Morrison has now slumped to the lowest likeability of any Australian leader since Andrew Peacock in 1990

The Canberra Times, 18 February 2020:

Prime Minister Scott Morrison, whose popularity has taken a big hit over the summer. Picture: Karleen Minney

It will be no surprise to Scott Morrison that his handling of the bushfires was a major political setback, and the latest set of polling only confirms the extent. The question will be whether the mud sticks.

Morrison sailed through last year's election on a high, with a likeability rating of 5.1, not great by historic standards, but higher than any party leader since Labor's Kevin Rudd after winning the 2007 election.

He has now slumped to the lowest of any leader since Andrew Peacock in 1990, and below the record low that Bill Shorten put on the scoreboard as Labor leader last year. Shorten had a dismal likeability rating of 3.97 in the ANU Election Study; Morrison has now scored 3.92 in a January poll by the ANU's Centre for Social Research.

It was personal. Half the people polled were asked to think about the performance of Scott Morrison when judging how good or bad a job the government had done on the bush fires; the other half was told to think about the performance of the government. You guessed it. When prompted by reference to Morrison, 64 per cent said the government had done a bad or very bad job, compared with 59 per cent when thinking about the government more broadly.

Anthony Albanese moved up in popularity, from 4.87 in June to 5.04 now - the highest of any Labor leader since Kevin Rudd at his peak in 2007, and higher than Mark Latham and Paul Keating.

The same message came from the Newspoll, which showed Labor overtaking the Coalition in the preferred prime minister ranks in January, for the first time since a brief hit from the Liberal leadership turmoil in August 2018. In September last year, 50 per cent of voters preferred Morrison for prime minister, against Anthony Albanese's 31 per cent, according to Newspoll. By January, Albanese was on 43 per cent and Morrison 39. Worse, Morrison's satisfaction rating went through the floor.

"I've got a thick skin," Morrison said on Monday when asked about criticism of him at the bush fire relief concert. "And I understand that over the period of the summer, you know, that people felt really raw about things ... My response is just to do things and get things done."….

But to date, Morrison has essentially failed to present any kind of ambitious reform agenda or coherent plan. As a result his Prime Ministership has turned into an endless round of inadequate and misguided responses to disaster, crisis and scandal…...

In the ANU survey just after the election last year, 45 per cent of people said the government should allow new coal mines; now only 37 per cent think so. As banks and big investors stop lending to thermal coal and turn their attention also to reducing investments in oil and gas, Morrison needs to align himself with the inevitable and start leading on new ideas for regional and remote communities.

He needs a better idea than the only one he seems to have rattling around in the top drawer - throwing more cash at the regions. Cash is handy, but it is not a reason for confidence or hope.

It appears that almost singlehandedly Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison may have sunk his own government.

"Around 77.8 per cent of the population reported indirect exposure, by having a friend or family member that had property damage; friend/family that had property threatened; had their travel/holiday plans affected; were exposed to the physical effects of smoke; or felt anxious or worried. This equates to around 15.4 million adults." ["Exposure and the impact on attitudes of the 2019-20 Australian Bushfires" 2020]

In January 2020 the ANU Centre for Social Research and Methods and the Social Research Centre collected data from more than three thousand Australian adults from the probability sample ‘Life in Australia’ about their exposure to the bushfires that occurred across the spring and summer of late 2019 and into early 2020. 

Researchers also asked about a range of attitudes towards the environment, institutions, and political issues. 

Data from the January 2020 ANU poll was able to be linked to previous polls at the individual level.

This is the result........

Biddle, N, Edwards, B, Herz, D & Makkai, T, (2020) "Exposure and the impact on attitudes of the 2019-20 Australian Bushfires":

Abstract 

The bushfires that occurred over the 2019/20 Australian spring and summer were unprecedented in scale and wide in their geographic impact. 

Between 20 January and 3 February 2020, the ANU Centre for Social Research and Methods and the Social Research Centre collected data from more than three thousand Australian adults about their exposure to the bushfires, as well as a range of other attitudes and beliefs. 

We estimate that the vast majority of Australians (78.6 per cent) were impacted in one way or another either directly, through their family/friends, or through the physical effects of smoke. 

Furthermore, we estimate that around 2.9 million adult Australians had their property damaged, their property threatened, or had to be evacuated. 

This is the first estimate of self-reported impacts on that scale from a nationally representative, probability-based survey. 

