Scott Morrison went that step too far with the NSW Liberal Party. Has he also gone that step too far with the NSW electorate?

The Guardian, 4 April 2022:

NSW Liberal MP Catherine Cusack says Scott Morrison ‘trashed’ the party’s values over two decades as state director. Photograph: Joel Carrett/AAP

Another senior Liberal has taken aim at Scott Morrison, accusing him of “self-serving ruthless bullying” and claiming he has “ruined” the Liberal party.

Catherine Cusack, a NSW Liberal who announced two weeks ago she would resign from the legislative council over her anger about flood relief, adds her voice to a growing chorus of critics of Morrison from within his own party in an opinion piece for Guardian Australia.

Cusack explicitly endorses Liberal senator Concetta Fierravanti-Wells’s “character assessment of the prime minister” and reveals she will not vote for the Morrison government in the May election.

The prime minister’s office was contacted for comment regarding Cusack’s claims.

On Tuesday Fierravanti-Wells labelled the prime minister an “autocrat” and a “bully” in an excoriating Senate speech revealing allegations Morrison had made “racial comments” when running for preselection in 2007.

Morrison has vehemently denied the claims, contained in statutory declarations reported in The Saturday Paper and then publicly backed by his preselection opponent, Michael Towke.

Cusack accused Morrison of having “ruined” the Liberal party and “trashed” its values over two decades, as state director, “then as a scheming MP and now as prime minister finding loopholes in our constitution to delay preselections in order to get his way”.

Cusack criticised Morrison for “forcing moderates to vote for [former Liberal and now United Australia party leader MP] Craig Kelly” when his preselection was under threat before the 2019 election.

She has warned she would vote against the prime minister over factional “scheming” and politicised allocation of flood relief.

“But he has outdone himself engineering a federal intervention to jump over the organisation all together.

“He got what he wanted at the expense of destroying our rules-based selection system and disgusting virtually every member of the NSW division.”

Morrison’s immigration minister and proxy in the NSW party, Alex Hawke, has been accused of procedural delays prompting a takeover of federal preselections by a three-person panel, including Morrison and the NSW premier, Dominic Perrottet.

The NSW court of appeal is set to rule on Tuesday whether the takeover and resultant preselections complied with Liberal party rules.

Cusack, a longtime critic of the Liberal party’s culture towards women, has spoken out about the exclusion of Ballina, Byron and Tweed from federal disaster payments, a decision reversed in mid-March.

Cusack said that “Scott Morrison’s brazen attempt to fund flood victims in a National party seat and exclude flood victims in a Labor seat that I happen to live in was just too much”.

“To see the self-serving ruthless bullying that has increased inside the Liberal party spill over into public policy and the poorest most vulnerable Australians who lost everything in the floods are the targets of this outrageous abuse of morality and power is simply intolerable.”

Cusack said assistance was “extended to all northern rivers victims” after their exclusion became too “embarrassing”, but the prime minister now appears to be “refusing to engage NSW government on additional measures that are so needed for victims of this incredible disaster”.

“It’s so bad I am moved to endorse Connie’s character assessment of the PM. ‘It’s my way or the highway’. For flood victims. Un-bloody-believable.”……. 

How the Morrison-Joyce partnership is faring in New South Wales.....

The Liberal/LNP and Nationals Coalition Government currently hold 76 seats (50.3%) in the House of Representatives and the Labor Party in Opposition holds 68 seats. With only a 8 seat overall majority, a loss of even three existing Coalition seats in NSW at the May federal election, without winning any NSW Labor seats in return, would possibly cost Morrison government.

Newspoll January-March Quarter 2022 suggests that the NSW Two-Party Preferred Vote of 54-46 in Labor's favour may produce a swing towards Labor of 5.8%, potentially gaining the Labor Party three additional seats in that state at the May federal election.

The Morgan Poll 22 March 2022 suggests that an even bigger 9.6% Two-Party Preferred swing to Labor could occur in News South Wales and a possible three to six seat gained at the federal election.

While the latest Ipsos Poll 3 April 2022 raises the possibility that a Two-Party Preferred swing of 6.8% would see Labor gain four seats in New South Wales.

