I finally finished Scott Morrison’s memoir, Plans For Your Good: A Prime Minister's Testimony of God's Faithfulness, and it’s a lot. Fortunately, I was saved from any temptation to write a full review—after my brief palate-cleanser a few weeks ago—by the fact that the former editor of the Sydney Review of Books, Catriona Menzies-Pike, has written a great review for Crikey that covers all the issues I have with Morrison’s love-letter to himself.
In particular, Menzies-Pike highlights the fact that, for all his overt piousness, his conversations with Jesus, and his relentless quoting of Scripture—honestly, reading the memoir1 you feel like the only book with more Biblical quotes in it is the Bible itself—Morrison’s faith is ultimately revealed as a meagre and self-obsessed version of Christianity, used less to advance the teachings of Jesus than to excuse or hide Morrison’s own political failures. Menzies-Pike writes:
I am not particularly troubled either by Morrison’s religious convictions or by their intensity, although I do not share them. What distressed me as I read Plans For Your Good was Morrison’s incessant use of his faith to deflect political accountability.
We are told a great deal about God’s mercy and Christ’s love, and Morrison likens himself explicitly to numerous Biblical figures. However, there’s precious little love or mercy expressed for any folks beyond the former PM’s circle of family and friends. He does let his guard down when he talks about his great love for his daughters and his wife. It’s moving to read of the solace Morrison’s family provided to him as he navigated the tremendous pressures of leadership. It’s just that we never here see him take a compassionate approach to strangers.
Reading the review, reading the book, you are reminded what a creature of the political class Morrison is, and how, because of that, he is able to advance his own cause with relentlessness and a fearless ability to ignore inconvenient facts, along with an impenetrable armour of self-righteousness while retaining the ongoing sympathy of his peers.
Eventually, of course, the Australian people saw through him—right through him—and kicked him and his government to the kerb at the 2022 Federal Election. The shift away from the major parties was already well underway, but Morrison’s awfulness turned that election into, not just a loss of government, but a rout of his own party, elevating the nascent community independents movement to prominence ahead of their time.
What strikes me even more forcefully, though, is the extent to which such a flawed player as Morrison—as evidenced by the election loss and his ongoing low standing amongst the Australian people—was able to construct a successful career in the first place.
So much of his success depended on a political class unwilling to call him out, and it is a trend that continues.
I’m not just talking about the tendency of News Corp to carry on their shoulders almost anyone from the non-Labor side of politics, but the more general issue of how the media run cover for power. In a fascinating companion piece to her review of Morrison’s book, Catriona Menzies-Pike2 illustrates the way in which serious criticism of him tended come from outside the mainstream, and she highlights James Ley’s fabulous essay for SBR on Morrison, noting that it has “aged well” (and it has). However:
You know what hasn’t? The 2015 episode of Kitchen Cabinet featuring Scott Morrison when he was Minister for Social Services, also known as the minister responsible for robodebt. I couldn’t get through it. Morrison was extremely adept at dodging accountability and still is. As you watch Annabel Crabbe giggle and softball her way around Morrison’s disgraceful, cruel record as minister for immigration, it’s newly apparent that this inane ‘getting to know you’ journalism was 100% in line with the marketing strategy that Morrison stuck to throughout his career, and that served him so well.
Even after Morrison finally left parliament, the mainstream bent over backwards to cast him in a sympathetic light. We got puff pieces from former Liberal ministers in the SMH, which, okay, up to a point, fair enough, I guess. Maybe.
But it is less acceptable that senior journalists take it upon themselves to define criticism of him in terms of hatred and then lecture the audience, and voters more generally, on what we fail to understand about Morrison’s strengths. David Crowe, for instance, wrote a piece that acknowledges Morrisons many wrong turns, but nonetheless tells us that “Even the haters should acknowledge that Morrison made the right call at some big moments in his three years as prime minister.” 34
It’s almost comical. Crowe approvingly quotes Morrison’s comment that “We may disagree, but we need to honour the good intentions of all of us.” And then, in the next breath, dismisses Morrison critics as “haters”.
So much for honouring good intentions.
It is true that Crowe sets out some of Morrison’s many failures, but the inclination to not properly weigh the effect of the former PM’s transgressions against the body politic is sadly typical of an industry that values balance—however faux—more highly than truth. Balance keeps you on the drip, I suppose. Truth is for haters.
To underplay the deep erosion of democratic values that Morrison’s comments about women caused; his attitude to welfare recipient, as evidenced by his robodebt strategy as unearthed by the Royal Commission; his pathetically slow reaction to the initial Covid outbreak and then to the need for rapid antigen testing kits during the Omicron outbreak; his decision to absent himself during bushfire season and then dismiss the very notion that he had a role to play; and then to assume for himself, in secret, the head of five cabinet ministries…
I mean, for FFS.
Crowe insists that the haters “paint the portrait too black” but it makes you wonder what exactly a prime minister would have to do for press gallery doyens to not both-side such behaviour. Under the circumstances, how dare anyone define the white-hot anger many feel at these abuses of power and failure of leadership as hatred and then somehow try and “balance” the pros and the cons of Morrison’s prime ministership as if we were choosing new wallpaper.
