Comment

Turnbull allies in the parliamentary party are increasingly sceptical of Scott Morrison’s ‘I knew nothing’ stance. One says Morrison confidant Stuart Robert, a former soldier, planned the manoeuvre with military precision, dudding Peter Dutton and Turnbull in the process. So with emotions still so raw it is little wonder the newly minted prime minister runs for fairly unconvincing cover every time the issue of the ‘coup’ is raised.

We carefully considered the history of our struggle, the many broken promises, and the way the Constitution and political system excluded us. We learnt from the way our representative bodies have been repealed in the past. We contemplated why so many royal commission and expert panel recommendations have disappeared into the abyss in Canberra. After all we went through, does Snowdon really believe we are so detached from the realpolitik?

The Scott Morrison version of the Liberal government continues to be one of relentless activity and half-baked ideas. Morrison’s hand-waving, an early feature of his prime ministership, became flag-waving during the week as he replanted the Union Jack on the shores of Botany Bay. The arrival of the First Fleet on January 26, 1788 was, the PM proclaimed, “the birthday of modern Australia”. He also raised the prospect of another national day to celebrate the first 60,000 years of the continent’s history.

It is the secular nature of public education that Morrison and his fellow conservative believers don’t like. It’s why conservative prime ministers from John Howard onwards have sneered at the lack of values in public schools. What they really mean is the lack of their particular brand of rigid Christian values. It’s the greatest strength of public education that they reject – inclusivity, the fundamental belief that there are as many ways to live a good life as there are people living lives.

In the government party room on Tuesday Morrison told incredulous members that “we have momentum”. One quipped later: “Yeah, the sort of momentum you get when you jump off a cliff.” Maybe Morrison was taking heart from the fact he was more popular than Bill Shorten in the latest Fairfax Ipsos poll, though not quite as popular as the man he replaced.

I really wanted people to think about the anthem, and how we exclude First Nations people. I wanted people to think about racism and how it can look, sometimes in little ways we can’t see or didn’t think about. I hope that’s happened. I also hope people talk to each other about our anthem, and about how we can honour and show respect for Indigenous Australians. So I’m happy I did what I did. And even with the mean things some people have said about me, I’d do it again.

The stakes are extremely high in Wentworth. A loss there would see Morrison lose his majority in parliament. The prime minister is understood to have urged his state division to preselect a woman in what is an acknowledgement that he and the party have a “woman problem”. It is more accurately described as a “man problem” – too many men unwilling to share power.

Abbott explicitly believes white people and colonisation were good things for black people and this country. He subscribes to the terra nullius colonial fiction, describing Australia as nothing but bush before colonisation and the country as benefiting from British investment on ‘then-unsettled or scarcely settled great south land’.

There is compelling evidence a vicious ‘Scuttle Scott’ campaign is under way and, unlike the ‘Kill Bill’ strategy, this one is being mounted from inside the government itself. The new prime minister faces parliament next week for the first time since the Liberal Party toppled Malcolm Turnbull, and most of the ALP’s ammunition against Morrison will come courtesy of internal Liberal leaks and undermining.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called on the international community ‘to do whatever it can’ to secure the release of the two Reuters journalists. The Netherlands, Britain, Norway, Denmark and the European Union all demanded that the journalists be freed. Canberra issued a statement expressing ‘disappointment’ over the verdict. Once again, it feels like a fatuously limp reaction to a flagrant violation of all those principles the Liberal Party apparently holds so dear.