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."
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.
Genuine question for the memoir - does he take credit for increasing jobseeker during covid? It was arguably the only christlike policy he ever initiated.
Along with Treasurer Josh Frydenberg and Finance Minister Mathias Cormann, we got to work and put in place the single largest economic rescue package in Australia’s history. Wage subsidies called JobKeeper, income support, business grants, loan repayment relief from the banks, and rent relief from the landlords were just some of the measures we put in place. Thankfully, before the pandemic hit, we had spent the previous six years getting our federal budget back into balance. I spent three of those years as treasurer, knowing that rainy days would always come. Our economic plan worked. Millions of jobs and hundreds of thousands of businesses were saved. Compared to when the pandemic first struck, Australia’s economy grew 4.5 percent by the time we left office in the June quarter of 2022.8 That’s more than South Korea (3.9 percent); the United States (2.7 percent); and the United Kingdom, Canada, and France (all less than 1 percent).9 The Japanese and German economies were still going backward at that time.10 Australia’s unemployment remarkably fell to the lowest rate in almost half a century.11 We actually had more jobs after the pandemic than we did before it. Also, despite spending unprecedented amounts on our rescue package, Australia was one of just nine countries to retain our AAA credit rating from all three international rating agencies.12
Morrison, Scott. Plans For Your Good: A Prime Minister's Testimony of God's Faithfulness (pp. 109-110). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition.
I don't even know what to make of this or of Morrison in general. When I watched that Nemesis show he came off as almost eery, like it was scary that someone could lie so brazenly and in public. I sincerely believe that he is a deeply strange person and that we haven't really clocked that aspect of him.
Friends, if you are considering the purchase of any book about Scott Morrison, here is a handy shortcut: check the index to see if there is an entry for Robodebt. If not, the book may be safely ignored.
A great read Tim. Your point about how the media class attempts to resuscitate disgraced people is apt. The elites at the top of the MSM are desperate to be close to power and be unelected players in the game. We saw the same tactics against Daniel Andrews, to tear down an effective leader to no avail. Expect to see Morrison rehabilitated over time by feckless and incompetent ‘journalists’.
Yes, now the great diplomat who played golf with Trump! Not the failed treasurer who tried to bring austerity and claimed to be against entitlements while living off the public purse for decades
AS the greatest of leaners on the public purse and ludicrous law suits netting him other money - he pointed the finger at others in his "lifter vs leaners" rudeness. Puffing on his fat cigar with that other chap from one of the Benelux countries Matthias Cormann.
Brilliantly played, Tim: And it is in some senses a game of handball. I was raised in a fundamentalist Protestant sect - which - apart from the babblemania and arms waving wildly upwards was not so very different from the Pentecultism followed by SM's version. The sense of righteous superiority and that the world is in fact in the last days - so who cares about the environment (or Palestinians, in truth) but "Go the Sharks!" and a Pentecultist appointment in Hawai'i - Jen-and-the-gels-deserve-a-holiday - as smoke-screen - made a mockery of the role of PM - his subsequent assaults on ordinary Australians in his FIFO and cack-handed visit to Bargo - not even thinking of Robodebt and all his on-water-matters silence/refusal to answer - when managing asylum-seekers with lots of military presence from compliant military personages. Nope, no slavery ever in Australia - ignorance revealed - and the calibre of his buddies - Boris and Donald and Pompeo. Oh, yes - and the Sri Lankan curry with Annabel - and his mates in Sri Lanka - the Rajapaksa crooks!
I started reading this and boy, I was going ballistic, and not sure if I was about to have a heart attack, stroke or if it was just the start of a migraine. Fortunately for me, my wife dragged me off to the beach to walk the dog.
By the time we returned, my BP & HR had returned to normal, and I’d calmed down; well as much as I can when the subject is politics.
And yes, I am a HATER, guilty as charged and more than happy to admit it.
Thanks again for such a fine read Tim. The short-term risk is, of course, and now we are starting to see it, that Peter Dutton receives the same treatment. All the way to the Lodge. Can they not see what they are doing?
This recent interview with the Editor of the New York Times ⬇️ is a pretty good insight into the mindset: they just don't see it as their job to call people like Dutton out. I find the attitude disturbing, and a betrayal of democracy. I'm reading a (largely forgotten) history of some of the early journalists who confronted Hitler, and it is a real reminder of what journalism can be, even as risk of death (many of them did end up in death camps). https://www.semafor.com/article/05/05/2024/joe-kahn-the-newsroom-is-not-a-safe-space
Thank you again for such clarity 🤷🏾♀️ II often laugh to myself about the bible although it does hold some historical info.but when « tribes » were wiped out or forced to become Christian’s I shed a few tears knowing that the rainbow serpent is as good an explanation for that which man could not understand as a Father who promotes hatred I mean mothers are just as capable of hate and setting siblings against each other for Christ sake .🙏🏼
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."
The "why" of Morrison is, I agree, hard to fathom. I had a crack at explaining it here: https://tdunlop.substack.com/p/the-end-of-government-as-we-know
I think it's just a sophisticated form of selfishness.
