We have seen Morrison's best, and it wasn't much

For quite some time he himself has been the main drag on the government's fortunes, at a time when the public has been disposed to want him to succeed, or the government, the economy, and the public health to triumph through catastrophe. He has found himself unable to mobilise that good will, and has failed to be the sort of person, or leader, that people have had an instinct to depend upon in a crisis. He won the last election virtually by himself and has never seemed to market confidence in his team.

Before and during the pandemic he has had unlimited access to public resources. He has not scrupled to use them for partisan, often quite improper purposes. He has an enormous capacity to believe that anything in his own interest, or the government's short-term political interest, is in the public interest. He is a polished professional politician but has been unable either to articulate long-term goals or visions for his country. Or strategies or explanations for the transition between short-term and popular actions and the long-term structure of society, the economy or the national security. It has taken some time for it to become obvious, but he is not very good at organising his team, or the administration behind policy and programs. His stock of personal idiosyncrasies is not endearing, nor do they enrich or add flavour to his style. No one could, or should, criticise him for not being intellectual or well read. One does not have to be if one wants to get involved in the contest of ideas and ideals. To be in the argument from a settled and disciplined philosophy. In it to persuade and to change behaviour rather than merely re-arrange facts. His supposed talent for marketing has never been about substance or making a real difference.

The cack-hand we are now seeing is the real him. Failing in the big things and in the little things. The big picture and the detail. Failing too to learn from his mistakes, including by frank analysis of the way that his own personality, and his own failings have contributed to, or caused his problems. Morrison blames others. Dodges responsibility. Rewrites history and redefines words and actions. These may be characteristics of a healthy ego - a necessity in politics - but work best only when the internal person privately understands the mistakes, and changes behaviour to make sure he does not repeat them. Morrison always gives the impression of believing his own propaganda, whatever it happens to be at the time. In the course of this he has lost any true sense of what actually matters.

Whether with the pandemic and the economy - the biggest things - or with a host of critical tasks - energy policy, climate change, population, defence, and quality and integrity of government, Morrison has seemed in constant struggle. With the facts. Determining the task. Articulating it for the ages, and beyond mere slogans or words like sovereignty. The marketing man has never been able to completely unite his team, including the Nationals, around enduring ideas, and difficult colleagues and backbenchers have realised that he cannot win an argument, call on loyalty, or demand confidence in his judgment. State premiers and chief ministers - some on his own side of politics - have rejected his instincts. Compromise - the essence of any government - has always underlined his weaknesses more than his strengths.

He hasn't even had the luck. In recent days, almost every plan, or target or announcement has been in constant revision.

The circumstances have changed in a way he did not anticipate. That is a commonplace in politics, or war, but Morrison has usually made his position more difficult by suggesting that his hopes and aspirations are turned into solid fact. That the doubters are wrong, malicious or absurdly cynical, or even - horrors - playing politics. Rather than ruefully admit error, he has tried to reinterpret old statements and assertions of operating principle to explain his latest duck and dive. He sometimes seems unable to do anything but stagger from fresh temporary setbacks and the collisions of quick fixes, inconsistencies and failures to understand, explain or establish guiding principles. Morrison may still have the time to throw unlimited sums of public money at each fresh crisis, but he has pretty much squandered his credibility, his authority and his moral credit with voters.

His political allies are in despair, reluctant to resort to the argument that he is the least worst of the leadership choices. Each leadership turmoil of the past decade, in the Liberals, the Nationals, Labor and even the Greens has generally seen that argument prosecuted by the ultimate big loser.

His rivals in his own party, and those in it who look at him without friendship, enthusiasm or shared faith in his self-belief, are content only if he looks the most likely winner of the next election. They would prefer that he fell off a cliff rather than that he was pushed. No one yearns for a restoration of the leadership uncertainties of the past. But some may well judge that his present leadership style has at best, nine months to go, perhaps with catastrophe for the party at the next election. He is too settled in that style to reinvent himself, even with an army of advertising folk.

Could someone do a better job of saving the furniture? Would those with leadership ambitions, on all sides of the Liberal Party spectrum, be better positioned for the long-term while there were things to do, or would they be better reforming the party after a debacle? Is yet another "miracle" possible, with God's vote making fools, yet again, of commentators, critics, opinion polls and doubters? That vote last time - what he has interpreted as having been divinely anointed for his role - has become another handicap. A man on whom God has lain hands is hardly likely to listen to mere mortals. Even colleagues.

The best thing going for him is that no one yet is sure that Anthony Albanese, or Labor, can defeat him. The Labor vote is holding up slightly ahead at the polls (for what they are worth), and it is almost impossible to detect a groundswell for the opposition - even less for its leader. Morrison and the Liberals have done enough to persuade voters that they deserve to lose. Labor has yet to persuade anyone that it deserves to win. Nor have they invested the mission with the appearance of a crusade for a better Australia. At best, they are describing what the Liberals are doing wrong. It is not enough.

