Images: (clockwise from top left) K-Rock, ABC, Power Mag, The News Motion.

“My fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.” – John F. Kennedy.

“We have to strike out in a new direction, in a new way, armed with our own self-regard, our own confidence and fully appreciating our own uniqueness.” – Paul Keating.

“How good is Bathurst?” – Scott Morrison.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison is widely seen among Canberra insiders as a “master manipulator” of media coverage, a man who deploys gaudy stunts and shrewd language to dominate the news cycle, distract the masses and further his political agenda. Sometimes the PM’s antics are relatively harmless diversions after a week of “March4Justice” events or getting called a liar by the French, but other times they’re deployed to advance nefarious narratives for a cause that’s often contrary to Australians’ best interests.

The chasm separating the soaring oratory of the first two famous quotes (above) from the bromidic banality of the third is part of a deliberate strategy. Morrison has gone out of his way to detach himself from the “elitism” (that is, vision) of many of his predecessors, offering punters a caricature of the “daggy handyman dad” from the ‘burbs.

It’s an image the PM has assiduously cultivated in lieu of an actual, substantial contribution to Australia’s political discourse and growth as a nation. Activist commentator Ronni Salt trawled through his speeches for a “defining moment” and found one – just one – from Morrison’s three-plus years in office, where he nearly spoke like a leader before reverting to his spruiker type, not unlike an actor startled back into character by a moment of spontaneous improvisation.

“’At a time of great challenge for our nation . . . (pause) … and indeed the world . . . (pause) … we are a strong nation’, he breathlessly begins”, Salt wrote. “And somewhere between that first dramatic pause and the second, you can feel him wondering what’s for lunch”.

In fact, Morrison has given us a “defining moment”, although it’s far from an inspiring one. He used those very two words to describe our 2019 submarine deal with France which, as you may recall, ended rather badly amid accusations against Morrison of lying and treachery.

If you don’t follow politics, chances are you lapped up and enjoyed “Scott the ordinary” in the months prior to Morrison’s “miracle” 2019 election win. “Mission Accomplished”, as they say.

Columnist and former Howard and Costello senior adviser Niki Savva likens Morrison’s three years in The Lodge to a circus, whose Prime Ministerial ringmaster tries to ride two horses at once.

“After finally dismounting he insists it went without a hitch, despite videos showing he had fallen off repeatedly”, she wrote. “No matter … in keeping with his ever-more-preposterous photo frenzies, he does a tap dance in a red sequinned top hat and changes the story”.

Thus, amid a once-in-a-century pandemic he’s botched, a virtually non-existent “Plan” to tackle climate change, an epidemic of sexual misconduct within the walls of Parliament and other messes too multitudinous to mention here, we’ve seen the re-emergence of “Ringmaster Scott” in recent days. “Never mind the reality staring you in the face; roll up, roll up as I nearly soil myself, Engadine-style, on a ‘hot lap’ of Mt Panorama!”

“I’m in the Tassie camp”, he beamed, on the relocated Fifth Ashes Test. “How good would a big ute be?” he smirked, on some tourist trap groaner for Geelong.

Endearing antics for the disengaged or the rusted-on conservative, the spectacle is downright depressing for the rest of us.


Cartoon: Warren Brown, Daily Telegraph

With an election looming, we’ve witnessed a series of shameless ScoMo stunts these past few weeks, some designed to distract, but other more impactful absurdity threatening to derail much-needed change in Canberra. Clearly falling under the latter was Gladys Berejiklian’s fabricated “interest” in running for the Federal seat of Warringah, certain scribes last week churning out wall-to-wall speculative coverage that “she might run”.

Fed tantalising, trumped-up tidbits by anonymous “Liberal Party sources”, media of all sorts wasted a full week chasing this phantom, the Sydney Morning Herald going so far as to proclaim that Berejiklian had “shifted her thinking” in favour of running. “ICAC not a consideration”, the headline read.

That’s the same ICAC which only had to announce it was investigating Berejiklian (over grants to sporting and artistic groups in the electorate of her disgraced lover) to prompt her October resignation as NSW Premier. In most cases when a high official is under investigation, he or she steps aside pending its outcome; instead, Berejiklian resigned both from her position, and from parliament altogether.

A cadet journalist with half a brain would have recognised that Gladys was in serious trouble, and that at the very least her political career was over, yet the Herald pressed on in pursuit of its Holy Grail. Imagine the embarrassment at its North Sydney headquarters when Berejiklian revealed that she’d nixed any Federal comeback after what she said was “a very short” period of consideration.

As with many of Morrison’s more Machiavellian antics, the “Gladys for Canberra” nonsense served a hidden agenda, offering up a chance for him to stymie moves for a Federal ICAC by trashing the NSW version as a law unto itself. “He contended NSW ICAC was in the public humiliation business – ‘chasing down people’s love lives’”, wrote Katharine Murphy in The Guardian.

