAN:

He spent a lot of time thanking people. Staff, family, people who had protected him. He got quite emotional talking about a couple of, I think AFP officers, who were injured during a crash in Tasmania. Who, when people attended to them, asked, is the boss okay? And, you know, so he teared up in parliament talking about that.

Audio excerpt – Scott Morrison:

“And I’ll especially mention, Travis Ford and Jen McCrae, who were terribly injured in the line of duty protecting me… In a terrible car accident in Tasmania. I will always be grateful for your sacrifice…”

SEAN:

He cautioned against bitterness. He said that he would not be taking bitterness’ from his time in politics. He’d won, he’d lost, but he wanted to move on. And he put that down to his faith in Jesus Christ.

Audio excerpt – Scott Morrison:

“I leave this place appreciative and thankful, unburdened by offences, and released from any bitterness that can so often haunt post-political lives. This is due to my faith in Jesus Christ, which gives me the faith to both forgive, but also to be honest about my own failings and shortcomings.”

SEAN:

And then finally, he talked about the importance of Judeo-Christian values, at the centre of Western civilisation.

Audio excerpt – Scott Morrison:

“We should be careful about diminishing the influence and the voice of Judeo-Christian faith in our Western society, as doing so risks our society drifting into a valueless void. In that world, there is nothing to stand on. There is nothing to hold on to. And the authoritarians and autocrats win.”

SEAN:

He talked very much about how that belief in Judeo-Christian values centred around the dignity of the individual. And I think there are plenty of holes in that in regards to Scott Morrison's actual approach to the prime ministership. So it was very interesting to hear him talk about that.

Audio excerpt – Scott Morrison:

“For those who perhaps may feel a bit uncomfortable with my Christian references and scripture references here or at other times, I can’t apologise for that. Because of what it says in Romans 1:16, for I am not ashamed…”

SEAN:

And then, having talked about that, which sounds like something that is really very much about meaning and a way of investing politics with meaning, he then cautioned very heavily against investing politics with too much meaning. That there were other, other places in society one should try to derive meaning from. So I think that's a bit of a, you know, classic Scott Morrison side step of responsibility. So that was his speech, some interesting things and some more predictable things.

ANGE:

And you mentioned his references to religion in this speech and that's something you've written about before. What role do you think religion played for him ultimately? And what did his speech tell us about that?

SEAN:

Well, I think first of all, his religion played an incredibly performative element during his prime ministership. And by that, I do not for a second mean that he is not sincere about his religion. He is 100% sincere about his Christian beliefs. What I mean is that, especially in the lead up to him becoming prime minister and his career as a minister, he was very careful not to talk very much about his strong political beliefs, such that when he became prime minister, people didn't really have much of a sense of who he was, which was a really remarkable thing. He was this kind of anonymous prime minister, and that the beauty of religion, again, sincerely held, but the beauty of religion was that it allowed him to present himself as a man of belief without us actually having some sense of what it was that he believed that was important in relation to his politics. You know, he was a conviction politician without ever being able to be held to those convictions. So I think that was a really interesting feature and is tied to that idea of Scott Morrison as ultimately a performance guy. And then the second element I think is the way that religion, certain religions, can structure your view of the world. You do see a number of binary divisions in Pentecostalism in particular, between God and Satan. And I do think you saw a lot of division of the world in the binaries in Scott Morrison's Prime Minister, certainly division of the world into the deserving and the undeserving. In his first week as Prime Minister, he made this very significant statement. He said, ‘we are going to redefine fairness’.

Audio excerpt – Scott Morrison:

“And what I described as ‘a fair go for those who have a go’. This is what makes the Shire and Southern Sydney such a great place to live and raise a family. And there are plenty of quiet Australians who understand that as well.”

SEAN:

That is a hugely dramatic statement of intent. And I think he saw that all the way through his career as a minister and as prime minister.

You know, and you saw this most explicitly in the attitude of his government, and also previous governments towards, people on government payments, people on welfare. You saw it in their attitude towards Robodebt. I mean, it's important to remember that Scott Morrison was the minister who initiated Robodebt. As treasurer, he heavily promoted Robodebt including during the election, which Malcolm Turnbull won, and then as prime minister, he defended robodebt. So it was actually quite central to his progression through that government. And afterwards, the royal commissioner castigated the use by politicians of language demonising welfare seekers. Now that's something both sides of politics have done, but I think you saw that, that punitive approach most apparent under Robodebt.

ANGE:

In Scott Morrison's speech, did we see him lean into this kind of daggy dad image at all? Did that come up? It's often been talked about, did it come up in his final word?

SEAN:

Look it did and I'm, you know, in two minds about whether to be cynical about this. He talked about his daughters wanting him to include all of Taylor Swift's albums. And so he went on a, kind of, riff for a paragraph or so in which he managed to talk about his political career and mention all of Taylor Swift's albums.

Audio excerpt – Scott Morrison:

“Well, what's a dad to do? Here I go. It is true that my political opponents have often made me see ‘red’, often when subjected to the ‘tortured poets’ who would rise to attack my ‘reputation’...”

SEAN:

I think the interesting thing, of course, is it's tie back to this image of him as Daggy dad, and I don't think we should ever forget how crucial that was. The thing he leaned into most heavily was this idea that he loved rugby league, he loved the Cronulla Sharks. He gave his first interview not to, you know, not to Leigh Sales, host of 7.30 at the time, not to you, but to a rugby league star, A former rugby league star. He held a press conference holding a rugby league ball, he would sign off interviews or press conferences saying Go Sharks out of nowhere. It was very clear that he wanted people to know this one thing, and this other thing, that he liked cooking curries with his family.