The Essential Report 22 March 2022 showed that in New South Wales Scott Morrison's performance approval rating stood at 46%. Three was no breakdown of  Anthony Albanese's performance approval rating at state level in this particular poll, however his national approval rating stood at 43%. 

Another bad Newspoll for the Coalition published on 27 February 2022. But which Morrison Government MPs might lose their seats if the election night results were as bad?

GRAPH: The Australian

 

Newspoll published 27 February 2022 in The Australian.

Survey conducted by YouGov on 23-26 February 2022.

Federal Primary Votes:

Coalition 35% (up 1)

Labor 41% (unchanged)

Greens 9% (up 1)

United Australia Party 4%

One Nation 3% (unchanged)

Federal Two-Party Preferred Vote:

Coalition 45% (unchanged)

Labor 55% (unchanged)

Preferred Prime Minister:

Morrison 42% (down 1)

Albanese 40% (up 2)

Unsure 18%

Albanese Performance:

Approve 44% (up 4) Disapprove% 43 (down 3)

Morrison Performance:

Approve 43% (up 3) Disapprove 55% (down 1)

Based on Antony Green’s Election Calculator if a federal general election had been held on 26 February then Labor would have gained government with 92 seats in the House of Representatives to the Coalition’s 53 seats and, other parties/independents would have held 6 seats.

Under this scenario Labor would gain 23 former Coalition seats and it might lead to a potential outcome such as this:

Banks NSW ALP 0.2% - David Coleman MP defeated

Ryan QLD ALP 0.5% - Julian Simmonds MP defeated

Hasluck WA ALP 0.7% - Ken Wyatt MP defeated

Menzies VIC ALP 1.0% - new Liberal candidate Keith Wolahan defeated

Bennelong NSW ALP 1.1% - no new Liberal candidate to date but defeat expected

Lindsay NSW ALP 1.5% - Melissa McIntosh MP defeated

La Trobe VIC ALP 1.6% - Jason Wood MP defeated

Brisbane QLD ALP 1.6% - Trevor Evans MP defeated

Deakin VIC ALP 1.8% - Michael Sukkar MP defeated

Dickson QLD ALP 1.9% - Peter Dutton MP defeated

Robertson NSW ALP 2.3% - Lucy Wicks MP defeated

Leichhardt QLD ALP 2.3% - Warren Entsch MP defeated

Flinders VIC ALP 2.4% - Zoe McKenzie new Liberal candidate defeated

Pearce WA ALP 2.8% - Linda Aitken new Liberal candidate defeated

Higgins VIC ALP 2.8% - Katie Allen MP defeated

Longman QLD ALP 3.2% - Terry Young MP defeated

Reid NSW ALP 3.3% - Fiona Martin MP defeated

Casey VIC ALP 3.4% - Aaron Violi new Liberal candidate defeated

Braddon TAS ALP 3.4% - Gavin Pearce MP defeated

Swan WA ALP 4.7% - Steve Irons MP defeated

Bass TAS ALP 6.1% - Bridget Archer MP defeated

Chisholm VIC ALP 6.3% - Gladys Lui MP defeated

Boothby SA ALP 6.6% - Nicole Flint MP defeated

Looking at the first three Newspoll & Roy Morgan voter intention polls of 2022

So what would the results of the first three voter intention surveys conducted by Newspoll and Roy Morgan Research look like on the ground, in the two federal electorates of Richmond and Page in the Northern Rivers region and, in the neighbouring electorates of Cowper, New England and Lyne?

Would seats change hands at the 2022 federal general election?

Morgan Poll 4-16 January 2022

Nationally a 7.5% swing to Labor

Antony Green's Federal Election Calculator 2022

Outcome

National Party holds Page (1.9%) Cowper (4.4%) Lyne (7.7% ) and New England (10.1%).

Labor Party holds Richmond (11.6%)

Newspoll 25-28 January 2022

Nationally a 7.5% swing to Labor

Anthony Green's Federal Election Calculator 2022

Outcome

National Party holds Page (1.9%) Cowper (4.4%) Lyne (7.7% ) and New England (10.1%).

