PM MUST WAKE UP NATION’S VOTERS
THE signs aren’t good, and Scott Morrison must now realise he cannot win the next election until he says something bold.
Fact: many voters are sick of politics as usual and are desperate for change.
A third now back minor parties, and on Saturday an independent won the NSW state seat of Wagga Wagga from the Liberals for the first time in almost 60 years.
So why isn’t the Prime Minister selling himself as the change voters hunger for? Why does he instead promise “we’ll have a continuity” after he replaced Malcolm Turnbull?
Wrong. Do that and Morrison will struggle to make voters even realise he’s in charge let alone think that dumping Turnbull was a change for the better.
I’m sure Morrison knows the surest way to cut through would be to say he’ll slash the immigration that’s crowded your cities, or scrap the globalwarming crusade that’s driven up your electricity prices. Turnbull resisted both, and the media Left would be so angry that Morrison wouldn’t struggle for attention.
But his nightmare is that the Liberals’ Left wing would revolt if he tried either. If he tore up the useless Paris Agreement to cut global-warming emissions, former foreign minister Julie Bishop has made it clear she’d fight him. But that now leaves Morrison babbling that the Paris Agreement’s emissions cuts would have “no impact on electricity prices”, meanwhile promising, unlike Labor, to now cut electricity bills before cutting emissions. Why, if cutting emissions doesn’t cost?
To make himself seem different from both Labor and Turnbull, Morrison is suggesting he’ll instead fight for freedom of religion to protect Christians.
Good, but that doesn’t go far. Morrison, a Pentecostal Christian, risks being attacked for just looking after his own.
To win, he must go broader — and blokier. Why not declare a wider war against the vicious offence-takers who’ve made so many Australians too scared to speak their minds?
He could at least criticise the violent Leftist protesters who stop conservatives meeting, and the police who charge the victims protection money. He could punish the universities that sack warmist sceptics and try to ban speakers like conservative Bettina Arndt.
He could muzzle a Human Rights Commission that persecutes even cartoonists, and demand that the Leftist ABC allow more debate.
Dare to fight, PM. At least, the noise will wake the voters.