Good Weekend's Who Mattered 2019: Politics

Scott Morrison: “Cunning. A little Machiavellian. And not to be underestimated." Plus: Jacqui Lambie and Philip Lowe.

Scott Morrison

Politics was part of our Prime Minister’s life from his early years, when he helped his father, a Sydney policeman, campaign as an independent for Waverley Council in the city’s east. That early exposure to retail politics – his father served on the council for 16 years – paid off when he stunned the doubters in the Coalition and his opponents outside it to win the May federal election. Along the way, the former Tourism Australia marketing man cut through with phrases such as “How good is ...?” and the “quiet Australians”.

“He’s cunning. A little Machiavellian. And not to be underestimated,” says The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age chief political correspondent David Crowe. “Scott Morrison has the appearance of the everyman – he can toss a sausage at a barbie, and barrack with a beer at a Cronulla Sharks rugby league game – but he’s a savvy political operator and a political animal, too.”

Of course, Morrison didn’t do it alone. There was campaign director Andrew Hirst, principal private secretary Yaron Finkelstein, chief of staff John Kunkel and trusted parliamentary allies like Ben Morton, a West Australian MP who travelled with him throughout the campaign. In the same way Morrison relied on a tight and loyal inner circle – including MPs sometimes dismissed as the “prayer group” for their Christian beliefs – to defeat Peter Dutton for the Liberal leadership in August 2018, he won the national election with a small and disciplined team.

“Morrison might look smug and cocky to some, with that grin – almost a smirk – but he wasn’t smug and he wasn’t cocky or complacent during the campaign,” says Crowe. “The ones who were smug and cocky and complacent during the campaign were [then opposition leader Bill] Shorten and the people around him.”

Being a man of faith has become part of Morrison’s political brand, and he let the media into his Pentecostal church at Easter. Perhaps unexpectedly in a largely secular country, it has played well for him. “Some thought that would be a liability, but it was an advantage. The proof is that it’s now Labor trying to decide whether they got it wrong on respecting people’s religious freedom.”

Morrison was among the first to call the March shootings at mosques in Christchurch “terrorist” attacks, and took the need to curtail social media platforms to both the G20 and G7 meetings. And he’s clearly gained the favour of US President Donald Trump, who loves a winner. “Some people hate that about Morrison, and of course he is being duchessed by Trump, but he’s being pragmatic. It’s the job of the Australian PM to get along with the American president – we do have an alliance.”

But what does this man stand for? Morrison’s government is still finding its way on big challenges: an economic slowdown, trade wars, friction with China, religious freedom laws and the endless question of whether they can ever arrive at a lasting, unified position on climate change. Critics see no shortage of flaws in Morrison’s approach to government, seeing inaction and indecision where he claims steadiness.

Crowe says the election win gave Morrison authority, backed by leadership rules he introduced to make it harder for his own party room to throw him out.

“He’s more secure now than any politician since John Howard.” The question for the coming year will be how he uses it.

Jacqui Lambie

Few people knew what to make of Jacqui Lambie when she entered federal politics as a senator from Tasmania in 2014 for the Palmer United Party. Five years later, she’s become a politician who matters: in some cases, the senator who matters.

Lambie quit Palmer’s party in November 2014, continuing to sit as an independent with ill-formed views on everything from foreign policy to sharia law. “A lot of us saw her as an opportunist,” says The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age commentator Tony Wright. “But she’s an excellent case of a pretty ordinary person who has grown into their job.” Life experience helped, says Wright, including dealing with a son who fell into ice addiction, and her own struggles with mental health, both of which Lambie has been open about.

She lost her Senate seat in 2017 because of dual citizenship with Britain, and many observers thought that would be the end of her federal political career. But against the odds, she returned as a senator after the 2019 election, this time on her own terms, as leader of her own party, the Jacqui Lambie Network. The time away from politics gave her a chance to reflect about its gravity. “This term, she appears reborn as a serious politician,” says Wright.

As one of six Senate crossbenchers, Lambie currently holds a potent balance-of-power position. The government needs the support of four crossbench senators to pass legislation, but often has been able to only rely on three: Conservative Cory Bernardi (who leaves politics next month) and two Centre Alliance senators on issues like tax, and Bernardi and One Nation’s Pauline Hanson and Malcolm Roberts on matters like border protection. Lambie thus has held the key across the board.

This week she demonstrated as much, first blindsiding the government by voting with Hanson and Roberts to sink the union-busting Ensuring Integrity Bill, then issuing an ultimatum to the Coalition on its controversial “medevac” legislation. Lambie’s been lobbied publicly and privately by all sides about the right of doctors to decide when asylum seekers and refugees detained in Papua New Guinea and Nauru can be evacuated for medical treatment in Australia, and has now stated that she will back the bill, but only if the government meets her single demand – believed to be reviving the option of sending offshore asylum seekers to New Zealand.

“You can see that she’s been agonising over what to do – but also smart enough politically to use her position, which is pretty powerful,” says Wright.

Philip Lowe

The governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia has adopted a very public iron-fist-in-a-velvet-glove stance this year, urging the federal government to use its fiscal levers to boost the economy rather than remain so laser-focused on a surplus. “His hard message is this: ‘We’ve exhausted every option we have, there’s nothing more we can do. You blokes have plenty of options – what the hell are you doing?’ ” says The Sydney Morning Herald political and international editor Peter Hartcher.

"But the relationship between a central bank chief and government is a delicate one. The governor of the bank needs to be careful that he doesn’t overstep the mark or undercut his position by inviting intervention – or being crushed.”

Lowe has succeeded so far, albeit annoying politicians on the way through. Shadow assistant treasurer Andrew Leigh has taken a swipe at him, as has Liberal backbencher Tim Wilson, but Hartcher warns politicians need to avoid the path of, say, Trump, who called Lowe’s American counterpart (Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell) “clueless”. “It’s an interesting symbiosis,” says Hartcher. “In a credibility contest between Morrison and Lowe, Lowe wins hands down. If they act against him, or are seen to be hostile, financial markets would react pretty sharply against the government.”

Lowe cut interest rates to a record low of 0.75 per cent in October, and despite concerns this is beginning to refuel a housing boom in Sydney and Melbourne, he has emerged as a fearless public servant fighting for the little man, speaking out in a way his predecessors rarely did, including advocating for difficult but sweeping productivity reform. “When he first took the job he was mousy, quiet, but now he’s taken up this campaign and become forceful and high-profile,” says Hartcher.

“It’s not in Lowe’s nature to want a fight, but after long reflection he has decided it’s his duty.”
Lowe has encouraged workers to demand pay rises, told bosses to grant them, and told his own board he doesn’t want one – all with understated charm. “When he goes to a dinner party and people don’t know who he is, he says, ‘I work for a bank.’ He doesn’t say, ‘I control your mortgage.’ ”

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