Labor Party holds Richmond (11.6%)

Newspoll 9-12 February 2022

Nationally swing of 6.5% to Labor

Anthony Green's Federal Election Calculator 2022

Australian Labor Party wins federal government, however the Member for Cook (NSW) Scott Morrison retains his seat (12.5%).

Outcome

National Party holds Page (2.9%) Cowper (5.4%) Lyne (8.7% ) and New England (11.1%).

Labor Party holds Richmond (10.6%)

* 

Back To The Future? Newspoll voting intention survey 6-12 February 2022, published 13 February

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/newspoll

The graph displayed above contains the results of 37 Newspoll surveys published between 4 February 2018 and 13 February 2022.

Two days after Scott Morrison became Australia's 30th prime minister the Newspoll survey of 26 September 2018 showed the 'two party preferred' vote stood at Labor 56 (unchanged) to Coalition 44 (-5).

 

The day before the 18 May 2019 federal general election Newspoll showed the 'two party preferred' vote stood at Labor 51.5 to Coalition 48.5. The Coalition went on to win the 2019 election 77 seats to 68 seats, with a 9 seat majority in the House of Representatives - since reduced to an 8 seat majority.

Six times between 10 November 2019 and 6 June 2021 the 'two party preferred' vote stood at 50-50.

On 13 February 2022 - just 66 days out from the last possible date for the constitutionally required federal general election - Newspoll showed the 'two party preferred' vote stood at Labor 55 to Coalition 45.

 

The Australian, Newspoll published on 13 February 2022 revealed:

FIRST PREFERENCE VOTE:

Coalition 34% (unchanged)

Labor 41% (unchanged)

TWO PARTY PREFERRED VOTE:

Coalition 45% (+1)

Labor 55% (-1)

The Greens 8% (-3)

Pauline Hanson’s One Nation 3% (unchanged)

Others 14% (+3)

LEADER’S PERFORMANCE:

Scott Morrison

Approval 40% (+1) Disapproval 56% (-2)

Anthony Albanese

Approval 37% (-3) Disapproval 46% (+3)

BETTER PRIME MINISTER:

Scott Morrison 43% (unchanged)

Anthony Albanese 38% (-3)

Unsure 19%

Newspoll survey was conducted on Wednesday 9 February to Saturday 13 February 2022 from a sample of 1,526 respondents.

First Newspoll for Australian federal election year 2022 - questions concerning leadership

Newspoll,  survey conducted Tuesday 25 to Friday 28 January 2022 from a sample of 1,526 respondents

News.com.au, 30 January 2022:

Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s government is fighting for political life according to Newspoll with popular support plunging to the lowest levels since the 2018 leadership change.

After a horror summer marked by rising Omicron cases, hundreds of deaths and fury over a shortage of rapid antigen tests, voters have turned on the government with a sharp drop in support.

The Prime Minister is expected to hold an election in May. While March remains an option, today’s Newspoll is unlikely to prompt the PM to go to the polls anytime soon.

According to Newspoll, Labor’s primary vote lifted three points to 41 per cent, it’s highest result since 2018.

For the first time, the Coalition is also behind Labor on the question of which party is deemed better at leading Australia’s recovery out of Covid-19.

In the first Newspoll of 2022, support for the Prime Minister has been smashed with the combined Liberal-Nationals primary vote falling two points to 34 per cent.

On a two-party-preferred basis, Newspoll delivers Labor a winning margin of 56-44 – the largest margin for the opposition since the leadership change in September 2018.

Labor would wipe-out the Morrison Government’s majority if those results are replicated at the election with the potential loss of up to 25 seats and a landslide victory.

This is the worst Newspoll result for the Liberal Party since September 2018 and is worse than previous plunges in support after revelations of his secret Hawaii holiday during the 2019 bushfires, Brittany Higgins allegations in 2021 and anger over the vaccine rollout......

On the weekend Morrison went to a car race for the political optics & Albanese went to a campaign rally

 

The Saturday Paper, Post, 6 December 2021:

Labor leader Anthony Albanese has unveiled a higher education policy at a rally in Western Sydney, while Prime Minister Scott Morrison engaged in his own election campaign-style events.