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.
Yep, it;s a pretty big hole in the democratic armoury, isn't it?
Genuine question for the memoir - does he take credit for increasing jobseeker during covid? It was arguably the only christlike policy he ever initiated.
Along with Treasurer Josh Frydenberg and Finance Minister Mathias Cormann, we got to work and put in place the single largest economic rescue package in Australia’s history. Wage subsidies called JobKeeper, income support, business grants, loan repayment relief from the banks, and rent relief from the landlords were just some of the measures we put in place. Thankfully, before the pandemic hit, we had spent the previous six years getting our federal budget back into balance. I spent three of those years as treasurer, knowing that rainy days would always come. Our economic plan worked. Millions of jobs and hundreds of thousands of businesses were saved. Compared to when the pandemic first struck, Australia’s economy grew 4.5 percent by the time we left office in the June quarter of 2022.8 That’s more than South Korea (3.9 percent); the United States (2.7 percent); and the United Kingdom, Canada, and France (all less than 1 percent).9 The Japanese and German economies were still going backward at that time.10 Australia’s unemployment remarkably fell to the lowest rate in almost half a century.11 We actually had more jobs after the pandemic than we did before it. Also, despite spending unprecedented amounts on our rescue package, Australia was one of just nine countries to retain our AAA credit rating from all three international rating agencies.12
Morrison, Scott. Plans For Your Good: A Prime Minister's Testimony of God's Faithfulness (pp. 109-110). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition.
Thanks for grabbing this, Tim.
I don't even know what to make of this or of Morrison in general. When I watched that Nemesis show he came off as almost eery, like it was scary that someone could lie so brazenly and in public. I sincerely believe that he is a deeply strange person and that we haven't really clocked that aspect of him.
Friends, if you are considering the purchase of any book about Scott Morrison, here is a handy shortcut: check the index to see if there is an entry for Robodebt. If not, the book may be safely ignored.
A great read Tim. Your point about how the media class attempts to resuscitate disgraced people is apt. The elites at the top of the MSM are desperate to be close to power and be unelected players in the game. We saw the same tactics against Daniel Andrews, to tear down an effective leader to no avail. Expect to see Morrison rehabilitated over time by feckless and incompetent ‘journalists’.
Like Joe Hockey - another excrescence.
Yes, now the great diplomat who played golf with Trump! Not the failed treasurer who tried to bring austerity and claimed to be against entitlements while living off the public purse for decades
AS the greatest of leaners on the public purse and ludicrous law suits netting him other money - he pointed the finger at others in his "lifter vs leaners" rudeness. Puffing on his fat cigar with that other chap from one of the Benelux countries Matthias Cormann.
Brilliantly played, Tim: And it is in some senses a game of handball. I was raised in a fundamentalist Protestant sect - which - apart from the babblemania and arms waving wildly upwards was not so very different from the Pentecultism followed by SM's version. The sense of righteous superiority and that the world is in fact in the last days - so who cares about the environment (or Palestinians, in truth) but "Go the Sharks!" and a Pentecultist appointment in Hawai'i - Jen-and-the-gels-deserve-a-holiday - as smoke-screen - made a mockery of the role of PM - his subsequent assaults on ordinary Australians in his FIFO and cack-handed visit to Bargo - not even thinking of Robodebt and all his on-water-matters silence/refusal to answer - when managing asylum-seekers with lots of military presence from compliant military personages. Nope, no slavery ever in Australia - ignorance revealed - and the calibre of his buddies - Boris and Donald and Pompeo. Oh, yes - and the Sri Lankan curry with Annabel - and his mates in Sri Lanka - the Rajapaksa crooks!
I started reading this and boy, I was going ballistic, and not sure if I was about to have a heart attack, stroke or if it was just the start of a migraine. Fortunately for me, my wife dragged me off to the beach to walk the dog.
By the time we returned, my BP & HR had returned to normal, and I’d calmed down; well as much as I can when the subject is politics.
And yes, I am a HATER, guilty as charged and more than happy to admit it.
Thanks again for such a fine read Tim. The short-term risk is, of course, and now we are starting to see it, that Peter Dutton receives the same treatment. All the way to the Lodge. Can they not see what they are doing?
This recent interview with the Editor of the New York Times ⬇️ is a pretty good insight into the mindset: they just don't see it as their job to call people like Dutton out. I find the attitude disturbing, and a betrayal of democracy. I'm reading a (largely forgotten) history of some of the early journalists who confronted Hitler, and it is a real reminder of what journalism can be, even as risk of death (many of them did end up in death camps). https://www.semafor.com/article/05/05/2024/joe-kahn-the-newsroom-is-not-a-safe-space
Thank you again for such clarity 🤷🏾♀️ II often laugh to myself about the bible although it does hold some historical info.but when « tribes » were wiped out or forced to become Christian’s I shed a few tears knowing that the rainbow serpent is as good an explanation for that which man could not understand as a Father who promotes hatred I mean mothers are just as capable of hate and setting siblings against each other for Christ sake .🙏🏼