Liberal MP
for Cook, former Australian Immigration Minister and former Treasurer, Scott
John Morrison, is being marketed as Australia’s first Pentecostal prime
minister.
Right from
the start of his parliamentary career Morrison politicised his own faith and made
sure he identified as a Pentecostal ‘Christian’ in his First
Speech in the House of Representatives on 14 February 2008.
This month
the Pentecostal ministry returned the favour by commencing his re-election
campaign….
Pentecostal leaders have
warned their congregation that “darkness” will spread across Australia and
Christians will be persecuted if Scott Morrison
does not win the next election.
Others have been told
that Morrison’s rise to power was a “miracle of God” that answered three days
of prayer and fasting. They have been told that Morrison has made a public
stand for Christian freedoms, and has promised to keep doing so, so God intervened
to ensure he beat the home affairs minister, Peter Dutton, in
the Liberal leadership spill.
Videos posted to YouTube
show how Pentecostal and evangelical religious communities are reacting to the
rise of Morrison as prime minister.
Last Sunday, pastor Adam
F Thompson from Voice of Fire Ministries and Adrian Beale from Everrest
Ministries told a congregation of Hope City Church that Morrison’s elevation to
power was divinely inspired.
Thompson, who says he
can interpret dreams and that supernatural signs and manifestations accompany
his ministry, said he’d received a message from God that Morrison and the
Coalition must win the election.
“Scott Morrison, he’s a born-again Christian,
he’s probably one of the first ever born-again prime ministers, but it’s not
time to celebrate at the moment.
“This is a crucial time
right now … In the next six months it’s time for the body of Christ [the
Christian church] to put its differences aside … and come together and agree
that Jesus is the Messiah and start praying together and calling it in and
praying for our prime minister right now, and for our government.
“I really see that the
body of Christ is going to have influence in the arena of – the political arena
of this nation.
“[But] if the prime
minister right now doesn’t get elected in this next election there’s going to
be darkness coming. And I’m not being negative. The laws are going to change
where darkness is going to come and there will be persecution on the church.”
Thompson asked the
congregation if they truly wanted a Pentecostal revival and reformation in
Australia.
“If it doesn’t happen in the next six months,
in the next year I should say, there is going to be, the laws are going to come
in, where they’re going to change and darkness will come,” Thompson said.
“The Lord is saying he
wants us to rise up and pray, rather than come into persecution where we’ll
have no choice.”
In the video, Beale from
Everrest Ministries then leads the congregation in prayer for Morrison, calling
on God to help Australians grasp the value of his intervention in the
leadership spill.
“Just as Scott has come to the fore, unexpected
Lord, you’ve kept him hidden for a time such as this,” Beale said.
“Lord, we pray that the
whole of the body of Christ in Australia would grasp the value of what you’ve
done, Lord, and get behind our new leader … and that the next election would be
won so that godly principles would be put into place, rather than the enemy
having his way.”
“Firstly, on the 15th of
August, the Senate voted down the euthanasia in the territories proposal. No
one expected this. This was an absolute miracle,” Marsh says in the video,
which was posted last month.
“Secondly, on Friday the
24th, the Liberal party voted in a new prime minister, Scott
Morrison, after a week of political turmoil.
“Many people here in
Australia of faith believe this was a miracle of God, as Mr Morrison has a
strong faith in God and has made a stand for Christian freedoms and has
promised to do so in the future.
“It would seem that
this is a direct answer to our prayers, as we prayed against the erosion of our
Christian freedoms under the forthcoming Ruddock report.”....
In apparent response Morrison has stated....
Pause for a moment and consider the ramifications for an Australian democratic secular society, when the far-right leader of a right wing federal government apparently believes that secular society has no greater claim to legitimacy than faith-based society and, that prayer not environmental or economic policy is an appropriate response to the effects of climate change.
BRIEF BACKGROUND
Subsequently
he stood for parliament as a Liberal Party candidate and won the seat of Cook
in the 2007 federal election.
On the
election of the Abbott Government in 2013 he began his ministerial career:
Cabinet Minister from 18.9.2013
Minister for Immigration and Border
Protection from 18.9.13 to 23.12.14
Minister for Social Services from
23.12.14 to 21.9.15
Treasurer from 21.9.15 to 26.08.2018
Prime Minister from 24.8.2018.
As Minister
for Immigration and Border Protection Morrison had a reputation for refusing
information to parliament, mainstream media and the general public.
Eight asylum seekers in onshore/offshore detention died during his term as immigration minister - these deaths included three suicides (one by self immolation), one ruled a death in custody, one due to failure to receive adequate medical care whilst in offshore detention and another a murder of an asylum seeker by offshore detention security guards.