What we know:

• Albanese revealed a $1.2bn plan to create 65,000 new university and TAFE places if it wins next year’s election;

• Labor would cover fees for 465,000 TAFE places in the areas hit hardest by Covid-19, such as hospitality, tourism and construction;

• Up to 20,000 new university places will be created, with priority for First Nations Australians, people in remote and regional areas, and those who are the first in their family to study at university;

• “We are seeking renewal – not revolution,” Albanese told the rally in the marginal Liberal-held seat of Reid;

• Morrison meanwhile visited the Bathurst 1000, meeting race fans and taking a lap in the safety car, before meeting volunteers and farmers in flood-affected Forbes in NSW;

• tIt comes as the final Newspoll for the year records Labor’s two-party lead unchanged at 53-47;

• The Coalition is shielding itself from scrutiny in the leadup to the election, with just 10 parliamentary sitting days for the first six months of 2022.

A frequent complaint on social media is that the Murdoch-Stokes-Costello media cabal along, with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, often do not broadcast Leader of the Opposition & Labor MP for Grayndler Anthony Albanese’s press conferences or policy announcements in full - either cutting to a doorstop with the prime minister or to a television news item having all the merit of a newspaper side column filler.

So for those seeking balance here are two videos.....

Has Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison lost the confidence of his parliamentary party and its coalition partner?

Since late October 2021 the issue of Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison's leadership, personal integrity and the quality of his decision making has quickly moved past the rumour mongering, onto the international stage and into both Houses of the Australian Parliament. 

The voting public were also beginning to show their disapproval.

The Conversation, 15 November 2021:

52% (up two) were dissatisfied with Scott Morrison’s performance, and 44% (down two) were satisfied, for a net approval of -8, down four points. This continues Morrison’s slump from his pandemic highs. Six months ago, Morrison’s net approval in Newspoll was +20, and last November his net approval was +36.

Members of his own backbench have gone from muttering their discontent from behind closed doors, to actively backgrounding against him and, onto openly defying him inside and outside of the Parliament. 

7am Podcast, 19 November 2021: 

The federal Coalition government holds office by the barest of margins - just one seat. Now, a popular and high profile Liberal incumbent has announced he won’t be recontesting his electorate, throwing the party’s election preparations into jeopardy. Today, Paul Bongiorno on why the Liberal MP abandoning Scott Morrison thinks Anthony Albanese might be a better Prime Minister for the country. 

John Alexander Liberal MP for Bennelong had recently announced he is not standing at the 2022 federal election. He is understood to be tired of partisan politics where winning is everything but good policy in the national interest runs a poor last. Unnamed parliamentary colleagues are saying that privately Alexander is scathing of the leadership of the government of Scott Morrison, Josh Frydenberg and Barnaby Joyce, believing they put the government’s self-interest above everything. 

Full audio here.

On 21 November 2021 @KafkaVoltaire released this summary of a 'backgrounding' he received from two sitting LNP MPs:

On 22 November, the first day sitting day of the short period before Parliament goes into recess until 2022 saw the Prime Minister publicly caught out knowingly misleading the House and, in the Senate members of his government were openly threatening him with political mayhem when five Coalition senators crossed the floor to vote for a bill banning mandatory COVID-19 vaccinations. 

By 23 November the news cycle was beginning to put his feet to the fire....

The Hawaii holiday is one headache, but Scott Morrison has bigger problems in the Parliament. @latingle reports. #abc730 pic.twitter.com/iomrKI6yf1

— abc730 (@abc730) November 23, 2021

There is now speculation that Scott Morrison might be forced to change his preferred election date to March 2022 in order to block fellow Liberal and Minister for Defence Peter Dutton's ambitions to become prime minister.

Team Morrison and The Voter in 2021

 

The Shot, 21 September 2021:

Great Scott: the grand narrative of Scott Morrison

...On one end of the scale, we have the people who believe the entire charade of politics is made up and if it’s not made up then the “mainstreameeja” must all be in on it with them, sort of like fake moon landers but without the flags. On the other end are the people who let information flow over them like a long shower, obliviously taking it all in, the type who truly believe Scott Morrison once saved a lady from near death on a Sydney beach because 2GB said so…..

