Over the past two months Scott Morrison has experienced a spectacular fall from grace. He's gone from being the miracle man who won the unwinnable election, to a Coalition leader who can't show his face in rural Australia without being heckled out of town.
Talking heads, from Channel 9's Karl Stefanovic — a previous contender for Australia's least popular man — to conservative stalwart Piers Morgan have roundly criticised Morrison's lackadaisical attitude to the current bushfire crisis. Even actress and singer Bette Midler has gotten in on the act with some concise and creative language describing our head of government.
Furthermore, it's not just the inner-city latte-sipping lefties who have turned on Morrison; his frosty reception in Cobargo last week tells a tale of Australians who won't remain quiet in light of his disregard.
So how could 'Scotty from Marketing' have gotten this all so wrong? In short, he stumbled out of the gate.
Two months into this crisis, the government finally switched from a 'reactive posture' to a 'proactive' one. This is double-speak for 'finally doing something without being begged'. Unfortunately for him, Morrison had already dug his own grave.
As I watched the ABC live stream of the PM announcing his new proactive plan, it was clear that most commenters' attitudes lay somewhere on a spectrum between 'too little too late' and 'bloody coup'. The angry-react emoji were coming faster than I've ever seen before. Australians are not buying Morrison's excuses of wanting to avoid a 'knee-jerk reaction'.
Scepticism is understandable, given that between the start of this unprecedented fire season and the government's current 'posture shift' we have seen Morrison state that RFS volunteers do not need financial support because they 'want to be there'; reject calls for extra federal funding despite RFS members crowdfunding to acquire face masks (for all that luxurious breathing they want to do); and, of course, the disastrous Hawaiian getaway. The PM has subsequently walked back nearly all of these decisions, but only in the face of immense public pressure.
"The government's bizarre choice to transform an announcement about additional resourcing for firefighters into a political ad only adds to the mounting evidence that significant action is just a cynical move made by a party backed into a corner by public opinion."
Morrison's sluggish response deserves some further scrutiny, however, because it reveals an upsetting truth about our government. After all, crises are usually easy pickings for politicians; someone with