ANGE:

Yes.

SEAN:

And there was a sense that those were the only two things you needed to know about Scott Morrison, to understand what sort of a prime minister he would be. This is where the complicity of the media, with this type of performative politics, has to be named. Scott Morrison wasn't called out for this. People kind of… well, a lot of journalists went along for the ride.

ANGE:

After the break, what kind of legacy will Scott Morrison have?

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ANGE:

Sean, Scott Morrison built this image of being a sort of daggy dad in politics. He won the 2019 election and really leant into that image. When did the public's perception of Scott Morrison start to turn?

SEAN:

There were several key points. The bushfires was the first real turning point, when he made that comment about not holding a hose. People did turn on him and the polls absolutely dipped. His approval went from very high to very, very low, very, very quickly. And then, remarkably, when the pandemic hit, his approval ratings soared again. Not just recovered to normal, but absolutely soared. And then again, over the course of the pandemic, they fell off dramatically. And there were, I think, two moments there which merged. One was, the Brittany Higgins controversy, and the sense that he had no empathy, had no empathy for women in particular. And then around the same time, you had problems around the vaccine rollout, and that vaccine rollout gave people a concrete experience of that failure to take responsibility. And I think that merging with all of the Women's March for Justice really hurt him. And really, was very difficult for him to recover after that. He tried, but of course he tried through rolling out the same tricks that he rolled out previously. And they were all performative. They were all around the different costumes he put on. And people had grown sick of that approach. In a way, his prime ministership was a test for how long that performative approach to the prime ministership could be effective. The answer is, not very long, but I think the thing that we don't have an answer to is how much that was hastened by the pandemic. And here I think you come to something that Scott Morrison did, which is not really lie. More that he evaded things. He didn't like answering questions very directly. He would often dodge them. He really wouldn't, you know, coming back to a theme here, he really wouldn't admit responsibility. And I think over time that just added up to the sense that he was a bit of a slippery character who didn't want to be honest with people. And I think when people begin to perceive that who you are is quite divorced from your public image, that's when things really hurt. And because he tried to present himself as this authentic guy, this word authentic was thrown around by several of his colleagues in the lead up to that first election that he won, when it turned out to many people that he was inauthentic, that gap really, really harmed him.

ANGE:

What kind of ex-prime minister do you think Scott Morrison will be?

SEAN:

He has said that he wants to be an ex-prime minister like Julia Gillard.

By which he means not speaking about partisan politics, not taking a partisan side, really staying on the sidelines. Now, some have suggested, I think, rightly, that there's a little bit of cynicism here. You know, he's looked at somebody else who was arguably unpopular when they lost the leadership, and has made a pathway to becoming quite a popular ex-prime minister. And he's trying to foreshadow that as his path. So it's not, I think it's not just about the approach. It's actually about that transition from very unpopular to quite a respected figure. I think the difficulty with trying to tell that story about himself is it overlooks the reasons, or some of the reasons, that Julia Gillard was unpopular at the time. There is a very clear sense now that a lot of that, not all of it, but a lot of it was down to misogyny. It was down to particular ways she was treated because she was the first female prime minister, and Scott Morrison doesn't really have that recourse. And nor is he ever going to have, you know, the affectionate, historic response that Julia Gillard is, you know, I think, rightly afforded for that achievement. So I’ll be very interested to see if he actually manages to pull off the dignified silence.

ANGE:

And your biography of Scott Morrison, The Game, talked about how he viewed politics as a game. Seeing as his time in politics is now over, if we consider politics a game, did he win?

SEAN:

Well, I mean, I guess he became prime minister. But no, no, I don't think so. I think he desperately wanted to win the 2022 election. Fair enough. I even thought after the 2022 election that there was some part of him that wanted to come back, but I think the multiple ministries debacle that emerged after he exited as PM, really damned him in front of his colleagues. And I think that possibility faded away. So, no, I don't think he won. I think… I actually think it is remarkable how widely disliked he is in Australia at this point. I don't think it will last, with the ferocity that it exists right now. But it is sharper than I would have expected.

ANGE:

And Sean, do you think we'll ever have a prime minister who plays the ukulele on national TV again?

SEAN:

Yeah. Probably.

ANGE:

Probably.

Audio excerpt – Scott Morrison:

Scott Morrison plays April Sun in Cuba

ANGE:

Sean, thank you so much for your time today.

SEAN:

Thanks for having me.

Audio excerpt – Scott Morrison:

Scott Morrison plays April Sun in Cuba

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ANGE:

Also in the news today…

Tributes are being left near the scene where the bodies of Jesse Baird and Luke Davis were discovered at a rural property in Bungonia in New South Wales.

Police say the bodies of the two men were discovered after their alleged murderer, Senior Constable Beau Lamarre-Condon, drew a map of the location from his jail cell.

And,

Qantas has agreed to pay 21-thousand dollars in compensation to a worker who was stood down and isolated from colleagues after directing others not to clean planes arriving from China early in the COVID-19 pandemic.

It comes after a New South Wales District court found the airline was guilty of breaching workplace health and safety laws last year.

The court is yet to determine Qantas's full liability in fines, compensation and costs.
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I’m Ange Mccormack, this is 7am. We’ll be back again tomorrow.

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