Our survey findings also show that subjective wellbeing amongst the Australian population has declined since the start of spring 2019, people are less satisfied with the direction of the country, and have less confidence in the Federal Government. 

People are more likely, however, to think that the environment and climate change are issues and a potential threat to them, with a significant decline in the proportion of people who support new coal mines. 

By linking individuals through time, we are also able to show that some of these changes are attributable to exposure to the bushfires.

DOCUMENT Exposure_and_impact_on_attitudes_of_the_2019-20_Australian_Bushfires_publication.pdf (PDF, 685.59 KB):


General satisfaction with life before and after the bushfire season 

In the October 2019 ANUpoll 65.2 per centsaid they were either satisfied or very satisfied with the way the country is heading. By January 2020 this had declined to 59.5 per cent of adult Australians. 

Over the same period, there was a small (but significant) average decline in life satisfaction from 7.05 (on a scale from 0 to 10) to 6.9. 

Levels of confidence in institutions 

Confidence in the federal government declined by 10.9 percentage points from October 2019 to 27.3 per cent by January 2020. 

Confidence in other institutions was quite stable over the period, and higher than for the Federal Government. In January 2020: 

• 48.8 per cent of the population had confidence in the public service (52.1 per cent in October 2019); 

• 73.8 per cent had confidence in the police (75.8 per cent in October 2019); 

• 40.4 per cent had confidence in the State/Territory Government where they lived (not asked in 2019); and 

• 93.0 per cent reported confidence in organisations responsible for firefighting in regional or rural areas (not asked in 2019). 

Voting patterns between October 2019 and January 2020 

The per cent of people who said they would vote for the Coalition if an election was held that day declined from 40.4 per cent in October 2019 to 34.8 per cent in January 2020. 

The largest relative increase (8.8 per cent to 10.5 per cent) was for those who would vote for a party other than the Coalition, Labor, or the Greens. 

Views on party leaders between June 2019 and January 2020 

Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s average rating declined from 5.25 to 3.92 out of 10. 

Leader of the Opposition Anthony Albanese’s average rating increased from 4.87 to 5.04. 

Changes in attitudes towards the environment 

49.7 per cent of people reported aspects of the environment as the most important issue or second most important issue facing Australia in January 2020 compared to 41.5 per cent in October 2019. 

Reporting fires, natural disasters or extreme weather as the most or second most important issue were close to non-existent in October 2019. This increased to 10.2 percent by January 2020. 

Concern about most specific issues increased from 2008 to January 2020, with the greatest increase for: 

• loss of native vegetation or animal species or biodiversity (a 13 percentage point increase); 

• drought and drying (a 9 percentage point increase). 

Support for new coal mines have declined since the May 2019 election. In June 2019 45.3 per cent said yes to the question ‘In your opinion, should the Government allow the opening of news coal mines?’. This had declined to 37.0 per cent in January 2020.

Capital cities versus the rest 

There is majority support by residents in both capital and those living outside of capital cities that global warming is very serious, and that global warming will be a threat to them. These views are more strongly held by capital city residents. 

Only 35.6 per cent of capital and 40.1 per cent of non-capital city residents support new coal mines and there is no statistically significant difference in views between the two. 

Did exposure to the bushfires affect changes in satisfaction, confidence or voting intentions? 

Direct or indirect exposure to bushfires did not statistically affect changes in life satisfaction between October and January. 

Indirect exposure to the bushfires affected levels of confidence in government and satisfaction with the direction of the country. Those exposed reported greater declines in both confidence and satisfaction. 

Although there was no significant direct affect from the bushfires on reporting a change in voting intention, exposure to the bushfires was associated with a significant decline in the likeability of Prime Minister Scott Morrison......

It appears that almost singlehandedly Australian Prime Minister & Liberal MP for Cook Scott John Morrison - aka #ScottyFromMarketing - may have sunk his own government.

Australian Prime Minister 'Scotty From Marketing' Morrison has called a voter anti-Semitic one time too many

During a media door stop at Mt. Barker in South Australia on 24 December 2019 Australian Prime Minister & Liberal MP for Cook Scott Morrison asserted that certain action/s taken by a voter* resident in the federal electorate of Kooyong were anti-Semitic.

This was not the first time - he made a similar assertion about another voter at another doorstop on 17 July 2019.

