This text first appeared in InQueensland.
When Scott Morrison fronts the media, it’s as deliberate, scripted and risk-assessed as the whole lot else the Liberal chief does. He has, in his famously self-identified “flow-brain” (a pop psychology time period for whole immersion in an exercise), the information and phrase photos wanted to promote the day’s providing.
Morrison additionally has in entrance of him a shuffle of papers with double-spaced notes on the whole lot his marketing campaign crew thinks may be raised by journalists on the lookout for an angle or discovering some delicate flesh to puncture.
He makes use of these notes, juggling papers and studying from them phrase for phrase.
It’s a smart method, decreasing threat and minimising the alternatives for the media to discover a hole, a gap or a contradiction.
More often than not it really works, helped by Morrison’s formidable skill to bluster with phrase salad that always collapses into gibberish.
It’s all finished with such self-belief and confected conviction, even the nastiest gotcha lazy journalist is left with no line of sight on what really occurred.
Morrison shouldn’t be allowed to get away with it however he has been given the advantage of the doubt for the reason that pandemic kicked off two years and two months in the past. All of this was a assemble, like the whole lot else this 24/7 political being does.
Studying from the way in which John Curtin dealt with the media throughout World Conflict II, Morrison introduced the leaders of the press gallery into the sanctum — they got the deepest “off the report” background briefings with Well being and Treasury officers. The briefings have been very common at first, generally greater than as soon as every week.
By way of this relationship — which Curtin used to verify the nationwide media didn’t threaten the safety of the warfare effort — Morrison protected his personal private and political safety. It wasn’t about defending the well being and financial security of the nation however had a sole purpose of controlling and proudly owning the every day narrative to the only benefit of probably the most political and ambitiously pushed prime minister the nation’s ever seen.
On the similar time, Morrison entrenched a polling program that by no means stopped. The Liberal Get together stored testing opinion, assisted by publicly-funded surveys monitoring attitudes to varied packages and traits.
That is the unending marketing campaign machine Morrison carries round with him, in his head and in these pages on his lecterns. It’s the full melding of the marketing campaign director (Morrison ran the Liberal’s New South Wales department for greater than half a decade).
The information would possibly change however the mission by no means wavers — trying to find the binary selection, dividing and conquering and to the winner the spoils, the entire spoils.
The Morrison playbook is known as “genius campaigning” by some however it’s really a really slim set of abilities. An in depth take a look at how Morrison strikes, behaves and speaks on this marketing campaign, and lining it up towards what he did in 2019, reveals there may be not a lot distinction, which is its purported brilliance and likewise its potential weak spot.
This background gives perception into the way in which Anthony Albanese is dealing with himself throughout this marketing campaign and the way it’s being offered within the media.
Albanese has had real stumbles — not figuring out the then official Reserve Financial institution money price and the unemployment price have been actual, inexcusable foot-in-mouth moments — and he’s been awkward and unprepared in just a few responses.
The lack to get by means of what ought to have been a easy query on Thursday — the six priorities of his personal nationwide incapacity insurance coverage scheme plan — was additionally inexcusable and may solely be attributed to poor preparation and a confidence in “winging it”, seen by colleagues as a weak spot in the way in which Albanese handles issues.
Albanese will be excused for not figuring out the positive particulars of the whole lot however there’s no excuse for not figuring out sufficient to get by means of a query in a marketing campaign media convention.
The Labor chief ought to have had sufficient of the fundamental element in his thoughts to reply not less than half of the query after which have sufficient rhetorical flourish at hand to get by means of the remaining. It’s what Morrison does.
John Howard got here out of his bruising time within the late Eighties satisfied the way in which to beat Labor was to “rise up earlier and go to mattress later” than Labor, ringing the entire radio stations earlier than breakfast and checking in with the entire newspapers earlier than bedtime.
It was his working system within the lead as much as the 1996 election and he made certain the errors he made within the 1985/88 interval weren’t repeated. A landslide was his reward.
That is how Labor and Albanese might want to method the final two weeks in the event that they wish to safe victory.
Additionally, he ought to wean himself off the props of getting shadow ministers as backstops. It has not served him effectively within the larger scheme of issues and recollects the 1980 election marketing campaign when Labor had Invoice Hayden journey the nation with ALP president (and NSW rockstar) Neville Wran and ACTU president Bob Hawke backing him up. The comparability and distinction didn’t assist on the finish of a dropping bid for energy.
For the time being Albanese is metaphorically much like the large theme behind Tennessee Williams’s Cat on a Scorching Tin Roof, a world working out of lives.
