Scott Morrison first recent Australian leader to survive 3 years
Canberra, May 20: In at least one sense, Scott Morrison has become the most successful Australian prime minister in years just by standing for reelection on Saturday.
He is the first to survive in office from one election to the next since 2007. That year, the government of Australia's second-longest-serving Prime Minister John Howard was voted out after a reign of almost 12 years.
Between Howard and Morrison, there have been four prime ministers including Kevin Rudd who served twice during an extraordinary period of political instability in Australia.
Rudd's second stint ended when voters ousted his centre-left Australian Labor Party government in the 2013 election.
The other three prime ministers were toppled by their own parties, which panicked amid poor opinion polling. So too was Rudd during his first stint that set the revolving door to the prime minister's office spinning.
Morrison's relative longevity can be explained in part by his conservative Liberal Party tightening the rules that enable them to activate their leader's ejector seat.
But most put his survival for a full three-year term down to the credit Morrison is given for leading his coalition to a narrow victory in the last election in 2019 when Labour was favoured to win.
Some betting agencies had been so confident of a Labour victory that they had paid out the party's backers before polling day.
The 54-year-old former tourism marketer was labelled the "accidental prime minister" in 2018 when his government colleagues chose him to replace then-Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull.
It was yet another overthrow of a prime minister without involving voters for reasons not fully explained in a process that Australians increasingly loathe.
Polls
suggested
Morrison
would
have
one
of
the
shortest
tenures
of
any
Australian
prime
minister
with
elections
only
months
away.
His
critics
argue
that
his
success
has
been
a
triumph
of
style
over
substance.
The satirical website Betoota Advocate labelled him "Scotty from Marketing" when he first came to power and the description has gained popularity since.
Opposition leader Anthony Albanese has been nicknamed Albo since he was a child in keeping with a time-honoured Australian tradition of abbreviating names and often adding "o" at the end.
Likewise, Morrison is widely known as ScoMo. But there is conjecture around just how organic that nickname is.
"That's what I've been tagged as, so I may as well embrace it," Morrison said in 2017 when as treasurer he added "ScoMo" to his Facebook account name.
Morrison
sells
himself
as
an
ordinary
Australian
family
man
who
is
passionate
about
his
Sydney
Pentecostal
church
and
his
local
National
Rugby
League
football
team,
the
Cronulla-Sutherland
Sharks.
His
persona
is
described
as
"Daggy
Dad,"
an
affectionate
Australian
term
for
an
unfashionable
father
who
can
be
amusing
but
can
also
be
a
source
of
embarrassment
for
teenage
children.
During a family profile for Australia's "60 Minutes" current affairs program broadcast nationally in February, he sang an amateurish rendition of a 1970s rock song "April Sun in Cuba" while strumming a ukulele.
He is the son of police officer and one-term Mayor John Morrison and a descendant of British convict William Roberts, who arrived in Australia in 1788 with the first fleet of 11 ships that established the penal colony that became Sydney.
He promoted tourism for the Australian and New Zealand governments before entering politics.
He is seen by some as an incongruous mix of a committed Christian who made his name through ratcheting up a refugee policy that many church groups have condemned as inhumane.
Morrison rose to public prominence when the conservative coalition government was first elected under Prime Minister Tony Abbott in 2013 as the minister who stopped asylum-seekers from attempting to reach Australian shores by boat.
Australia used the navy to turn boats back to Indonesia, or it banished refugees to remote immigration camps in the poor Pacific island nations of Papua New Guinea and Nauru.
The policy has been widely condemned as a callous abrogation of Australia's international obligations to help refugees.
Australia's human rights watchdog found in 2014 that Morrison failed to act in the best interests of asylum-seeker children in detention.
Morrison explained his deep belief in the righteousness of crushing the people-smuggling trade and preserving the safety of people who are tempted to board rickety boats to take the long and treacherous voyage to Australia.
The boats have stopped arriving and the government recently moved to neutralize the plight of refugees still languishing on the islands by accepting a New Zealand offer to resettle 150 a year.
Morrison remains proud of the refugee policy. He has a trophy shaped like a silhouette of a people-smuggler's boat inscribed with the words: "I Stopped These."
Sen.
Concetta
Fierravanti-Wells,
an
enemy
of
Morrison
within
his
conservative
Liberal
Party,
said
the
prime
minister's
faith
was
a
marketing
ploy.
She
described
Morrison
as
the
most
ruthless
person
she
had
met
in
her
public
life.
"He is adept at running with the foxes and hunting with the hounds, lacking a moral compass and having no conscience," Fierravanti-Wells said in her final speech to the Senate in March.
"His actions conflict with his portrayal as a man of faith. He has used his so-called faith as a marketing advantage," she added.
Morrison referred to his Christian faith's influence on his politics during his first speech to Parliament in 2008.
"So what values do I derive from my faith?" Morrison asked.
"My answer comes from Jeremiah, Chapter 9:24: I am the Lord who exercises loving kindness, justice and righteousness on earth; for I delight in these things, declares the Lord," he said.