The horror, the horror — Morrison’s quiet coup unleashes square-ups and hypocrisy on a grand scale

If nothing else, this week has confirmed the notion of Australian politics as a small town of dysfunctional families and seething, petty resentments.

It doesn’t help our own sense of self to admit it but — let’s be honest — nothing much really happens in Australian politics. In some countries foreign tanks are on the move, dissidents are being jailed and tyrants are tearing apart the social fabric. 

In Australia we have belatedly discovered that a mendacious Bible-basher had moved furtively around the portfolios of other ministers without actually doing much at all and for reasons even he struggles to explain.

Nevertheless it’s our own homegrown kind of coup that never happened. In a week of grand hypocrisy and personal get-squares, here are some of the best from deep inside the Canberra bubble.

The indignation of Bridget McKenzie 

Seriously, there’s no beating Bridget McKenzie when she’s on the rampage about transparency and due process. The Victorian National Party senator didn’t hold back upon learning that Morrison had secretly taken up the role of then National Party resources minister Keith Pitt and cancelled an off-shore gas project. This, she charged, was a breach of the Coalition agreement governing how the Liberals and Nationals work together. 

It has been… hmmm, let’s add it up … three years, seven months and four days since the sports rorts affair exploded and McKenzie was dispatched from the ministry after a Morrison-ordered inquiry into her apparent conflicts of interest. The rest of us remember that Morrison stonewalled on acting against McKenzie. But that’s not how the senator saw it. Bristling with resentment, she had to be dragged off the stage, screaming blue murder all the way to the backbench.

And what about those undisclosed interests? Crikey’s own investigation revealed that McKenzie had listed several gifts on her pecuniary interests register without disclosing the names of donors. It later emerged that these corporations included gun purveyor Beretta Australia. Secrets? Due process? Transparency?

What the heck, McKenzie hit her mark. Revenge was sweet.

What goes around, comes around — at warp speed

Could there be a more aggrieved party this week than former Home Affairs minister Karen Andrews? 

Andrews was put in an impossible position by Morrison on election day two and a half months ago when he ordered Andrews and her department to make public confidential information on a boat intercept, with the express aim of scaring voters into voting Liberal. Morrison had thereby made Andrews complicit in trashing long-standing conventions of public service neutrality.  

The episode was damaging to Andrews. Then this week she learnt that Morrison had been secretly shadowing her job all along.

Insult heaped upon deception, all wrapped in betrayal. Is it any wonder that Andrews grabbed the get-square moment in both hands and was first out of the blocks to call for his resignation?

It seems she couldn’t bear to be under the same roof as Morrison, even a roof as big as Parliament House’s.

Et tu, Brother Stuey?

Even Morrison’s closest friend in politics, Stuart Robert (aka Brother Stuey), joined in the criticism — if ever so mildly. The two have lived, prayed and schemed together. Morrison publicly stood by Brother Stuey when he ran into his own conflict of interest problems and was cast out of the Turnbull ministry years ago. Morrison brought him back and allowed him to put all his assets behind a total wall of secrecy. 

Surely, Brother Stuey, we must remember: let he who is without sin cast the first stone. 

Morrison’s hierarchy of needs

One of the more surprising secrets to emerge was that the only time Scott Morrison used his coup-powers was to put the kibosh on a gas development off the coast of NSW. Coming from the gas-fired, coal-wielding prime minister of a minerals council-sponsored government, this was surprising — to put it mildly. But on closer inspection, Morrison was behaving entirely according to type. The development was causing massive angst in coastal seats, which Morrison needed. It proved that Morrison will do anything to win an election, including abandoning a gas project. 

Live by the sword, die by the sword

In a form of twisted political symmetry, political journalist Simon Benson has been on the scene at both ends of Morrison’s political career. Fifteen-odd years ago Benson was one of the News Corp reporters whose stories forced a rerun of the Liberal preselection for the seat of Cook, paving the way for the election of Scott Morrison in 2007. As senior political writer with The Australian, Benson was the go-to reporter for the Morrison machine. Now, as co-author of Plagued, the book which revealed Morrison’s secret ministries, Benson has been responsible for terminally wounding Morrison and perhaps bringing his parliamentary career to a close.

Wheels within wheels

While on the topic of Benson, can we politely raise the slightly awkward fact of his close relationship with Senator Bridget McKenzie? To be frank, Crikey doesn’t know what to make of it, given that Benson will have been privy to this extraordinarily damaging information before the last federal election. There are some eye-watering potential conflicts of interest, but let’s assume that McKenzie only found out about it when she read it in the newspapers, just like the rest of us. No wonder she was so outraged.

An opened secret

It was, in all, a very Morrison moment: the power grab that led to very little, the theoretical coup that we only found out about after it didn’t happen.

No sand-bagging of Parliament necessary. No razor wire around the perimeter. Just a sad lament on the sorry state of the Coalition zoo.