Politics

Is Scott Morrison’s latest slogan – ‘can-do capitalism’ – simply an overarching abrogation of his responsibility to provide good government in our national interest?

Former Australian tennis great John Alexander doesn’t like the way the game of politics is being played. Winning is everything and the biggest losers are Australians. Good policy and a genuine bipartisan search for what is best for the nation, in his opinion, comes a poor last.

When will Scott Morrison and the Liberal National Party realise that three-word slogans are not a policy; indeed, they may not even be an effective way to deliver the desired marketing message? In the past two elections we were bombarded with ‘Jobs and growth’. Absent any detail, we were left asking, Which growth? In what sectors? On what time line? The latest slogan covering the absence of policy detail is ‘Technology not taxes’.

In one of the most remarkable developments, certainly since the Second World War, an Australian prime minister has leaked a highly confidential security document against an American president. Think about that. On the international stage, Scott Morrison put his own domestic political interests ahead of maintaining public trust between Canberra and its most important strategic and treaty partner, the United States.

Back in 1997, when Crown casino opened its massive Southbank ‘entertainment centre’, I was possibly its best-known public critic. It was a time for compulsory cheering after Crown’s lavish opening, but I was disturbed. I said it is too big and too powerful, with so much money flowing that politicians and media will not even know when they have been bought. This memory was triggered as I read the findings of the Finkelstein Royal Commission into the Casino Operator and Licence.

It’s taken a long time but the concept of the ‘greater good’ – the sense of a shared destiny, of shared interests, collective purpose, a common future – is finally returning to our politics. Largely this is the result of the need to build community support for lockdowns, various other restrictions on our lifestyle and for vaccinations in response to the Delta strain of Covid-19.

The fictional Stone Age family of largely unremembered animated children’s film The Croods is the prime minister’s latest inspiration for a nation exhausted by lockdowns and living in fear of the Delta strain of Covid-19.

It was a Saturday when I found out Kate was gone. I was about to pick up the phone to call her, because I had not heard from her during the week … I knew something was wrong, but my mind tried to minimise the weight of any worry. Kate was and will always be the strongest woman I know.

Morrison defended our 20-year ‘longest war’ as worthwhile in the name of freedom. Australian soldiers dying for freedom is never in vain, he said. But whose freedom is the question? Apparently, it is not the freedom sought by those who flee the Taliban’s tyranny.

It is difficult to understand how the government justifies setting the level of JobSeeker below the poverty line. It appears much of the government’s decision was based on the prime minister’s personal prejudice.