Even now, Morrison benefits from an establishment that keeps the chaps inside the fold (to vaguely paraphrase Yes, Prime Minister), and it is fair to ask why this is being done on our dime (whatever the exchange rate). I’m referring to the fact that Australia’s Ambassador to the US, Kevin Rudd, saw fit to run what amounted to a book promotion for Morrison’s memoir at an event at the Australian Embassy in Washington DC.
Now, it is certainly true that a visiting former PM would be accorded certain courtesies, and we should have no problem with that. It is also true that our embassies and high commissions around the world regularly host cultural events, including those involving visiting artists of various sorts, and that that is also how it should be, the standard operation of soft power and of keeping in touch with expat communities.
At the very least, though, allowing Morrision the latitude to promote his book in this way is a grey area, and it would’ve been much more appropriate to convene the event at the Ambassdor’s residence rather than at the Embassy itself. And just in case you were wondering about the commercial nature of the gathering, Morrison was quick to tweet us a reminder of how he saw it:
Rudd then congratulating himself on Twitter for gathering a “broad church”5 is another perfect example of the general point I am making here. That the political class will construct every grand theory they can to gloss over what is essentially a class loyalty, the elite being elite.
We are played for fools.
You don’t have to hate Scott Morrison to wonder why in the world the political class accommodates him. All you have to understand is that power normalises its purposes in many ways, diffusing itself in social norms and institutional practice, whether it is by softballing the former prime minister’s record on immigration; defining his critics as haters; faux-balancing his many underachievements while in office; or letting him promote his book at an Australian embassy in the name of broad-church liberalism.
That we were all given the benefit of such doubts.
I use the word “memoir” advisedly. As Menzies-Pike notes: “In this meagre book…Morrison dispenses with the conventions of the prime ministerial memoir and unburdens himself of any obligations to future historians. …The text that Morrison has bequeathed the nation is neither a coherent narrative of his time in office, nor does it offer any useful insight into the relationship between his faith and the policies implemented by his government. Instead, we have a book about what God has done for Morrison (a lot), with some digressions on what Morrison has done for God (never enough, but that’s okay).”
Menzies-Pike’s Substack newsletter, Infra Dig, is available for subscription, and it is worth a look.
As it happens, I 100% agree with the sentiment Morrison expresses here, but the principle is not a get-out-of-gaol-free card. When someone’s political values are as anti-democratic as Scott Morrison’s, it is right to identify them as such.
And did he actually make the right calls of his own accord, or was he dragged kicking and screaming to them precisely because critics and organisations like the ACTU demanded that he do these things? Had “the haters” not brought the heat, in other words, would we, in fact, have had the responses we finally got and for which Crowe exclusively praises Morrison?
The pulpit apparently wasn’t “broad” enough to accommodate someone who would strenuously argue for the separation of church and state.
I'm reminded of Deborah Snow's interview with Morrison in 9Fax in Jan 2022 "Nothing off limits: Scott Morrison on his bruising years as Prime Minister" 15 Jan 2022 because this quote has always stuck with me:
________
I’d asked him if he had given any thought to his legacy. “No,” he shot back.
At one level this wasn’t surprising. He views himself, above all, as a problem-solver and pragmatist – “a bit of a bulldozer”, to use his own words, “very mission, task-focused. That is my nature”.
But the speed with which he rejects the notion of even contemplating a legacy is striking. It’s as if devoting headspace to larger ideas about the future of the country is a form of moral or intellectual vanity, a derogation of prime-ministerial duty.
__________
Struck me then, and still strikes me, as a tell. If you don't want to leave a legacy, if you don't aspire to even attempting a positive change and are happy with "steady as she goes" (tho not, I hasten to add, competent enough to deliver that steadiness), then why do you want the job? Why should we give it to you? And why didn't serious auspol journos make more of that disavowal and wave a red flag? Surely it's neither normal nor desirable to have a PM who doesn't actually want the job, or, rather, wants the job of party leader, but meh to the job of PM as a not very pleasant add-on.
It's even worse than Howard's aspirational "relaxed and comfortable"; it was as if leadership of the parliamentary Liberal party was more to be proud of than being Prime Minister.
Just odd.
I get similar vibes, minus the religiosity - or perhaps faith in a different idol - from Albanese. With the single (botched) exception of the referendum aside, it seems that Albanese is determined to not address some of the biggest challenges facing the country, all on the altar of having "two time ALP PM" in his obituary instead of "finally ended the climate wars and ended expansion of fossil fuels", or "addressed the impact of social media and AI on democracy", or "set the country on a sensible national security path", or anything that is in fact a national policy for the present and future and that is not, at its base, tribal.
This is a long-winded way of making the case again for an independent cross-bench with whom a "party of government" has to negotiate. If neither the ALP nor the Liberal leader actually wants to use the Parliament for governing, perhaps someone else can, much as Lincoln said to McClellan: "If General McClellan does not want to use the Army, I would like to borrow it for a time, provided I could see how it could be made to do something."
A glorious rebuttal.
I cannot go further because of my 'hateriness' for the enablers of the political creature so typified by Morrison: the Australian journalist, and its confederate, the bloated, unanswerable, metastasising cyst, the columnist.
We still have one of the best electoral systems in the world (the curiously behaviour of the Electoral Commission of Qld notwithstanding) but without a free Press, and we have an entirely shackled media, Australia will yet be lost.