Scott Morrison has thanked his local community for the support they showed him through "the best and the hardest of times" during more than 16 years as the MP for Cook.
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"I didn't waste a day," the former prime minister said during an interview with ACM's the Leader in his electorate office overlooking Cronulla mall.
He also reflected on the controversies that dogged his time in the top office, claiming the high level of personal attacks on him resulted from the Coalition's shock 2019 election win, which upset "a whole crowd", including many in the media.
Mr Morrison, who led the Coalition to a shattering defeat at the 2022 election, announced this week he would resign from parliament at the end of February to take up advisory roles and positions on private boards, focused on the US and Indo-Pacific, drawing on his experience and networks in the region, in particular through AUKUS and the Quad, while spending more time with his family in Sutherland Shire.
Mr Morrison said in his statement, "It has been my great privilege to represent the wonderful people of Cook for more than sixteen years in our federal parliament. The decision to leave is always a difficult one when you have been doing something you love and feel passionate about. However, I believe the timing is now right to move on to a new season with my family and take on fresh challenges".
In his statement and interview, Mr Morrison stressed the support he received locally.
"Jenny and I are very grateful for that," he said in the interview. "Here was always a very wonderful place in the best and the hardest of times to come and be supported, people understood what you were trying to do and they gave a lot of moral support here in the shire."
Mr Morrison said it was "fair to say" he was an outsider when he was pre-selected, after Liberal Party turmoil, to replace Bruce Baird on his retirement as MP for Cook.
However, he had felt more "connected to the values" of the shire than he did to the eastern suburbs, where he grew up in Coogee.
"The shire is a self-starting community, enterprising, aspirational, a place where people do work very hard, where people run their own businesses often for more than one generation," he said.
"It is also a generous community, not in a showy way or even a political way. If someone needs a hand, someone will give it.
"The volunteerism, the community organisations, the sporting organisations...I have spent time all around the country and I haven't seen a part of the country that matches the shire for that generous community spirit."
Mr Morrison said the surf life saving clubs had "always been an unifying institution in the shire".
"I think they summarise what the place is about," he said.
Mr Morrison said the reason he was the subject of so many personal attacks as prime minister was "because we won the 2019 election and the people we beat didn't like it".
"There were a lot of noses put out of joint - people who thought a Labor victory was certain. Not just those in the parliament or the Labor Party, a whole crowd who thought it was time for Labor to be in power and their rather intrusive and invasive tax agenda to be centre stage. Many of them are in your profession [the media]. They didn't like that and so they engaged in a rather fulsome campaign over many years."
Mr Morrison said the personal attacks had more of an impact on his family than on him.
"When you have been in politics as I have and operate at those levels, there is a certain insulation, psychologically, you put around yourself so you can just do the job. You have to, otherwise you can't manage the country through a crisis."
Mr Morrison said his family was "thrilled" he would have more of a normal life.
"My girls have known nothing other than that life," he said.
The family will continue to live in their Lilli Pilli home of many years and will finally have time to arrange some long-overdue renovations - "but I won't be doing a dual-occ," he said with a laugh.
Mr Morrison said the pandemic and China Indo-Pacific security issues were his biggest challenges as prime minister.
The latter "gave me more sleepless nights than the pandemic," he said.
"The pandemic was full-on and overwhelmingly exhausting. The volume of things you had to do was extraordinary. Meeting after meeting after meeting, data coming out of your ears, things changing all the time.
"It wasn't just the medical thing, it was an economic thing, an industrial thing, so many different threads you had to pull together. I had great ministers working with me, but as prime minister you were the one who had to do that.
"I think our hit rate on good decisions was pretty high, certainly more than just about any other country in the world.
"When you look at the economic performance and the health performance, it's hard to name a country that did better. I think Taiwan was the only one, but not by much.".
Mr Morrison said the criticism of the government over the vaccine delay was "somewhat overstated and didn't take into account the complexity of what was occurring".
"For instance, it was said we should have ordered earlier," he said.
"Japan ordered earlier and got them after us.
"I think there was a convenience of analysis to suit a narrative, which was political and I think unfortunate because when the country needed bipartisanship I cant say I got it in the federal sphere.
"I did get it, particularly in the early stages, from most states but not all. That was a challenge to the federation. I don't think people really appreciated what the constitutional powers of the states were."
Mr Morrison admitted it would have been better that he had not take a family holiday in Hawaii while bushfires burned across Australia in 2019. Mr Morrison cut short his trip after the deaths of two volunteer firefighters in Sydney.
"I went directly from the airport to the operations centre," he said. "I went to the Horsley Park Rural Fire Service, I met with the families, their wives, their kids, their colleagues and I am friends with a large number until this day. If it's OK for them, in my view they are the people whose view matters most.
"That issue was highly politicised and personalised. We had arranged to go down the south coast, but had to change that because I was invited to India for a state visit, which was pretty important. We had to readjust for family reasons and I came straight back.
"While it would have been better not to have gone, at the same time the political pile-on was very personal, and it's unfortunate a disaster was politicised and personalised in that way."
Mr Morrison sees the building of a second Sydney airport at Badgerys Creek as a major win he gained for the Cook electorate as treasurer and prime minister.
"At the same time, we kept the tension in the cord on the cap and curfew," he said.
He is also "really pleased" with what the federal funding he secured for Kamay Botany Bay National Park, which provided the sculptures, new ferry wharves and a soon to be opened new visitors centre.
Mr Morrison's local achievements list also includes establishing the Cook Community Classic, Cook Community Awards and securing funding for the Cronulla and North Cronulla surf clubs.
"If you kept going there would always be more things you could do, but I didn't waste a day," he said.
"I worked very hard to try and get the right balance between what I was doing locally and nationally.
"I don't think there is a person in the country who doesn't know the Sharks song. That was a way of me saying to the community, 'wherever I am, I am not far away.'
"I love my sport, I love going to games and that kept me connected.
"I will still go with my kids, but as a private citizen."
Murray Trembath
St George and Sutherland Shire Leader reporter covering politics, urban affairs, council, development and general community news. Email: mtrembath@theleader.com.au
St George and Sutherland Shire Leader reporter covering politics, urban affairs, council, development and general community news. Email: mtrembath@theleader.com.au
