I’ve never seen anything like this in Australian politics. “Psycho” Scott Morrison is the most hated politician in modern Australian history. His own party loathes him more than does the opposition or the Australian people
After his government backflipped on refusing to pay Labor electorates flood disaster support, Morrison’s own MPs unleashed a torrent of abuse on the PM.
Liberal party MP, Catherine Cusack said:
“I am so tired of it,” she said. “I don’t want to spend all day attacking and sounding bitter. I am not bitter – I just don’t fit into the new Liberal party culture and it drained all my energy trying.
…The NSW Nationals MP for Tweed, Geoff Provest, told local ABC radio he had lost faith in Morrison, saying he was “disgusted with the prime minister”.
…“Whether in the caravan parks or one of the little villages, there’s a real venom out there directed at the prime minister that he doesn’t understand what’s occurring on the ground.”
He said the decision to exclude residents in his seat and neighbouring Ballina was “deplorable”.
…“The federal government is disconnected with the good people of Australia and we’re paying the price for it here … I think they should hang their heads in shame.”
…There were also reports on Wednesday of frustration inside the NSW government over the delay in federal sign-off for an additional $1.4bn in flood support because of the prime minister’s campaigning trip to Western Australia.
Liberal party inside, Nikki Savva, has more on the fear and loathing surrounding the PM:
…the man who created the daggy dad persona – a character his colleagues had never previously seen – for the 2019 election, then ever since has pretended to be everything from a hairdresser, to a welder, to a lab technician, confident that goofy pictures would grab voters’ attention. They have. At great cost to his dignity and authority.
Liberals…are furious with Morrison and Alex Hawke for deliberately stalling preselections and incensed by briefings to media against Dominic Perrottet over management of the flood crises claiming it’s a repeat of the undermining by Morrison’s surrogates of Gladys Berejiklian during the Black Summer fires.
…They say they could lose five seats in Western Australia, one in South Australia, four in Victoria and two in Tasmania. Another plugged-in Liberal has drawn up a list of 24 seats at risk across the country.
…Above all it needs Morrison to behave like a prime minister, to forgo stunts and blame-shifting, leave the sledging to others or to negative advertising and construct a compelling argument for his re-election. Not too much to ask, is it?
Yes, it is. It’s like asking a dog to play chess. He does not have the faculty for it. Morrison is not making reasoned judgements, intuitive leaps or even operating from a playbook. He is acting out: a hollow man through which only his own long-buried trauma gains warped expression.
I can only reiterate that when you let a disordered personality of this nature run an organisation it is the latter, not the former that suffers.
The “psycho” flourishes on conflict, hatred, abuse, pain and confusion while the same destroys the bonds that hold the organisation together.
These are now the circumstances of the Liberal Party and Australia both.
The good news is that the nation can be shot of Morrison in May and can begin to heal. We may even be better for it, more adept at identifying the “snakes in suits” in our midst.
But I’m not so sure about the LNP. The wounds and scarring left behind by Morrison’s disorder will be deep and long-lasting. If the LNP were to lose 24 seats to Labor or anything near it, it would be the worst election defeat since WWII:
At best, it will take multiple electoral cycles to process the post-traumatic stress within the senior levels of the party and the rank and file membership and to rediscover basic rationality.
Worse, Morrison’s culture of disorder may entirely displace what came before it and the LNP cease to exist in any identifiable centrist and decent form. Just as has happened to the US Republican Party.
As a political entity, the LNP is buggered for now. As a functional organization, it may be destroyed permanently.
And while we’re on the subject of abuse, let’s not get too doe-eyed about Labor. Until now it has survived Morrison’s rapefest. But the death of the marvelous Kimberly Kitching is exposing a rotten underbelly:
Labor senator Kimberley Kitching told a parliament-employed workplace trainer she was being bullied by Senate Labor colleagues, according to multiple ALP sources.
Several of Senator Kitching’s colleagues have told the ABC that the 52-year-old, who died from a suspected heart attack a week ago, cited the alleged bullying when she was undergoing workplace education on November 5 last year.
…This version of events has been relayed to the ABC by multiple Labor sources in whom Senator Kitching confided — men and women — who claim the Victorian senator was being bullied, ostracised and isolated by the ALP’s Senate leadership, which comprises senators Penny Wong, Kristina Keneally and Katy Gallagher.
What is most disturbing about this is that Kitching was Labor’s most clear-eyed China skeptic and was prepared to put country before party in working with her fellow Wolverines across the aisle.
That’s the thanks you get.