Having modelled himself on U.S. President Donald J. Trump, Scotty From Marketing had taken to telling brazen political lies and freely throwing insults around without suffering uncomfortable consequences.

Official website of the Prime Minister of Australia, statement made on 24 December 2019
 snapshot taken 6:12pm 16 February 2020

However, Australia is not quite America just yet and, this time a letter arrived at Morrison's electoral office. 

Australian Prime Minister & Liberal MP for Cook Scott Morrison being sued for defamation by clarencegirl on Scribd

https://www.scribd.com/document/447228487/Australian-Prime-Minister-Liberal-MP-for-Cook-Scott-Morrison-being-sued-for-defamation

If Morrison doesn't resolve this matter to the satisfaction of Michael Staindl then sometime after tomorrow legal proceeding will in all likelihood commence.

Note

* Michael Staindl filed a petition in the High Court sitting as the Court of Disputed Returns in July 2019 challenging Australian Treasurer & Liberal MP for Kooyong Josh Frydenberg's eligibility to sit in the federal parliament. The hearing was set down for Tuesday 18 and Wednesday 19 February 2020. The Court is still considering evidence submitted and has not yet handed down a judgment.

Cartoons of the Week

Reg Lynch

Jon Kudelka

Mark David

Political Artifice 101: physical presentation as a thing

Australian Prime Minister and Liberal MP for Cook Scott John Morrison is always crafting his image.

The jutting lower jaw pics, ubiquitous flag lapel pin, the city bloke attempt at mimicking the look of moleskins & cotton shirts when in rural areas, the occasional flirtation with different spectacles frames, his dizzying array of Trumpian baseball caps and those attempts to alter his hair style - buzz cut, casual tousle or added length.

However, the fact remains that it is only manufactured image easily seen through.

At every turn there is a enduring metaphor for the degree to which such image creation fails - in Morrison's case it's the top of his skull.

And the irritating smirk he can barely contain. 

* All photograhs found at Google Images

Cartoon of thw Week

David Rowe

Quote of the Week

"The question you should all be asking is why should the PM have tax -payer funded air purifiers, while ppl in public housing have spent the summer choking on bushfire smoke?" [Asher Wolf, Twitter, 9 February 2020]

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison doesn't have to suffer the effects of prolonged exposure to bushfire smoke. How good is that?

Kirribilli House, Sydney, situated on Kirribilli Point with an uninterrupted view eastwards across Sydney Harbour is an official residence of the Prime Minister of Australia.

Prime Minister & MP for Cook Scott Morrison moved into this large, harbour-side residence in September 2018.

I believe there is air conditioning in rooms on the bedroom floor, but not in the well-ventilated rooms on the ground floor.

By June 2019 it appears that Scotty From Marketing had his rent-free residence set up just the way he liked it, courtesy of the taxpayer dollar.

The Daily Telegraph, 9 February 2020:

Taxpayers also coughed up more than $3000 during the 2018-19 summer for four Dyson fans but can be reassured they came with HEPA (High Efficiency Particulate Air) filters, ensuring the Morrisons weren’t bothered by harmful bushfire smoke particles.

Apparently such an air filter which retails at $799 per unit will automatically purify a whole room.

It has the following features:

• Automatically detects and reports air quality levels in real time on PM2.5, PM10, VOC and NO2

• Activated carbon filters remove gases. Sealed HEPA filters capture 99.95% of ultrafine particles such as allergens and pollutants

• ...delivers over 290 litres per second of smooth, yet powerful airflow – circulating purified air throughout the whole room

• Automatically senses, captures and projects – then reports to your Dyson Link app

• Adjustable oscillation angle from 45° to 350°, to help project purified air around the whole room

• Purifies all year round. Cools you in summer

• Purifies without the draught

• Night-time mode Monitors and purifies using its quiet settings, with a dimmed display

• Remote control

Seems Morrison had his primary residence well kitted out for the predicted 2019 severe fire season months before the bushfires actually struck.

The fire season commenced for me on 17 August 2019 but didn’t start to really kick off in a big way until around four weeks later, when I was living under this thick bushfire smoke below for weeks on end….

The Daily Examiner

gramho.com

Unlike Scott Morrison, I live in a small rented unit with no air conditioning and on an income so low that I can only dream of owning even one Dyson air purifier.

