THE GAME A Portrait of Scott Morrison by Sean Kelly

Black Inc.,2021

One would not expect that a book about Prime Minister Scott Morrison written by a Sydney Morning Herald journalist and a former staff member of both Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard’s offices would be a flattering depiction.  One will struggle to find much positive comment or any flattery in this book about its subject.

However, Sean Kelly, as a political journalist, has a  grudging recognition that if politics is a game ( hence the book’s title) then Morrison has indeed played ‘the game’ well, being the longest-serving  PM since John Howard.

The origins of this book, a portrait not a biography, are an article Kelly wrote for The Monthly in 2018.

Kelly asserts that Morrison despite being in politics for ten years and public life for twenty was the most anonymous politician to be elected PM in several decades. A clue to anyone in politics is their employment background. Morrison’s career was in marketing. Kelly refers to E.M.Forster’s literary theory of characters in a novel as either ‘flat’ or ‘round’.Flat characters could be seen as caricatures and can be captured in a sentence or two.The benefit of which was that they never needed re-introduction and were easily recognised. Consciously or unconsciously Morrison has become the archetype of middle Australia, the daggy suburban Dad who likes his footy and a barby with his mates. Almost like a marketing campaign from Tourism Australia akin to  Lara Bingle with a Pure Blond beer in her hand yelling  over the backyard fence “Where the Bloody Hell are ya?”

This flat ‘ordinary man’ image has been pilloried by his detractors but has also led to underestimation of his ambition and skill in ‘the dark arts’ by many more fancied opponents such as Abbott, Turnbull and Shorten all of whom lie in his wake. As a marketer Morrison, despite being raised in Sydney’s Bronte and having played rugby union , continued to press home the ‘ordinary man’ message by relentlessly in the past few years talking about the Sutherland Shire and its NRL team the Cronulla Sharks.

Despite these skills,  ScoMo and the Coalition are well behind in the polls  and facing defeat in 2022. In his account Kelly tries to identify why its has unravelled for Morrison. He pinpoints various issues and Morrison’s response to them, namely the  bushfires in late 2019 early 2020, the continuing pandemic commencing in early 2020 and the #MeToo Movement.

Despite the Shire dream holiday being on a Jetstar flight to Hawaii it was always going to be clumsy decision during the bushfire crisis to fly away on an overseas holiday. In defence of his decision the rather vacuous comment “I don’t hold a hose”( in contradistinction to Bush Fire Brigade member Tony Abbott) went down badly. Morrison’s trip to fire ravaged NSW country town Cobargo was a PR disaster.

The pandemic has been problematic for all governments across the world . The National Cabinet was meant to be an idea to co-ordinate the response across the Commonwealth but at various times recalcitrant state premiers have made the federal government look weak. Morrison’s comment about containing the virus,  “It’s not a race” was ill-judged. An equally ill-disciplined statement was Morrison’s parliamentary attack against the then Australia Post Christine Holgate’s bonus to senior executives of Cartier watches . The watches worth about $5000 each ,if given as cash bonuses would have attracted no attention . The idea of Cartier watches did not pass the Shire pub test. A settlement with Holgate , possibly large enough to buy all the spectators at Shark Park a Cartier watch, was made.

The #MeToo Movement reached well into the Morrison Government with the loss of an Attorney-General, another minister stood down pending an inquiry and an allegation of a late-night rape within Parliament House by one staffer against another.

Kelly’s criticism of Morrison relates not just the way he has handled the above issues but how in explaining his response at press conferences he obsfucates giving long, meandering non-answers .

However Kelly’s strongest and perhaps most unfair commentary about Morrison is his signal role in stopping illegal arrivals to this country by boat. Morrison’s actions he criticises as being callous and hypocritical to his Christian faith . Morrison stopped  the people smugglers who placed their human cargo often times in unseaworthy craft without care for their safety. To permit this ghastly trade to continue would have only led to more deaths at sea.It was an issue which harmed the Labor Party electorally,  perhaps that is why it still rankles with Kelly.

The book although it shows Kelly’s wide reading, with literary allusions from Lewis Carroll, to E.M. Forster to Donald Horne,   has a tendency to drift off in tangents, it is a serious attempt to understand a  Prime Minister who remains a flat character. Despite Kelly’s barracking for the other side if Morrison pulls off the next election it would be more miraculous than his win in 2019 and Cronulla’s first premiership win in its history in 2016.

Jeffrey Phillips,SC

State Chambers