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“Australia’s Prime Minister has, for the past few weeks, been … trying to inoculate himself against entirely justifiable criticism that he’s failed to produce a credible body to watch politicians at the federal level despite promising one for three years. Just let those basic facts settle on you for a few minutes (and) you’ll get to insidious pretty quickly”, she added.

Given the wider machinations, scribes who succumbed to “Gladys for Canberra” can be seen as “useful idiots” in a higher-stakes game to which they seemed oblivious. Sky News political editor Andrew Clennell, a News Corp scribe of rare integrity who hadn’t been duped by the drama, was scathing of his journalistic colleagues:


Cartoon: Fiona Katauskas, Eureka Street

Another Morrison tactic is bringing in a handful of senior journalists, one from each mainstream outlet, to share what’s touted as important breaking news on one issue or another. On a deadline, and mindful that the other outlets present might scoop them if they took their time applying due diligence, the eventual coverage by each often resembles stenography – a regurgitation of the government’s information and agenda.

In one infamous case, Morrison called in the senior scribes in March last year to outline plans for a gas-fired power plant, gas pipelines and the opening up new fields for gas fracking. Sure enough, mainstream media led with news of a “gas-led recovery from the coronavirus recession”, only to discover hours later that a gas plant was not needed, and that the government was merely pitching what some derided as an “industry rescue package” on behalf of fossil fuel donors.

By then it was too late. “The corporate media and a gun-shy ABC had run the press campaign for the government, deceiving millions of Australians”, wrote Callum Foote for Michael West Media.

Morrison’s manipulation of our media – sometimes with odious intent, at other times seemingly for shits and giggles –prompts some to wonder: “how on earth does he get away with it?” Surely the media – our Fourth Estate, reportedly there to hold the powerful to account – would hold Morrison’s feet to the fire after a couple of these stunts.

Not so, readers: scores of shenanigans later, he’s still at it. After three years getting utterly accustomed to Morrison’s modus operandi, last week’s antics elicited just a few rebukes amid largely favourable coverage, annexing critical column inches and airtime from such trivialities as rising seas and the Omicron variant.

Let’s not forget that a rather cosy relationship exists between the market-friendly LNP government and the ASX-listed corporate media. Morrison only looks like a “master media manipulator” because he’s allowed to do so (can you imagine a Prime Minister Albanese getting equal, quasi-collaborative treatment if he winds up in The Lodge?)

That plus the frequent need on the part of hurried scribes to ‘get the story out’ (fact or fiction is almost a peripheral concern) and the prioritising of ‘clicks over credibility’ by some bone lazy editors brings Australian media to its current, parlous state. It’s all ruthlessly exploited by Morrison, leading the incomparable Ronni Salt to sum it up as only she can: “Political media think they’re observers of the game. (In fact) they’re the ball.”

Scott Morrison’s public persona is all picket fences and suburban lawns (above) but lurking just below the surface is something much darker. Movie Clip: De Laurentiis Entertainment Group

As the silly season approaches, beaches beckon and barbecues fire up across this wide brown land of ours, it’s tempting to put your feet up and accept the Prime Minister’s preferred, “Daggy Dad” image which, let’s face it, fits hand in glove with all that. Except the real Scott Morrison doesn’t come within Cooee of this sunburnt Shangri-la.

“Morrison heads arguably the most corrupt federal government Australia has ever seen”, wrote academic and scholar Jennifer Wilson. With no ICAC to keep it in check, the government blithely doled out billions in Community Development Grants or for new car parks, heavily concentrated on LNP or marginal seats, and a $40 million grant to Murdoch’s Foxtel for “the broadcast of underrepresented sports” (nobody else got a cent). Then there’s Dutton’s au pair affair, the Sports Rorts scandal, the Helloworld episode, the Austal investigation, the shenanigans of Christian Porter or Barnaby Joyce, and the $5 million to LNP-aligned Crosby-Textor.

“(It’s) an eye-watering suite of scandals that in previous times would likely have caused the collapse of a government, or at the very least, mass resignations of its ministers”, Wilson wrote in Independent Australia. “Behind (his) façade of banality, Morrison ruthlessly manipulates to secure first his own interests and then those of his party”.

Democratic societies are supposed to have at least two safeguards against such abuse of power. First, there are checks and balances, ideally administered by an agency like ICAC in NSW, which stands above the fray and the whims of politicians; second, there is a well-resourced, diverse and dedicated media bringing such abuses to the public’s attention over the various “shiny objects” a Scott Morrison might toss their way.

The Federal Opposition and progressive crossbenchers have both committed themselves to a Federal ICAC while, on Friday, a majority on the Senate’s Media Diversity Inquiry recommended a judicial probe with the powers of a Royal Commission to look at reforming “large media organisations (that) have become so powerful and unchecked that they … consider themselves beyond the existing accountability framework”.

Guess who stands in the way of both these critically-needed reforms. Our “how good are utes?” ringmaster, that’s who. “Democracy dies in darkness”, it’s often said. You might want to factor this in at the polling booth.