So when the hot, thick smoke from the bushfires seeped through the edges of my home’s window and door frames, when I could not clear this smoke as opening any window or door just let in more smoke, when my eyes began to sting, my throat hurt, my head ache, my already compromised respiratory system struggled and the pain in my tight chest became so bad that I thought I might be having a heart attack – I had no way of pressing a remote control button to relieve my distress with a Dyson.

Bushfire smoke blew over me to varying degrees for four months, reducing any remaining sense of wellbeing and restricting my ability to move outside the confines of my home, while Prime Minister Morrison called for patience and calm and his deputy prime minister told the media; "Yes, the smoke is a problem but smoke, as it always does, will blow away."

The smoke did eventually go away, but my ability to breathe easily most of the time has not returned in its absence and I fear it never will.

But that’s OK – after all Scott Morrison can play backyard cricket on Kirribilli House lawns, sip wine of an evening on the verandahs or stroll outside to watch the New Year’s Eve fireworks – safe in the knowledge that he can return to the air conditioning and the four air purifiers I helped pay for.

Meme of the Week

Meet Australian Prime Minister Smirky McSmirkface.....

This is how the world sees Australia and Australians in January 2020

A British perspective.....

"..the boys from the Morrison campaign were the Neville Chamberlains of Australian politics who had convinced Australians to ignore the greatest threat to their nation’s security" [TheObserver columnist Nick Cohen writing in The Guardian, 5 January 2020]

The Guardian, 5 January 2020:

There are worse leaders than Scott Morrison. The “international community” includes torturers, mass murderers, ethnic cleansers 
and kleptomaniacs beside whom he seems almost benign. But no 
leader in the world is more abject than the prime minister of Australia.

He cuts a pathetic figure. A leader must speak honestly to his people in a crisis.The sly tactics of climate change denial, the false consoling words that it’s a scare and we can carry on as before, have left Morrison’s words as meaningless as a hum in the background. Nothing he says is worth hearing.

Australian English is rich in its descriptions of worthless men: as useful as tits on a bull, a dry thunderstorm, a third armpit, a glass door on a dunny, a pocket on a singlet, an ashtray on a motorbike, a submarine with screen doors, a roo-bar on a skateboard. Morrison is all of the above, but a British saying sums him up: “too clever by half”. Morrison won last year’s Australian general election, although his conservative Liberal party was expected to lose, by slyly mobilising opinion against tax rises in general and environmental taxes in particular.

The climate change denialism he espoused is a moving target. In the 1990s, lobbyists funded by the oil industry acted as if the overwhelming majority of scientists who understood the subject were in a conspiracy against the public. They accused the authors of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports of being guilty of a “major deception” when they discussed the human influence on climate. Many still hold to the original sin of this denialism.

Even as Australia burned last week, Tony Abbott, Morrison’s conservative predecessor, was still saying the world was “in the grip of a climate cult”. Abbott proved he was willing to make others suffer for his wilfully ignorant belief by scrapping a carbon tax when he was in power in Australia in 2014. A fallback position is emerging. It accepts that manmade climate change is real but withdraws the concession as soon as it has been made and loses it in an obfuscatory smoke.

The final fallback and the final degradation will come, I predict, in the mid-2020s when the right abandons denialism completely, admits that climate change is catastrophic, but adds it’s far too late to do anything about it, which it may well be.

Scott Morrison is hunkered down in stage two. He grudgingly acknowledges the existence of man-made climate change but hurriedly adds that other causes are at work. The climate has always changed and it’s not worth bearing the costs of challenging a polluting culture. It worked in last year’s elections, but sounds absurd today.

“By not recognising climate change as a serious threat you fail to prepare overworked, underappreciated first responders for larger, more frequent bushfires that devastate communities,” said one previously solid Morrison voter, after he had learned the truth about conservatism as his family waited to be evacuated from a New South Wales beach.

Despite its failure, perhaps because of its failures, the do-nothing Australian right remains admired across the conservative world. The 2019 election was meant to be a climate change election about the killing of the Great Barrier Reef, the extreme drought and average summer temperatures across the continent hitting 40C. Yet Morrison and his campaign team managed to turn it into an election about the Australian Labor party’s tax plans.

