Scott Morrison tried to kick off his National Press Club (NPC) address on a note of contrition.
“I haven’t got everything right, and I’ll take my fair share of the criticism and the blame,” the prime minister said.
Throughout the address, which marks the start of the political year, and which was Morrison’s first opportunity to really claw back momentum after a summer of incompetence, the prime minister remained on the defensive.
Through a typically long (and frankly rather dull) preamble, stressing the challenges of COVID and national security, and tossing in plenty of buzzwords about the Coalition’s “strong economic management”, Morrison’s message was clear: yes, things might be kinda bad right now, and we kinda messed up, but we think they’ll probably get a bit better soon. We hope. Also, don’t vote for the other guys.
It wasn’t until questions kicked in that the prime minister really looked rattled, forced onto the back foot by a hostile barrage. First up, 7.30 political editor and NPC President Laura Tingle asked Morrison whether he’d take the opportunity to say sorry for his mistakes as PM – from COVID to that Hawaii trip, from rapid test shortages to the NDIS.
“We’re all terrible sorry for what this pandemic has done to the world and this country” was the start of Morrison’s rambling non-answer. He also admitted that, maybe, the messaging from government was a little too optimistic about the hot vax summer.
“So you don’t have to say sorry about any of those things?” Tingle asked.
“I think I’ve explained my answer fairly fully,” said Morrison.
Things got more awkward. A question about whether he knew the price of bread, petrol and RATs was met with an admission that Morrison’s minders hadn’t even briefed him in case of a gotcha.
“I’m not going to pretend to you that I go out each day and I buy a loaf of bread and I buy a litre of milk. I’m not going to pretend to you that I do that,” he said.
“And I’ll leave those sort of things to you, mate.”
Sure, a gimmicky question, but an admission that chips away at the regular, suburban dad schtick Morrison tries so hard to cultivate.
Later, Ten’s political editor Peter van Onselen raised some bombshell text messages between Gladys Berejiklian and a current Liberal minister, allegedly referring to Morrison as “a horrible, horrible person”, a “fraud” and “a complete psycho”.
Morrison said he didn’t know what van Onselen was referring to, and denied the characterisation. The tone had truly soured by then.
Morrison went on to claim the government hadn’t prepared for the Omicron strain, or stockpiled RATs, because no country was prepared. Foresight be damned.
One final question on the election ahead gave Morrison a chance to pivot. Asked in light of his falling polling numbers, and lack of easy scare campaign fodder from Labor, where the win would come from, the prime minister drew a comparison between his government and Labor with its “each way bet” on the budget and national security.
It’s the kind of message Morrison wanted to home in on, before questions derailed his stump speech — his government’s apparent goal of easing cost-of-living pressures while staying out of people’s lives.
On top of that were some brief announcements. He flagged a $2.2 billion university research commercialisation package, the goal of dropping unemployment below 4% and more support for aged care workers.
As policy offerings went, these too were classic Morrison — reactive quick-fixes to solve a political problem. Morrison recently admitted to having thought little about vision and legacy, preferring to see himself as the deliverer of such quick fixes.
Today he rather glibly outlined his vision as creating a country “where Australians can live the life they choose for themselves and make their own way”.
Of course, Morrison could well get away with all that nothingness if problems were getting fixed. His National Press Club address spent a lot of time trying to make excuses for why those fixes didn’t happen. The press pack just wasn’t buying it.