His well-known antipathy towards asylum seekers has been demonstrated by his actions and statements such as this in 2013:
“It doesn’t matter how much education you’ve had, it doesn’t matter whether you’ve come from Syria,Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, anywhere else, it doesn’t matter whether you’re a child, it doesn’t matter whether you’re pregnant, it doesn’t matter whether you’re a woman, it doesn’t matter whether you’re an unaccompanied minor, it doesn’t matter if you have a health condition, if you’re fit enough to get on a boat then you can expect you’re fit enough to end up in offshore processing.”
In 2015 and 2018 Scott Morrison took part in the removal of two Liberal prime ministers - Tony Abbott and Malcolm Turnbull. In the first instance by agreeing not to stand as deputy on Abbott's ticket and in the second instance by sending his own supporters to lobby for the second leadership spill and then successfully standing for the vacant prime ministership.
The first two Newspolls published after he was sworn in as Australia's 30th prime minister were unfavourable to the government he leads. The second was the Coalition Government's 40th consecutive unfavourable Newspoll with First Preference voting intentions running at Labor 42% to Coalition 34% and Second Preference voting at Labor 56% to Coalition 44%.
So unlike the prime minister he replaced, Morrison experienced no 'honeymoon period' after he came to office.
Due to the resignation of former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull on 31 August 2018 Scott Morrison currently leads a government without a majority in the House of Representatives.
Morrison has not been generally viewed in a favourable light by the media nor by some who worked with him in the private sector.
Morrison attended Sydney
Boys’ High School through to Year 12. In March 2015, approximately 300 alumni
of the schools former students signed a letter protesting Mr Morrison’s
attendance at a fund-raising event. The letter accused Mr Morrison of having
“so flagrantly disregarded human rights”…..
Veteran Canberra
journalist Laurie Oakes once said on television that the government “should
avoid the goading and arrogance of Scott Morrison, where he just pours mullock
on journalists”. Oakes added that his attitude towards journalists was
disgusting. “When people like Scott Morrison give us the finger when we ask
tough questions, we’ve got to shine a light on that and expose it because it’s
not acceptable.”
To become Liberal
candidate for Cook in 2007, he lost the preselection ballot, 82 votes to 8, to
Michael Towke, a telecommunications engineer and the candidate of the Liberals’
right faction. However, allegations emerged that Towke had engaged in branch stacking and
embellished his resume.The Liberal Party’s state executive disendorsed Towke
and Morrison won the pre-selection. Later, the allegations against Towke were
disproved and Sydney’s Daily Telegraph was successfully sued by
Towke.
When 48 people died in
the Christmas Island disaster of 2010, Morrison objected to the Gillard
Government offering to pay for families’ fares to the funerals in Sydney……
The BBC’s Nick Bryant
ungenerously wrote: “My hunch is that Scott Morrison doesn’t spend much time
agonising over the contradictions that have marked his career, or fretting
about the veering course of a political journey that has taken him from the
moderate wing of the party, to the right. The main point for him is that his
career has been heading in an ever-upward trajectory.”
Twelve years ago,
Morrison was sacked from Tourism Australia – two years into his term as boss
there. The then Liberal minister for tourism, Fran Bailey, in 2006 said the
board could no longer work with him. He was “incapable of being a team player”
and faced a revolt from state and territory tourism executives.
An Australian National
Audit Office report released a scathing report into Tourism Australia’s
management of “perceived conflicts of interest” while Morrison was at the helm
and quoted industry observers who had “expressed the view that the perceived
conflicts of interests of board members are a major risk to Tourism Australia’s
reputation”.
Morrison’s reported
half-a-million dollar payout was questioned as excessive and not in accordance
with regulations according to then Remuneration Tribunal president John Conde.
Morrison’s ability to
listen to others was questioned during his time as treasurer. Sydney Liberal
John Alexander, who headed a group of parliamentary colleagues worried about
housing affordability, was incensed by Morrison’s dismissive attitude to him.
The task of holding his badly fractured government together will make
Morrison’s time at Tourism Australia seem like a walk in the park.
Karl Stefanovic put it
bluntly on the Nine Network: “You are the boss but you have little or no
control over the party … Your party is an absolute dog’s breakfast.” Amazingly,
Morrison said he was “not fussed” about all that. “We are focused on the job
ahead.” But in a giveaway that it’s getting to him, the PM leaked one of his
own pending announcements: that his five-year commitment to raise the pension
age to 70 was being ditched. Labor’s Jim Chalmers quipped the PM was getting in
first.
In 1998, aged 30,
Morrison went to New Zealand to run that country's national Office of Tourism
and Sport, answering directly to the then tourism minister, Murray McCully. He
became known as "Murray's Rottweiler", so enthusiastically did he
throw himself into a battle between the minister and the national tourism
board. When the dust settled, the casualties included the board's chairman and
chief executive, as well as McCully himself. A Wellington newspaper reported
that in the ensuing inquiry, Morrison emerged as "a cross between Rasputin
and Crocodile Dundee".
