Comment

By now it is staringly obvious that we need a royal commission into the procurement and rollout of Australia’s vaccine program. This government held one into roof insulation and another into the renovation of an old kitchen, so it should not be too great an ask.

We don’t have great conspiracy theories here in Australia. Not compared with Americans, whose conspiracy theories are fantastic in their sheer creativity: an air force base in Nevada is secretly a UFO hangar, the CIA had president John F. Kennedy killed by weaponising grassy knolls, the moon-landing was filmed by Stanley Kubrick on a soundstage, and something metallurgically implausible involving jet fuels and steel beams and 9/11.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, nothing was more eloquent than the joint news conference of Scott Morrison and Gladys Berejiklian at the prime minister’s Sydney accommodation, Kirribilli House, this week. The Lodge in Canberra has been relegated to temporary digs status, giving reinforcement to accusations from Victoria that Morrison sees himself as ‘prime minister for New South Wales’. Like John Howard, he’s turned Sydney into the capital of Australia.

Bob Hawke’s first act as prime minister in 1983 was to save the Franklin River in Tasmania. In 1987, he over-rode Queensland’s bull-headed premier, Joh Bjelke-Petersen, to save the Daintree wet tropics. These rainforests faced death by a thousand cuts, from mining, logging and real estate developments. In that way, they were just like Tasmania’s takayna/Tarkine rainforest in 2021.

Finally there is confirmation of what has long seemed obvious: Scott Morrison is a bully. Behind that smirk-set jaw is a pure and startling rage. He is gripped by the indignation of certainty. Julia Banks describes Morrison as “menacing, controlling wallpaper”. From the time he realised she would not contest the 2019 election, he wanted her silence. “He wanted me to be quiet, he wanted me out of the parliament,” she says. “I mean, he wanted me out of the country …”

Joining the Liberal Party has always been an ideologically driven decision. It is a pledge to uphold the values outlined by Robert Menzies  in 1944: traditionalism against the march of modernity, minimising government intervention in the ability of the individual to generate wealth, and a commitment to harassing the daylights out of women while calling yourself things like “big swinging dicks”. It isn’t just a commitment to the party of John Howard, Malcolm Fraser, Harold Holt and Robert Menzies; it's also a commitment to the party of Andrew Laming, Christian Porter, Craig Kelly and Eric Abetz.

Morrison’s decision to call in the military to sort out the vaccine rollout hasn’t provided him with the cover it was designed to. It’s one thing to send a general into war; it’s another not to give him any ammunition.

When Prime Minister Scott Morrison fronted up to the press conference to announce the outcome of Operation Ironside last month, he seemed even more pleased with himself than usual. Hundreds of alleged offenders had been charged and millions of dollars’ worth of drugs had been seized. It was almost as though it was an election year, and Morrison knew that fear mongering and surveillance powers play well with certain voters.

For a politician to get noticed these days, they have to be spectacularly bad at their job. On this principle, the Coalition has produced some of the mightiest figures in Australian political history, characters who will be studied for generations to come, so future leaders can learn just how bad it can get.