The Chaser Report - Sean Kelly on the strategic boringness of Scott Morrison

Episode Date: November 8, 2021

Zander and Dom chat with author Sean Kelly for our very first Chaser Report: Afternoon Edition! Sean chats about his new book, "The Game" and provides an expert's insight into the operations of Scott Morrison, and unpacks his portrait of Australia's Prime Minister. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is The Chaser Report. Hello and welcome to the first ever afternoon edition of The Chaser Report. This is a new thing that we're doing from this week, just trying it out, where we put together a shorter, very topical, punchy morning edition that's going to come out at the usual time. And then in the afternoon we're going to put out each day a chat with somebody in particular about something. Just the one chat, a longer and more leisurely chat for afternoon listening. Today, it's a look at Scott Morrison. Sean Kelly is a former advisor to Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard.

He's now a columnist for nine newspapers and has written many articles for the monthly and other people besides. And his new book about Scott Morrison is called The Game, a portrait of Scott Morrison. And it explains how Scott Morrison's very boringness, the fact that we only know one or two things about him that he likes the sharks, cooks curries on the weekend. But that actually plays to his advantage in constructing a persona.

that enables him to win elections. Zander and I are going to have a chat to Sean Kelly in a moment right here on the Chaser Report. Thank you for your patience. Your call is important. Can't take being on hold anymore. FIS is 100% online so you can make the switch in minutes. Mobile plans start at $15 a month. Certain conditions apply.

Details at FIS.C.A. Welcome to the Chaser Report. our first afternoon, in addition, with a longer interview. Today, it is with Sean Kelly. He's a former advisor to Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard when they were prime ministers working in the media office. He's a columnist for nine newspapers. He previously has written things for the monthly

and other people besides. And his book is The Game, a portrait of Scott Morrison, which I think is the first biography of its kind taking a look at Scott Morrison as Prime Minister. Sean, thanks for joining us. Thanks very much for having me. Is it the first?

You know what? It's in fact the third. It's the third. What a terrible intro. It's been a very busy year in the arena of Scott Morrison publishing. I think people had a sense, firstly, that he could be an important prime minister in a very strange crisis-driven period. And then quickly they had the sense that he might not be prime minister for that long.

So if they were going to publish a book, they'd better get around to it quickly. Yeah, it's been a weird run, hasn't it? And you say that you confess in the book that when you were first asked to do the Skomar biography, which might be the first two didn't really register for me. you would just, no, I don't want to do it. Why? And what changed your mind? I was largely put off by the feeling that Scott Morrison was not that interesting. I thought he seemed boring.

I'd written a long article about him already, and I wasn't sure I had a lot more to say than those 5,000 words. And then I thought more about it, and I realized that that fact that he was boring was actually one of the strangely, perversely interesting things about it. him. You know, how, he's on display all the time, and yet we knew so little about him. And somehow, people still weren't interested, despite the fact the guy had become prime minister and then won a shock election, you would have expected people to be fascinated by him, but they just

weren't. So one of the questions that the book tries to deal with is tries to answer is, why is he not more interesting to more people? And I think in many ways, that's a kind of deliberate effort. He wants to keep himself free of scrutiny. He doesn't want people to pay close attention to him. And that has largely worked pretty well for him. The book starts looking at his time as immigration minister and looking at his appearances on Annabelle Crabshow. How did you choose that as a dive-off point?

That was your introduction to Scott Morrison for the audience? Look, I mean, the decision of how to begin a book is a fraught one. And I went back and forth on that. and almost didn't use the chapter, very close towards the end. But I kept it there, and I kept it there for two reasons. Firstly, because I think that it is a more interesting way into Morrison to deal with this program, which I think is an interesting phenomenon, and Annabelle Krabb is a very, you know,

is a very captivating character, I think, on the Australian media scene. And secondly, because that program, I think, and the controversy around that program, giving air time to Scott Morrison allowed me a way into significant questions around Morrison, like, how do we know who a prime minister is and how much does it matter whether we know who a prime minister really is? Because, of course, there's the real person, if you like, and then there's this performance that any politician gives to some extent, but I think Scott Morrison gives in a far more extreme way than most.

And trying to tease those two elements of Morrison out and separate them, I think is an important task. And you chart how he constructed this persona of Scomo. You make the point that we haven't had a Prime Minister who is as unknown as he was when he stepped into the role and it kind of gave him a blank slate to work on. How did he build the Scomo character and what were the elements he chose to highlight?

