Outgoing NSW Liberal senator Concetta Fierravanti-Wells made some very clear statements about the fakery of Scott Morrison last night. Wearing a prominent cross around her neck, she seized the moment to nail what Morrison’s apparent belief in Pentecostal Christianity really means and to reveal the hypocrite she considers him to be.
Fierravanti-Wells, a member of the right-wing Catholic grouping of the NSW Liberal Party, told a near-empty Senate chamber that Morrison’s “actions conflict with his portrayal as a man of faith. He has used his so-called faith as a marketing advantage”.
“While professing to be a man of faith,” she said, he was “adept at running with the foxes and hunting with the hounds, lacking a moral compass and having no conscience”.
Fierravanti-Wells then knitted together Morrison’s long-standing and close relationship with disgraced Hillsong Church leader, Brian Houston, in a way which others in the Canberra complex have shied away from.
“We learnt the leader of his Hillsong Church group, Brian Houston, was a mentor to Morrison. Houston recently stood down as head of Hillsong because he was charged with sexual offences. It is noteworthy that, in the past, Houston flew top cover for his paedophile father.”
(Fierravanti-Wells got part of that wrong: Houston has not been charged with sexual offences. He breached Hillsong’s code of conduct.)
Finally the senator turned to Morrison’s hypocrisy. “He might profess to be Christian, but there was nothing Christian about what was done to Michael Towke” — the Australian-Lebanese businessman who defeated Morrison in a pre-selection for his seat of Cook and was then subjected to a smear campaign.
The sense of religious betrayal was palpable in Fierravanti-Wells’ attack.
Opening the door on how internal Liberal politics gets done, the party veteran recalled that she and the NSW Liberal’s powerful Catholic conservative, David Clarke, had put their votes behind Morrison at a key juncture in his political career — a decision she now bitterly regretted.
To traditional Catholic believers, Morrison’s brand of Pentecostalism is always suspect — seen as big on glitz and marketing while lacking in intellectual heft and tradition. They see it as centred on the advancement of self and the acquisition of material wealth, as opposed to Catholicism that elevates the idea of suffering.
Last night that marriage of Morrison’s fake religion and the fakery of the man came together in one of the most powerful faith denunciations Parliament has witnessed.
It was also a rarity in Canberra where political journalists have refused to touch the story of Morrison and his relationship with God, even though it goes directly to the character of the prime minister, as Crikey has detailed since last year.
The outgoing senator has performed one final public service: she has finally belled the cat on the hollowed-out man in the Lodge and his pretence of religious piety.