We are not yet in election mode and can assume that both parties are reserving their campaign strategies and tactics for the end. But at the moment, Morrison and the coalition will have defeated themselves. Found wanting in the biggest political challenge of their lives, one which was, however, the greatest political opportunity since World War II. But equally found wanting as a party of general government. Shown to be complacent and corrupted, dishonest in the way it used public funds for political purposes; compulsive liars, secretive, untrustworthy and resistant to the rule of law. The public has been patient with, even affectionate about a white-bread Morrison, but they have seen through him, become cynical about the perennial gap between his announcements and what happens, and his unwillingness to take responsibility for outcomes. Others have seen his petty meanness and grudge carrying, his lack of kindness or empathy, his incomprehension of the equality of women, and the chasm between his religion and his unchristian impulses. Some character deficiencies can be endearing - as Bob Hawke, Kevin Rudd and John Howard discovered to their benefit; the weaknesses of some others can only repel.

If Morrison were a stronger and more imaginative leader, one would not see him staring at the abyss. His present crisis comes from the fact that there is a temporary shortage of Pfizer vaccine - a shortage which could be over within a month. There is no longer a shortage of AstraZeneca, and there ought to be enough on hand to vaccinate most of the most vulnerable groups, if only the powers that be, including the defence force, could concentrate properly on those who are most vulnerable.

But it's not really about shortages. It's about how over-marketing has collapsed confidence. How lies and overstatements have exposed the vacuum within as well as the hypocrisy of ministers, with opportunist (but now deliciously unfortunate) comparisons about the treatment of Victoria and NSW. Misstatements about "gold standards". Collective resentment by the citizens of states and territories about criticism of border closures - closures that proved very popular with residents and which saw the virtual annihilation of the Liberals in Western Australia. Indulgence towards friends, spite towards enemies. A statesman would have been beyond the petty partisanship, and would have restrained others - Josh Frydenberg in particular, and perhaps his very loyal and partisan cheer squad in News.com and Nine - from black and white presentations that mostly alienated voters, if not constituencies.

After umpteen stumbles, an increasingly politicised defence force and civilian administrators may be developing a plan for resolving most of the self-inflicted logistical nightmares, even if no one will relax before most of the population has ready access to the vaccines best suited for them. Once a high proportion of the adult population has been vaccinated, Morrison hopes, there will be an end to lockdowns, and government can plan a reopening of international borders and the economy. It could just be a matter of patience, resolve and steadfastness for the politicians in the main game. The greatest enemy could be panic and signs of disunity. And perhaps after a suitable time - before March or April next year - the public will forget the stuff-ups, the false hopes and the poor administration.

But if vaccine supply is at the centre of the political gloom, it has only a passing relationship with Morrison's real problems. The public understands that there is a short-term shortage, even if they are still reluctant to forgive or forget how and why it arose. They remember Morrison's declaration that Australia was "at the front of the queue" for vaccines, his declaration that "it is not a race". Most members of the public do not forget, at least as readily as Morrison, the confident declarations of timetables for reaching milestones, or the failures to deal with priority cases. A good many have seen how mates and cronies of ministers were given millions to organise the rollout. The public, and doctors, are well aware that the chancers, as much as Morrison and his ministers, have not been called to account. Indeed, it does not appear that a single bureaucrat or politician has lost place, position or money from what a former prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, with malicious unhelpfulness, has described as the greatest administrative disaster in Australian history.

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I have argued before that the next election will be won by the party with the most realistic and attractive vision of the future, not by a prolonged inquest into the management of the pandemic or of the recession it caused. Or by bitterness about lockdowns. One might think that the coalition can boast, as it describes its vision, about its success in keeping down the death rate and the infection rate, and its success in restoring the state of the economy. But it has to show how it can convert that success into a new future for Australians - a task made more difficult for it by the way in which Morrison has consistently shied away from describing any vision at all.

Labor has every right - perhaps every duty - to remind Australians of Morrison government failures with the pandemic, as well as of general governance. It can argue that these are the prism through which coalition visions, promises and character can be judged, or, as Scott Morrison might say, the fruits by which he should be known. But one can go only so far with such criticism. It must fashion a declaration that shows how the sacrifices, and the triumphs can be harnessed to make the economy better than it was. To repurpose public expenditure around education, jobs, and public health. And to make the lives of young Australians, Indigenous Australians, disabled Australians and older Australians better than they were. So that a prosperous and growing economy has a point rather than mere profits and a more stratified society, presently focused on ruining the environment. And to show voters why and how a driven and planned transition represents a better new deal than the mere restoration of things as they were before, under the control of folk whose power has never been so great.