And why did he make those choices? Well, there were these essentially two phases in Scott Morrison's career. Up to 2015, when he kept himself as you're absolutely right, a blank slate. And then 28, 2015 onwards, when he tries to fill in those blanks. And up to 2015, he doesn't really answer questions. He doesn't really talk about himself. He tries to get himself completely free.

But there's an exception to that. He has been an immigration minister. It's a senior ministry. It's an important step in his career promotion. And that inevitably sets him up because he's a liberal immigration minister as his hard line, hard line on immigration man. And that's a very traditionally masculine type. portfolio. It can seem quite mean and cruel, arguably is quite mean and cruel. And he, I think,

needed to free himself from that in some way. So he set about shifting that by creating this character, if you like, this Scomo character. This nickname suddenly surfaces around 2015, Scomo. His love of footy starts to come back to the forefront. He goes onto social media. He's been absent from it up until 2015. And he adopts this habit. of cooking curries once a week. He's modern, but not too modern. And there are these very simple brushstrokes, and suddenly you have Scott Morrison,

hardline immigration minister, transformed into skummo. Who loves the curry. And you point out the bizaranness that he's doing Sri Lankan curries when one of the most criticised things about his time as immigration minister was basically working with the Sri Lankan government

to crack down on Tamil asylum seekers. It's a truly bizarre decision when you think about it, or at least it's a tremendously cynical decision to decide to cook the food of this particular nation, you know, to turn something which has involved inflicting cruelty on a significant group of people into a gimmick for television. Now, there is perhaps some deliberate thinking in there.

I think there is the attempt to telegraph what was once called tolerance, inclusion, the idea that in fact he's not xenophobic, but actually loves these cultures because he loves their food. And he gets to make the scomosa pun, which is one for the ages, of course. He does, he does indeed. So look, it is a strange thing, but I think this is the point about a show like Kitchen Cabinet and much media coverage of Scott Morrison or any other politician. If you watch it with the notion in your head that this is a performance

and you look closely to try to identify the gap between the performance and reality, then I think you can learn something important about the politician who is embarking on that performance and the choices they're making about their position in public life. Thank you for your patience. Your call is important. Can't take being on hold anymore? FIS is 100% online, so you can make the switch in minutes.

Mobile plans start at $15 a month. Certain conditions apply. Details at FIS.ca. He's very interesting and just going through the book and you find out more about Scott Morrison and especially when he's juxtaposed to Malcolm Turnbull because, you know, Turnbull is this figure that has been around in the public sphere for decades. You've got the spy catcher trial and then eventually he becomes opposition leader and then drops out of that and then becomes Prime Minister. How important to you when writing the book was looking at Scott Morrison

in juxtaposition to the leaders that came before him? It's an interesting question. I think that for me the dominant point of comparison between Scott Morrison, of those other leaders, is that each of the previous prime ministers had come to the job as a known figure on some level. And Malcolm Turnbull is an extreme example of that. He had been very prominent in public life for a long time. But, you know, Kevin Rudd, Julia Gillard, Tony Abbott, that were all very high-profile politicians who had senior roles beforehand. And Scott Morrison had had a senior role for three years before this. He'd been treasurer and before that had been an immigration minister. And yet still didn't really,

really seemed to figure in the public imagination. When he became Prime Minister, there was a series, you know, there were articles published around the country saying, who is Scott Morrison, you know, let's catch our readers up because people really did feel a bit confused. And I think that does point to his success in keeping that slate blank. And it's one of the major themes in the book is this very boringness and this challenge in defining him.

And it's kind of, people always talked about Tony Abbott as the successor to John Howard. but I think it is Morrison in his embrace of ordinariness and always taking the boring option. But as Andy mentioned, Malcolm Turnbull, though, and one of the things that I really enjoyed reading in the book was your account of the assassination of Turnbull and how Morrison emerges as this clean-skinned figure and everyone thought he had nothing to do with it

and he defeated Peter Dutton and even Malcolm Turnbull in writing his autobiography seemed to be rethinking that narrative somewhat. What was your read on the end of Turnbull in hindsight? Look, I think it's fascinating when you read Malcolm Turnbull's memoir, and he just doesn't seem that hurt by what Scott Morrison has done. There's this sense that he never really formed a deep personal attachment to Morrison. I think that means on some level that Scott Morrison was as fuzzy and undefined to Malcolm Turnbull as he has been to everybody else.

