In the first of a three-part series, we examine the moment from which former prime minister Scott Morrison could never recover – and why Josh Frydenberg didn’t save their party | Peter Hartcher & jamesmassola
Scott Morrison played a central role in his own downfall. Here is how his government unravelled.
Frydenberg was by far the most popular government member. He drew big crowds and fat donations. Though there was no formal count, his closest supporters estimated he was within about 10 votes of a majority in the Liberal party room. In any case, the de facto leader of the party’s conservative faction was expecting Morrison to emerge with a brilliant masterstroke before election day.Surely after three years the Liberal leader and his deputy leader, Frydenberg, were working on a secret showstopper to clinch the election? Dutton and the entire government would wait in vain.
Three, and perhaps the hardest of all, it would not plunge into every political fight that the Coalition invited it to but would pace itself for a three-year term.Labor’s true believers are “a passionate bunch”, said Albanese: “I sometimes think that if they’d been there to see Jesus rise on the third day, some of Labor’s supporters would have said: ‘Well, what took you so long?’
The result? Morrison was allowed to fail on his own terms, uninterrupted by Labor trying to make itself the story. He didn’t disappoint.Scott Morrison’s staff really thought no one would notice. They really thought that the prime minister could go on holiday, leave the country for a week, in the middle of a national emergency, and no one would notice. While the premiers were crying out for national leadership.
Carswell told him it wasn’t a legitimate matter of public interest. If Coorey wrote about it, he’d cut off the supply of privileged information to theand favour a competitor, instead. Today, Carswell says he doesn’t recollect the conversation. This attempt at suppression rankled Coorey and his editors so much that they decided to publish a story they might not have otherwise.
Thirty-four people died in the fires. More than 2000 homes were destroyed. The smoke rendered the air hazardous to human health for millions as the blazes burnt uncontrollably; an estimated 80 per cent of the population was affected directly or indirectly by the fires. A total of at least 24.3 million hectares burnt, an area greater than the total land surface of the UK.
To this day, some Liberals continue to defend Morrison’s conduct. A Morrison cabinet minister and now backbencher, Stuart Robert, says: “Dutton and I were available as the decision makers, as the cabinet ministers responsible. The PM was able to go on leave as the decision-making ministers were on deck and we knew what to do.
It was the culminating point for Liberal voters frustrated with the party’s go-slow on climate change policy.had no intention of entering politics: “I was in northern California covering the fires in late November 2019. Normally the firefighters from there would be in Australia by then”, but were detained by the unusually long fire season in the US.
“There was already a sense of unrest in the electorate and, once you put an independent from the sensible centre in the frame, people said to me, ‘Suddenly there’s someone to vote for!’ A lot of people in Goldstein won’t vote Labor.” She won the seat with a 12 per cent swing against the incumbent Liberal Tim Wilson, double the size of the national average shift away from the Liberals.
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