Morrison takes the fight where Turnbull wouldn’t
THE Liberals won the first two weeks of this election campaign and one thing is clear: They couldn’t have done it with Malcolm Turnbull.
Good riddance. Dumping Turnbull as Prime Minister last year was not a mistake, whatever the media pack claimed.
His replacement, Scott Morrison, is now making this once-unwinnable election a contest by fighting like Turnbull couldn’t and on issues Turnbull wouldn’t. First, there’s his energy. Turnbull at the last election campaign regularly knocked off at lunchtime, but Morrison has the pedal to the metal.
Turnbull looked disengaged, Morrison full of beans. Turnbull also did meetthe-voter events as if he’d dropped in from Mars. Morrison looks like he belongs, whether he’s campaigning in a bar or shearing a sheep.
What’s more, Morrison has managed this trick without losing dignity or authority as PM.
That wasn’t always the case. In his first months as leader, he tried too hard to look like the bogan from the Shire.
Morrison, the former ad man, is also better at hammering home a message than Turnbull, who ditched three-word slogans for 3000word lectures.
When Shorten struggled to explain his plan to make us buy more electric cars, even getting recharging times hopelessly wrong, Morrison was crisp: “If Bill Shorten can’t tell you what his policy will do to the price of cars and fuel,
don’t vote for it.”
When Shorten wrongly claimed he planned no new taxes on super to go with his promised tax hit, Morrison again nailed it: “I suppose, if you’ve already racked up $387 billion in higher taxes, he must have forgotten.”
But the more important contrast is on the issues that Morrison has used to claw back into this contest.
Sure, Turnbull would also have attacked Labor on its high taxes, just like Morrison, but he was too vain and too needy of voters’ love.
Turnbull in the last campaign rarely attacked Labor, as though he thought his own magnificence was enough to wow voters.
Morrison is not that arrogant. He knows the Liberals can win only by smashing Labor, not least over taxes.
More crucially, Turnbull, a warmist, would never have smashed Labor on its mad and uncosted global warming plan as Morrison has.
Nor would he have defended Adani, the coal project Morrison is touting to save Queensland seats.
Far from it. Turnbull, wife Lucy and son Alex are even now attacking the Liberals on global warming, defending Labor’s electric car plan or backing anti-Liberal warming extremists such as Julia Banks, Zali Steggall and Oliver Yates.
All that said, Morrison still hasn’t got the Liberals ahead in the polls.
That’s in part because the first two weeks were just a rehearsal, too disrupted by Easter and Anzac Day.
No, the real campaign is the three weeks that start now, which is why Labor yesterday revealed its $4 billion childcare package.
There’s another factor the Liberals must learn from. Yes, Shorten plans massive tax grabs, but when did the Liberals last deliver a proper tax cut? The contrast is not strong enough.
It’s the same with Labor’s global warming scheme to slash emissions by four times more than the Liberals.
The Liberals’ own plan is just as useless, if less expensive, which is why Morrison has had to pull his punches.
He can attack the vast cost of Shorten’s plan, but can’t say it’s a dud that won’t change the temperature, because nor will his own.
Morrison also won’t attack Shorten for pushing fake scares about cyclones, drowning islands and a dead Barrier Reef, for fear of seeming not to take global warming seriously.
In fact, the toughest attacks on Labor’s climate plan have come from the media.
So the Liberals should realise their real mistake was not dumping Turnbull, but waiting too long to get rid of him and his policies.
How much stronger would Morrison be now had the Liberals attacked Labor’s climate insanity for three years, not just two weeks?
Still, Morrison may do one great thing for the Liberals.
Labor, if elected, will punish a slowing economy with tax grabs and global warming nonsense. That will hurt wages, jobs and power prices.
Morrison in now setting the terms of the debate for three years of Labor rule. He may be too late to win this election, but Morrison could be just in time to win the next. Watch Andrew Bolt on The Bolt Report LIVE 7pm week nights