What Team Morrison want you to think over and above anything else, above the policy and the pressers and the talk of Oh-My-God nuclear submarines and the twitter chatter, what they want you to think when you think of Scott Morrison, when you talk to your friends in the supermarket checkout or swap the goss in your Facebook groups, when you go to vote, they want you to think that Scott Morrison is a strong leader, a hero of our times. They want you to feel it and know it deep to your bones.

They want you to think that Scott Morrison is our own powerful leader, the one that will lead Australia out of this mess, and they want that image embedded deep down into your subconscious, without any annoying detail to bother you or meddle with your own private photo album.

How they do that is by casting a vast, barely tangible net up into the sky, a grand narrative net, one that says: “Scott Morrison is strong. Scott Morrison is a hero. Scott Morrison will save you.”

The way they keep that imagery afloat is by pumping it full of air and reinforcing it all the time, constantly, every day of every week of every month in every way. Scott is strong. Scott is our hero. Scott will lead us all to safety.

Think of Scott Morrison holding up a plane in Kabul to save a woman and her baby. Or at least that’s what the Daily Telegraph told us. I’m going to ignore the dry retching noises coming from the audience, you ungrateful cynics. What’s that? It didn’t happen? Of course, it didn’t happen.

Sometimes, the truth has nothing to do with pumping the net up. Sometimes it does. As De Niro snaps in Wag The Dog,“What difference does it make if it’s true?” If you learn anything from our imaginary TED Talk, learn that reality, like detail, has no real place in the political grand narrative…...

The Sydney Morning Herald, 23 September 2021:

Scott Morrison’s momentous national security announcement last week should have been a turning point for him and the government. Instead, because he delayed making one tough call, leaving himself open to accusations of backstabbing and deception from a great friend and ally, he robbed himself of a much-needed reset.

A few days later he again squibbed what should have been a straightforward decision involving a senior colleague, on a matter which goes to the heart of transparency and probity.

The way Scott Morrison dealt with the French, and Christian Porter, says much about his management style.CREDIT:DIONNE GAIN

Both were about trust. Both provided insights into the most troubling aspects of Morrison’s character and management style. Both have left a very bad smell.

The first was the big-bang unveiling of the new Anglospheric alliance – upending decades of diplomatic endeavours in Asia – which included the planned acquisition of nuclear submarines from the US or the UK.

By waiting until the night before the announcement to advise President Emmanuel Macron (Morrison’s office refuses to answer when asked if they actually spoke) he was torpedoing the $90-billion contract with France for conventional submarines, he guaranteed they went nuclear.

The second sounded like a transmission from a parallel universe. Morrison presented Christian Porter’s resignation from Cabinet as industry minister after refusing to disclose names of anonymous donors as the action of a man upholding standards.

At the end of March, Morrison could have, should have, relegated Porter to the backbench until his personal problems were resolved, rather than try to maintain the fiction the issue was fixed by his removal as attorney-general.

The fiction was compounded after Porter released his updated register of interests, then said he could not name donors to a blind trust helping pay the costs of his defamation suit against the ABC and journalist Louise Milligan over the airing of historic rape allegations, which Porter vehemently denied.

Desperate to get some clear air for his major strategic announcement, soon befouled by the French, Morrison had tried to buy time by asking his department head, Phil Gaetjens, to advise on the bleeding obvious – whether Porter had conformed with the ministerial code of conduct.

Then on Sunday afternoon, without waiting for Gaetjens, Morrison hastily called a press conference to announce Porter had upheld those standards by opting to resign from the ministry.

He could have, should have, said Porter’s actions did not conform to the high standards expected of a member of his government and sacked him. But he didn’t. He also said Porter had disclosed the amount he had received. He hadn’t.

Incredibly, when asked whether Porter should remain in Parliament while in receipt of the money (given the disclosure rules which apply to all parliamentarians, requiring them to fess up to everything including freebie footy tickets), Morrison protested that had nothing to do with him because he was no longer Porter’s boss.

Of course. He is only the Prime Minister, the leader of the government and the leader of the Liberal Party…..

The Australian, Newspoll, 19 September 2021: