Toot! Toot! All aboard the Australian election boat! The ship captain today will be Scott Morrison, as you can tell from the adorable costume he’s wearing. He will also be your hairdresser, your waterboy and something vaguely industrial in sumptuous high-vis. Look! He’s even sweeping a basketball court! This is a man who has FUN HATS for every occasion. He loves beer, once posed like a recently smacked, shaved mammal in a barre class and he’ll be your uke-strummin’, ridgey-didge real Aussie bloke, your daggy dad and your father figure ’til the end of time. Or until the end of his reign as prime minister – although, dear god, doesn’t that seem just as freakin’ eternal?
Why does the Australian prime minister affect more costume changes than a Ru Paul’s Drag Race cabaret act in an exploding dress factory? Because, uh, he wants you to know he’s not pretending to be anyone else. He actually said this – aloud! In front of a camera! – on an episode of Paul Murray Live. He was criticising the Labor leader, Anthony Albanese, his rival in the upcoming election, for having the raw, transformative temerity to lose a bit of weight, get new glasses and buy some new suits.
“I’m still wearing the same sunglasses,’’ Morrison insisted to Murray, “Sadly, the same suits. I weigh about the same size and I don’t mind a bit of Italian cake.” And then he repeated: “I’m not pretending to be anyone else.”
It was an extraordinary claim, not only because it flew in the face of recorded-in-photography years of Morrison’s relentless costume parade of pretending to be literally anything apart from a head of government running a trillion-dollar economy at a time of war, environmental disaster and peril. It was also because Morrison’s own office has spoken of his “dramatic slimdown” to the media. The Daily Mail retrieved 2018 articles of Morrison accompanying his Liberal leadership victory with weight loss. Opposition MPs delighted in sharing news reports from the Australian – no less – of Morrison celebrating his 53rd birthday, less than a year ago, swapping out cake for a dieter’s “Man Shake”.
Do I think Australia’s prime minister is a liar? To quote Emmanuel Macron – directly, he was talking about Morrison – “I don’t think, I know.” And so, apparently, do an increasing number of Australians, who have pounded Morrison’s standing in the polls, giving Albanese’s party a clear lead and even drawing the Labor leader dead equal to established-brand Morrison as preferred PM. More polls reveal he is considered Australia’s most untrustworthy prime minister since such a question was deemed necessary.
Every day the obliged election draws closer, and it’s desperation driving Morrison deeper into the dress-up box – because the falsity used to work. In the context of years of democratic leaders trying to be all things to all people, Morrison’s “fauxgan” working-class drag act used to have electoral purchase because his pretence flattered the specific culture of the bulk of the voters around him.
That was in 2019 – which is not just three years ago. It is a universe away.
The effects of climate change are now burning Australia or flooding it. A new variant of the interminable pandemic is causing a global rise in hospitalisations. There is a land war in Europe involving a nuclear-armed dictatorship. These are serious times – and the idea of politics as entertainment has been a dead brand since the professional comedian leading Ukraine stopped belting piano keys with his knob, donned the khakis and took up arms in Kyiv.
Albanese has claimed that being in car accident last year forced a reckoning with his mortality, prompting a health kick and weight loss. The more important awakening, perhaps, came a few months ago when – at the height of Morrison’s dithering about coronavirus management, even before his ineptitude with the floods – Albanese realised frustration with Morrison had grown so palpable he could actually win this thing.
Was it Morrison’s observable failure to manage that gave Albanese confidence to eschew Labor’s historically unfortunate habit of making leaders indistinguishable from beige carpet in the hope voters might trip and fall on to them? Morrison’s insistence that Albanese slim is less authentic than Albanese pudgy doesn’t work because Albo is an inner-city leftie who has finally – finally – decided to let himself look like one.
You may not like the Labor leader – or be like him – but he’s telling you who he is. This marks him in stark comparison to Morrison who, like a desperate ex-boyfriend, is always pretending to be the person he thinks you want but is never there when he could be of any use.
What waters lie ahead as the election ship sets sail, no one can say. Still in the captain’s hat, Scott Morrison plays with his props, sings a few songs and – unwisely – gets himself photographed with his cat. It’s clear he will do anything – anything at all – to insist you allow him to govern you – except the part of the job he likes least; governing.
• Van Badham is a Guardian Australia columnist
