(Image: Mitchell Squire/Private Media)

After the 2019 election, we’ve lost our obsessive fixation with polls, which is perhaps a good thing. But they’re very poor right now for the Coalition, no more than 16 weeks from election day.

Even the best poll for the Coalition, run by a Coalition pollster and used by Nine, has the government in trouble. Roy Morgan polling has the Coalition facing a landslide defeat. Prime Minister Scott Morrison has started the year as he ended it, blundering and stumbling from one debacle to another. And Labor is refusing to release any policies that might interrupt Morrison while he’s stuffing up.

So how can Morrison turn things around in less than four months? This week we present a mostly serious list of suggestions for the prime minister to come home with a wet sail in 2022. Today’s is:

Get out of the media bubble

Morrison loves to invoke the Canberra bubble about any subject he finds inconvenient, but perhaps doesn’t realise he’s a prisoner of a much worse bubble — that created by News Corp.

In the world of Rupert Murdoch, the government is performing well, Morrison is a great leader, and whatever occasional mistakes are made are trivial compared with the successes of the government.

It seems Morrison’s key inputs about what’s happening in the real world are skewed by the explicit determination of outlets like The Australian to support the government.

But you can’t perform better if you think you’re already performing well. And one of the most important drivers for better performance by public officials is knowing they are being held accountable by the media. When the media don’t hold you accountable, you lose a key incentive to perform well, even if they’re not telling you how well you’re doing.

And it’s not as if other outlets are making up for the fantasy world created by News Corp. Nine newspapers — chaired by a Liberal elder, run by a former Liberal staffer, populated by stenographers — appear to have responded to Morrison’s complaint that they are too tough on him not with proper scepticism but a lovefest of photo galleries, one-on-one interviews and video tributes.

When the people who claim their watchdogs of the powerful tell you how well you’re doing, any politician will be inclined to believe them. We all prefer good reviews to bad reviews. But Morrison needs to hear what’s really happening in the world — and quickly.