Prime Minister Scott Morrison addresses the National Press Club in Canberra on Tuesday. Photo: ALEX ELLINGHAUSEN

It had to happen eventually. Scott Morrison – the “daggy dad” Demtel Man from the Sutherland Shire via Bronte – has had the curtain pulled back, revealing a flawed, diminished soul arguably unfit for higher office.

Leaked text messages between former NSW premier Gladys Berejiklian and an unnamed LNP cabinet minister, revealed on Channel 10, describe the PM as a “complete psycho”, a “fraud” and a “horrible, horrible person”.

This follows revelations in “The Age” that Berejiklian described Morrison’s behaviour as “evil” after the PM’s office ‘backgrounded’ against the latter to discredit her following comments about Canberra’s botched COVID-19 vaccine rollout.

In the texts, Berejiklian goes on to accuse Morrison of actively spreading lies about her, and the cabinet minister calls him “desperate and jealous”. “(Voters) have worked him out, and think he’s a fraud,” the minister wrote.

In another series of texts dating back to the 2019 bushfire crisis (in which 45 Australians died) Berejiklian wrote: “lives are at stake today (but Morrison) is just obsessed with petty political point scoring”. When the PM jetted off to Hawaii during the crisis, the then-NSW Premier had a four-word response: “so disappointed and gutted”.

The PM, who pushed for Berejiklian to run for Federal Parliament, describes the former NSW Premier as a “close personal friend”. He may need to do a double take.

Yesterday’s bombshell was the culmination of 12 months during which the PM, who had a charmed run promoting and then protecting his “average suburban dad” trope, slowly saw it stripped away as retaliatory leaks and deep-dive biographies took their toll.

Sensing opportunities for payback and/or promotion, Morrison’s enemies pounced just as Monday’s Newspoll revealed massive weakness in the form of the government’s 12-point, two-party preferred deficit to Labor. Such is the nature of politics. ScoMo’s chickens are finally home to roost.


Cartoon: David Rowe (AFR)

With an election looming, the body of evidence against our PM is reaching critical mass. Sean Kelly’s recently-published portrait of Morrison, “The Game”, helped set the scene for his fall from grace, describing a PM who prioritises the political fix, is obsessed with messaging and narrative, is ruthless with those who stand in his way and who treats government as merely “a game” (with policy simply a means to win that game).

Thus we saw the PM repeatedly extolling his virtues as an “authentic”, rugby league-loving, curry-cooking dad from the Sutherland Shire (in Sydney’s south) in the lead-up to the 2019 election. In actual fact, Morrison was parachuted into the Shire to become the member for Cook, having spent a large chunk of his life in Sydney’s affluent east.

On political fixes-as-policy, Kelly cited “a quick fix to a controversial school funding issue … a summit (on the drought), an inquiry (into aged care)” and the short-lived, utterly unnecessary re-opening of Christmas Island detention centre to scare voters about refugees (at a cost of $180 million) as among the many Morrison decisions which failed to achieve what good policy might have. Such decisions were made, not coincidentally, as the 2019 election approached.

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Finally, there was Morrison’s Teflon-coated ruthlessness on his way up the political ladder, rising from first-term MP to The Lodge in what seems a trice (11 years in parliament is bloody quick).

It began with the elbowing of the elected LNP nominee for Cook, Michael Towke (whose Lebanese heritage was used as a cudgel against him in the seat where the Cronulla riots occurred) and ended with the ouster of PM Malcolm Turnbull, who months later still laboured under the illusion that Peter Dutton, not Morrison, had been his primary antagonist all along.

“If slipperiness defines him, it is also his primary political skill”, journalist Hugh Riminton wrote. “As Turnbull, Dutton and (French president Emmanuel) Macron can attest, those who have underestimated Morrison have been left clawing at the open air”.

Pretty well all politicians who reach the top are ruthless, of course, but Kelly more than once describes the PM as being unaffected emotionally by the damage he wrought along the way. Morrison’s ambivalence towards such atrocity begs the question: did the unnamed minister who called him a “psycho” (or psychopath, to use the clinical term) give an accurate diagnosis?

Kelly’s book, “The Game”, has been described as a forensic analysis of the PM, but Kelly stops short of anything so stark as calling him a psychopath.

However, a thorough look at the psychological traits Morrison displays – “slippery” manipulation, “sleeping like a baby” after ruthlessness, seemingly impulsive decision-making, often without a plan (see “vaccine rollout”), reluctance to accept responsibility/apologise for mistakes, playing the role of daggy suburban dad for political benefit, the vacuum behind the public profile, the transactional conduct and the primacy of the political fix, among other things – tick a lot of the abovementioned boxes.

Remember, there is a lot we don’t know about Scott Morrison – a ferociously private man in many ways – yet despite this, in the author’s humble opinion, he conforms to 14 of the 20 traits (see above) that define a psychopath. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-V) used by psychologists does not require a subject to tick every box to have such a disorder; there’s lot about him that points the casual observer in that direction.

Check out the above list of traits for yourself. You be the judge.


World leaders and CEO’s across the globe, including Morrison’s close ally, former US President Donald Trump, are seen by some clinicians and close observers as psychopaths. Footage: MSNBC.

If you’re shocked at the possibility our government is led by someone with deep psychological flaws – possibly even psychopathic ones – don’t be. Psychopaths and narcissists crave control and power, and their manipulative abilities often bring it within reach as CEOs, Presidents and, yes, Prime Ministers.

Politics are defined as “activities aimed at improving someone’s status or increasing power within an organisation”. It’s hard to think of someone better-suited to politics than a psychopath.

So there you have it: at least one minister considers Scott Morrison a psychopath, and even a cursory look at the PM’s traits on the DSM-V would give most of us pause for serious thought. Now that you know it, what are you – the voter – going to do about it?

In a democracy, if you have severe reservations about a PM, you vote him out. Did I mention an election is likely in May?