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The Gospel according to ScoMo

  • 09 August 2024
Plans for your good: A Prime Minister’s Testimony of God’s Faithfulness, by Scott Morrison, W Publishing Group    After he left office, the former prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, published a memoir called A Bigger Picture. Turnbull became a Catholic as an adult, not a journey everybody undertakes. In his book, he shares many personal things, not least his upbringing by a single dad. Yet there is scarcely a hint of his religious path. I once heard him asked by an interviewer if he was a Catholic. ‘Yes,’ said Turnbull, ‘a very bad one.’ That was it. No further correspondence, please.

Scott Morrison is the complete opposite. As far as religion goes, Plans for Your Good is right out there. It has a bible quote for every happening in the life of a prime minister, an act of faith for every decision. To be honest, I am not at all sure which approach I prefer. Between Turnbull’s silence and Morrison’s deafening proclamations, there must be a happy medium.

Turnbull belongs to the majority. John Howard, for example, is a regular churchgoer. He was once asked on TV what was his idea of the afterlife. It would have been interesting to know, especially since most of us are curious about this aspect of our faith. Perhaps Howard’s heaven was a place of low interest rates. For me, the afterlife is beyond my imagining and certainly beyond my explanation. Howard replied that he had the conventional understanding. I don’t think there are strict conventions around heaven and the pearly gates, but Howard wanted to close the topic down, a skill he had honed to a fine point. Few would blame him in this instance. We are told never to discuss religion or politics. If politics is your bread and butter, it makes sense to give religion an even wider berth. To be fair, I can’t recall Julia Gillard giving much time to exploring her atheism in public.

In some ways, this is a pity because people are seldom more vulnerable than when they speak about God. I wouldn’t mind a government being led by someone who struggles with more than opinion polls and budgets. Faith, for me, is not the opposite of doubt. It is the opposite of certainty. It is the ultimate surrender to truth, love and mystery. The older I get, the less sure I am of the right words to describe this constant risk taking which
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