And it is interest that Turnbull moves from that position of lack of clarity and fuzziness and not really suspecting Morrison immediately after Morrison. has taken over his prime minister, to a year or so later being pretty convinced that Morrison has come up the middle very deliberately and taken that job. And I think Malcolm Turnbull makes a pretty persuasive case because there's this very strange set of events in Scott Morrison's life. And it's either a set of bizarre coincidences or it tells you something important about Scott Morrison, which is that in three of the most important political events of his life, winning pre-selection as a liberal MP, becoming treasurer when Turnbull rolls Tony Abbott

and becoming Prime Minister when Turnbull gets rolled, in each case he claims he has nothing to do with his hands are completely clean. Now, if so, that is an incredible run of fortune. Just for listeners who may not be aware of what happened when Scott Morrison got pre-selected because it is an important event in his career and is far more interesting than him shitting himself at Maccas, but barely anyone knows about it. Could you give a bit of context? Sure. He stood in a very crowded field of really impressive liberal candidates for the seat of Cook. And he lost. He lost very badly. He got, I think, eight votes and was knocked out in the first round of voting. And this guy called Michael Talke won. And then a series of articles started

to appear in the press, a series of leaks, casting aspersions on the candidate who had won, and then with time, he was effectively torn down. And lo and behold, almost by magic, Scott Morrison seemed to rise up over the field of the other candidates, by the way, over this incredibly impressive field of candidates who'd beaten him in the early votes to win in the new vote that was scheduled by the Liberal Executive. And, you know, It is a strange set of events, and the slurs made against Taukeau are quite significant, and they've always been rumours about exactly what was said to liberal members, suggestions that there were really some very dark rumours spread,

but nothing's ever been entirely substantiated. And Morrison's essentially denied any involvement. Well, I mean, he views himself as having been appointed by God, so I suppose God works in mysterious ways if slurs are the way that it tends to work. But in terms of pinning down his policy positions and what he stands for, this is one of the things I've found a bit depressing about the book in a way, is that you analyze several points in his career, and his maiden speech is a great example.

That was printed in The Herald if people want to check out the Sean's analysis of that, is that what does he actually stand for? What does he want? What's the point of getting power? And it seems very clear that he wants to keep things the same. He doesn't want all this change coming through. We've certainly seen him do that. But what's the agenda?

Tony Abbott had a very clear agenda. So did John Howard. We knew what they stood for. Even Malcolm Turnbull. They didn't achieve it. What is the Scott Morrison project? Because in your maiden speech, looking at his comments on immigration and,

sorry, looking at his comments on our relationship with our indigenous history, you basically prove that he had every possible position in the course of the speech. Yeah, it's a remarkable speech. And this is a phenomenon that often happens when you look at Scott Morris. and speeches and his press conferences, it sounds like he's saying something clear. It sounds like he's articulating something potentially nuanced. And then you go back and you look at the text on the page

and you have a little bit of time and you think, this doesn't stack up at all. These sentences don't belong next to each other. This thought means one thing and this other thought means the other thing and this sentence isn't even finished. And everybody's speech, you know, people's speech is never as coherent as written communication. but his Prime Minister and his communication almost never ends in a solid point.

It's really quite dramatic. And I do think that is partly probably an indication of how he thinks, but it is also an indication of the fact that he doesn't have a clear agenda for the country. You know, we can look at the last three years, and it's absolutely true that COVID has taken over the last term. But also, if you look at the first, what, year and a half, of Scott Morrison's prime ministership before COVID hit, almost nothing happened. He didn't seem to want to do anything.

He wins the election in May 2019. By running against Shorten, right, but keeping this the same. Exactly. By promising almost nothing, by promising that Australia would remain the same. And in the next eight to ten months before COVID becomes a real thing in this country, nothing happens. There is just a sense in Scott Morrison's political career that there is nothing in particular he wants to happen.

And I do think that comes from. from a genuine conviction that Australia is absolutely wonderful and perfect as it is. And I think that's part of the secret of Scott Morrison's success. A lot of Australians feel that way. And even if you don't entirely feel that way at some intellectual, logical sense, it's still a tremendously soothing message to hear. I think a lot of people recently, especially with the events of COP and Macron and the Orcas deal, have started to notice a shift in how Australia under Morrison is being viewed internationally.

a lot of Australians a few years ago at the time weren't aware of his involvement with Trump. How do you think Morrison's viewed internationally? I think that Morrison is viewed increasingly negatively. I was contacted by an international columnist this week wanting to talk about the way that Scott Morrison is seen in terms of climate. And I think this climate message has really cut through because this is a focus of international attention. Now, it's worth saying that Australia's slow descent to global pariah didn't start under Morrison. I think that Australia has actually sustained a lot of international damage

because of its approach to refugees over the last decade, and I think its approach to climate has done additional damage. But I think this particular Glasgow meeting feels like a bit of a tipping point when the world's media is all looking at Australia. And I don't think there's any sense that Scott Morrison is particularly genuine about wanting to act on climate change. his rhetoric is particularly disingenuous. And so I do think there is a fair bit of negativity out there towards Australia right now.

