Over the past two months Scott Morrison has experienced a spectacular fall from grace. He's gone from being the miracle man who won the unwinnable election, to a Coalition leader who can't show his face in rural Australia without being heckled out of town.
Talking heads, from Channel 9's Karl Stefanovic — a previous contender for Australia's least popular man — to conservative stalwart Piers Morgan have roundly criticised Morrison's lackadaisical attitude to the current bushfire crisis. Even actress and singer Bette Midler has gotten in on the act with some concise and creative language describing our head of government.
Furthermore, it's not just the inner-city latte-sipping lefties who have turned on Morrison; his frosty reception in Cobargo last week tells a tale of Australians who won't remain quiet in light of his disregard.
So how could 'Scotty from Marketing' have gotten this all so wrong? In short, he stumbled out of the gate.
Two months into this crisis, the government finally switched from a 'reactive posture' to a 'proactive' one. This is double-speak for 'finally doing something without being begged'. Unfortunately for him, Morrison had already dug his own grave.
As I watched the ABC live stream of the PM announcing his new proactive plan, it was clear that most commenters' attitudes lay somewhere on a spectrum between 'too little too late' and 'bloody coup'. The angry-react emoji were coming faster than I've ever seen before. Australians are not buying Morrison's excuses of wanting to avoid a 'knee-jerk reaction'.
Scepticism is understandable, given that between the start of this unprecedented fire season and the government's current 'posture shift' we have seen Morrison state that RFS volunteers do not need financial support because they 'want to be there'; reject calls for extra federal funding despite RFS members crowdfunding to acquire face masks (for all that luxurious breathing they want to do); and, of course, the disastrous Hawaiian getaway. The PM has subsequently walked back nearly all of these decisions, but only in the face of immense public pressure.
"The government's bizarre choice to transform an announcement about additional resourcing for firefighters into a political ad only adds to the mounting evidence that significant action is just a cynical move made by a party backed into a corner by public opinion."
Morrison's sluggish response deserves some further scrutiny, however, because it reveals an upsetting truth about our government. After all, crises are usually easy pickings for politicians; someone with Morrison's political acumen should have seized on the opportunity to curry good favour with the public. Splash a few million here, pump some money into the RFS and you're right as rain. So why didn't the government act sooner? The reason lies in the Coalition's relationship with climate change, the third rail of Australian politics.
The Coalition is completely paralysed by its inability to constructively discuss climate change. We saw this when Turnbull was ousted by his own party for proposing a milquetoast energy policy that required barely any sacrifice of carbon emissions, and in the more recent conflict between the Young Liberals and their mainstream counterparts.
While Australia has always had bushfires, there is little doubt that this season's have been enabled and exacerbated by the hotter and drier conditions resulting from climate change.
And here is why the Morrison government was so slow off the mark: to acknowledge the unprecedented nature of these fires is to concede that there is something happening to the climate. The only way to downplay the reality of climate change, was to downplay the severity of the fires themselves.
Early on, the disdain for linking bushfires and climate change was made explicit when NSW Liberal Premier Gladys Berejiklian dismissed a question on the matter with an exasperated 'not today'. Deputy Prime Minister and leader of the Nationals, Michael McCormack, went one step further, stating that those who proposed such a link were 'inner-city raving lunatics'. Though Morrison's explicit words might concede such a connection, it can hardly be said that there is a consensus among members of the Coalition government.
Even now that Morrison has conceded climate change aggravated the fires, his speech is still firmly couched in economic rhetoric. His priority is assuring people that their jobs will not be affected, though a true move away from a carbon-reliant economy will require the disruption of many jobs. It is another way of telling Australians that the status quo is sufficient; do not panic, we are doing fine (despite a global view that says otherwise). It is a deflection that serves to take the heat off without any real commitment to change, because a commitment would certainly upset the party room.
Additionally, the government's bizarre choice to transform an announcement about additional resourcing for firefighters into a political ad only adds to the mounting evidence that significant action is just a cynical move made by a party backed into a corner by public opinion.
Only time will tell if criticism over handling of the bushfires will stick to the Prime Minister. But given he was so slow off the blocks, it will take a lot of hard work to regain the good will he lost in his weeks of climate inaction.
Tim Hutton is a teacher, masters student and freelance writer based in Brisbane. He writes on politics, education, media, societal issues, and the intersection of all of the above.
Main image: Prime Minister Scott Morrison tours the property of John 'Kooka' Kinniburgh on 3 January 2020 in Sarsfield, Vic. (Photo by James Ross-Pool/Getty Images)