So impressed was Boris Johnson that he hired Morrison’s boys to win the British general election. Fawning coverage followed of the digital “whiz-kids” from New Zealand: Sean Topham, 28, and Ben Guerin, 24. In Australia, the hotshots refined their technique of dumping hundreds of crude variations on the same theme on social media. They described how Labor would raise taxes and warned that a proposal to encourage electric cars threatened motorists. Labor wanted to hit “Australians who love being out there in their four-wheel drives”, said Morrison, as his propagandists targeted ads at owners of Ford Rangers, Toyota Hilux and every other popular model, saying that Labor would increase the price of “Australia’s most popular cars”. In Britain, the same team banged home the crude message in a thousand different ways that Johnson would “get Brexit done”.

Politicians and political journalists who eulogise the cunning of clever operators aren’t being wholly asinine. How a party wins a campaign remains a matter of importance. But not one of them added, after the praise for the wise guys and whiz-kids had ended, that the boys from the Morrison campaign were the Neville Chamberlains of Australian politics who had convinced Australians to ignore the greatest threat to their nation’s security. It’s as if crime writers spent their time detailing the cunning of criminals while never mentioning the victims left bleeding on the floor.......

Read the full article here.

An American perspective.....

"Perhaps more than any other wealthy nation on Earth, Australia is at risk from the dangers of climate change. It has spent most of the 21st century in a historic drought. Its tropical oceans are more endangered than any other biome by climate change. Its people are clustered along the temperate and tropical coasts, where rising seas threaten major cities. Those same bands of livable land are the places either now burning or at heightened risk of bushfire in the future." [Journalist Robinson Meyer writing in The Atlantic, 4 January 2020]

Cartoons for the Festive Season

@FionaKatauskas

@Broelman

Australian Election Study survey conducted after 2019 federal election found Scott Morrison is most popular leader since 2007 - but not as popular as Kevin Rudd in his heigh day

The Australian Election Study (AES) has surveyed voters since 1987. With the exception of 1987 and 2007 the survey has been funded by the Australian Research Council and its predecessors.

AES surveyed a nationally representative sample of 2,179 voters after the 2019 Australian federal election to find out what shaped their choices in the election.

The respondents were composed of two groups - those who originally took part in the 2016 Australian Election Study and those who were newly surveyed for the 2019 study.

apo.og.au, Australian Election Study, 6 December 2019, Sarah Cameron, Ian McAllister, 2019 Australian federal election: results from the Australian Election Study, Description, excerpt: 

Highlights: 

Policy issues 

• A majority of voters (66%) cast their ballots based on policy issues. 

• The most important issues in the election identified by voters include management of the economy (24%), health (22%) and environmental issues (21%). 

• Voters preferred the Coalition’s policies on management of the economy, taxation, and immigration. 

• Voters preferred Labor’s policies on education, health, and the environment. 

Leaders

• Scott Morrison is the most popular political leader since Kevin Rudd in 2007, scoring 5.1 on a zero to 10 popularity scale. [Note: In 2007 AES recorded Kevin Rudd as 6.3 on a zero to 10 popularity scale**]

• Bill Shorten is the least popular leader of a major political party since 1990. 

• A majority of voters (74%) disapproved of the way the Liberal Party handled the leadership change in 2018, when Scott Morrison replaced Malcolm Turnbull. 

Political trust 

• Satisfaction with democracy is at its lowest level (59%) since the constitutional crisis of the 1970s. 

• Trust in government has reached its lowest level on record, with just 25% believing people in government can be trusted. 

• 56% of Australians believe that the government is run for ‘a few big interests’, while just 12% believe the government is run for ‘all the people’.  [my additional notation]

According to AES in 2007 eighty-six per cent of Australians were satisfied with the way democracy was working. However since then democratic satisfaction has fallen by twenty-seven per cent and “there has been a pattern of declining citizen trust in the political system. Trust has not declined significantly since the 2016 election, but nor has it recovered from record low levels”. 

That 2019 record low trust level represented a twenty percent decline after 2007.

In the Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison years the perception that people in government look after themselves rose from 66% in 2013 to 74% in 2016 and 75% in 2019.

After the 2019 federal election only 1 in 4 Australians believe that people in government can be trusted to do the right thing.

The complete study can be read and downloaded here.

** other leaders besides Kevin Rudd who have gone to an election with an AES popularity score higher than that of Scott Morrison were; Bob Hawke (1987 & 1990), Kim Beazley (1988 & 2001), John Howard (1993,1996, 1998, 2001, 2004) and John Hewson (1993).