I started to wonder whether, just in reading the book, a fairly depressing thought that the limits to Morrison are also the limits to Australia. And this perhaps ties with what you're saying about Australia already being perfect, the notion that you can't really improve things, and that instead you've got to stave off threats. And you portray a picture of Australia's nationhood and what we stand for and who we are, which is a little bit of a bare cupboard.

You point out that at some points we were quite progressive and had led the world in some fields, but that's not the case anymore. Do you think Scott Morrison is a mirror to the inadequacies of Australia? I do, I do. I think he is a mirror to the deeply complacent strand in the Australian mentality.

And that's not to say all Australians feel that way, but I do think we are a rich country, We are a peaceful country. We are at one point set up some strong government services like universal health care. And I think that does give an enormous number of Australians a feeling of immense confidence in the future. And I think Scott Morrison feels that confidence. But I'm not sure we have really good reason for that confidence anymore. We've got lucky at several points in the past.

We got very lucky during COVID in being an island, very removed from the world. We often tend to pat ourselves on the back as if the luck is entirely the product of our own skill. Of course, I'm hardly the first person to make this point. Donald Horn wrote a whole book called The Lucky Country. But I think that the danger for Australia is particularly intense right now, and the danger is there because the world is changing very quickly. The world is changing on climate. Climate is going to intensify a lot of other crises.

It's going to increase the likelihood of pandemics. It's going to increase the intensity of the global refugee crisis. And at the same time, we have this immense shift in global affairs with the rise of China, the potential fall of America, and these factors, I think, are going to leave Australia in a precarious position if we continue to believe that everything will magically turn out all right. So, yes, I do think Scott Morrison mirrors Australia back to itself in certain care respects. You've been involved in the Parliament in the past, you're an advisor to writing Gillard. Do you think that changes how you approach writing about politics compared to how a journalist might?

I think it allowed me a particular insight into Scott Morrison for, for best of, better or worse, you know, as an advisor and as somebody who dealt with the press, as a press secretary, you know, I have spent time constructing images, constructing words for politicians. And that is very, you know, of course that's a part of politics, but when that takes over, I think that becomes a problem. And I think it has been taking over for some time. And I think under Scott Morrison, we're seeing, well, hopefully a bit of a peak. It's a very, it's a very, It's almost all of Scott Morrison's prime ministership. Now, maybe it'll be the peak, or maybe it'll continue.

Maybe it'll become more and more extreme over time. Maybe there's no way back. Maybe we have entered a series of image-based prime ministers forever. But in answer your question, yeah, I think my experience with image, if you like, did help me to see that and to try to take apart what that process of constructing that image is like. because I do think that's an important part of trying to understand this prime ministership, the tricks that Scott Morrison uses, because if we don't understand them, then we never get past looking at the performance to what's going on at a deeper level in politics,

and I think we need to. There's a fascinating bit where you analyse the images that he used in the, where the bloody hell are you campaign for tourism Australia, and how that style has come into his prime ministership. But when you look back on Morrison's time as a leader, I mean, clearly getting there was very well played. The election win was very unexpected and was really rather brilliant. And he, in many ways, as you write in the book,

was probably also lucky because of the circumstances that particularly suited him. But there have also been some very low points where he has not reacted well to crises. And the way that he sort of suddenly likes to breeze through things has not worked and people have gotten very angry. The bushfires and the vaccine rollout in particular, so his poll numbers plummet, he's, well behind at the moment now, admittedly he was behind last election and why anyway. Do you think the Australian public has begun to tire of the Morrison Act?

Do you think that they have begun to view him as someone who can't cope with a crisis and can't deliver? Or do you think the way things are going now at the country reopening is once again playing into Morrison's hands because once again keeping things the same is going to be a convincing pitch? I do think the thin Morrison character has worn even thinner with time. Absolutely. I think there was this sense that Scott Morrison plays politics as a bit of a game and that broke down during the crisis. It broke down during the bushfires, broke down when we

started to talk about sexual violence, it broke down during the vaccine mess. I think that's because in each of those cases, we were reminded that politics matters, that actually you were talking about people's lives and their deaths and physical harm. And that's the point at which we stop being able to pretend politics as a game. We stopped being able to pretend things will just be okay because we hope they will be. And so those are the times I think that Morrison really suffered politically because he was unable to break away from his approach to politics as a game. And so there was a mismatch between the way the Australian population suddenly saw politics, the fact that they suddenly remembered it was a serious pursuit. And Scott Morrison's continuing

treatment of politics is quite a trivial thing that could be won with strategy and tactics. Now, while people have, I think, faded on that a little bit, your question is essentially what will happen at the next election, and I have no idea, but I definitely think it's a possibility that we will end up in a position early next year when people are feeling pretty good about the world, and Scott Morrison will tell us we can keep feeling good about the world, and after a very ragged, rugged three years, we will want to return to that sense of stability

and that sense of comfort. And certainly Scott Morrison is the man to provide us with that comfort. You've worked with Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard. And in Anthony Albanese, we see someone who is trying to do pretty much what Scott Morrison did last time. He's being a small target. He's not putting policy out there. He is hoping that anger with the incumbent will get him through there.

Is this how politics is now that basically people don't want to make mistakes or really stand for anything? Because certainly with both Kevin Wright and Julie Gillard, they had a far clearer pitch to the electorate than Albo does right now. Look, it's a really remarkable situation, I think, where you have two political parties essentially running on nothing at all. Neither of them proposing any change, neither of them really putting any dramatic policies to the electorate.

It's very odd, and I think neither of them wants to be knocked over by the other side. I don't think this is the way politics will be forever after. I think that Albanese hasn't had much of an opportunity to take the limelight because of COVID, and I think COVID in a way has provided him with an excuse not to take the limelight, whereas I think oppositions in any other period are going to come under pressure to actually put something up, make an argument about the shape of the country and the future of the country. But look, Dom, I could be wrong, and I think that would be. be very sad for Australia if we ended up in a position where political parties just got smaller

and smaller and smaller and smaller. You, just before we end, you have this quote in the book, which is quoting someone else. I can't remember who exactly was right now, but it talks about the nature and the effect of humanising politicians and how we shouldn't humanize politicians or the people in power we should humanize the people that they're affecting. What was it like trying to write a book and considering, okay, this is Scott Morris from the man, this is the character he betrays. This is also the real world impact of that. We see it every day. Every time that there's a crisis, he manages to fumble it and still come out unscathed. How was it trying to balance that? It's tricky. It was Amy McQuire, who's a very good journalist and a very good

writer who made that point. I think it's an important point. And of course, you have to pay attention to people in power on some level. And you're right. That question of what to pay attention to, I think, is a really tricky one, because it is true that on some level who they are as a person matters. I also think when you're writing about a contemporary politician, when you're writing about a politician who is still in power, then, and has been in power for some time, then probably the fastest guide to who they are is what they've done, you know, what they've done and what they've said. And I think with Scott Morrison, at this point, he has a set of pretty visible traits. He has a set of visible habits and going looking for some secret

Scott Morrison. Both the left and the right do this in various ways. I think it provides him with a bit of an alibi. It distracts us from focusing on what is right in front of us. And that, in a sense, is what my book tries to do. In a very close reading way, it looks at what is already on the public record. It looks at what he's said and actually ask the question, if we pay attention, very close to attention to what Scott Morrison says and does. What does that tell us already? And then it asks the second question, well, we're not paying attention. Why aren't we? What does that say about us? And I think that tough question, what does that say about us, is a really important one to ask because I think a lot of us like to complain about politics, but very few of us

like to take any responsibility for our potential complicity in that politics. I think that's a question Australians need to ask themselves. Well, Sean, you've done a remarkable thing with this book. Not only have you made Scott Morrison interesting, but you've made Scott Morrison's boringness interesting. Congratulations. Thanks so much. Thank you. Sean Kelly's book, The Game, is out now from Black Ink.

Thank you for your patience. Your call is important. Can't take being on hold anymore? Fizz is 100% online so you can make the switch in minutes. Mobile plans start at $15 a month. Certain conditions apply. So there you have it. Sean Kelly's, our first ever guest for the afternoon edition of The Chaser Report. Let us know what you think about this new thing of having two episodes a day, a snappy morning one and a longer, more languid afternoon one.

Go to Apple Podcasts and leave a review there. Tell us what you think. Five stars is always appreciated, but how many stars you think. And tomorrow morning, don't forget, we're back with a brand new topical morning edition. We'll catch you then. Agis from Road Microphones and we're part of the Acast, Creator Network. Thank you.