Australian political race roars to life, with election set for May 21
The announcement leaves Morrison’s ruling conservative coalition with a six-week campaign to make up ground on the opposition Labor Party, which leads in the polls. In a news conference in Canberra, the prime minister previewed what is emerging as a campaign theme: admitting to mistakes but warning voters against change.
“It’s a choice between a government you know and a Labor opposition that you don’t,” he said.
Yet, it is Morrison’s familiarity that could be the coalition’s biggest problem as scandals, mismanaged crises and attacks from within his own party have dented the prime minister’s popularity.
“Rarely have we seen a leader who has collapsed so quickly in the public’s estimation,” said Paul Williams, a political scientist at Griffith University in Brisbane, who added that Morrison’s chances look “very bleak.”
The prime minister defied the polls in 2019, however, and has several things going for him. Australia has seen relatively few coronavirus deaths compared with other countries. Its economy has also recovered from the pandemic better than most, with just 4 percent unemployment.
“On almost any measure — on fatality rates from covid, vaccine rates, economic growth, jobs’ growth or debt levels — Australia’s recovery is leading the world,” Morrison boasted in his election announcement.
The mood in the country has shifted since a little more than a year ago, when Morrison appeared to be cruising toward reelection. At the time, Australia was almost completely virus-free, and anger over Morrison’s handling of devastating bush fires in late 2019 and early 2020 had waned somewhat.
But a slow vaccine rollout and bungled messaging — “It’s not a race,” Morrison said repeatedly — were followed by a surge in coronavirus infections that upended Australia’s “covid-zero” approach.
Accusations of crisis mismanagement surfaced again in recent months, when the prime minister was criticized for taking more than a week after devastating floods to declare a national emergency.
Scandals in his government have also hurt Morrison’s standing, especially among women. A staffer for one of Morrison’s ministers alleged she was raped in 2019 in Parliament House by a colleague, sparking nationwide protests. Another minister eventually resigned after being accused of a decades-old sexual assault, which he denied. And a third minister stepped aside after an allegation that he had been abusive, which he also denied.
Perhaps most damaging has been a steady drumbeat of stories undermining Morrison’s credibility, political experts say.
First, it was French President Emmanuel Macron, who accused Morrison of lying in October over a now-scrapped submarine deal. More recently, the accusations of dishonesty have come from within Morrison’s coalition.
In February, the prime minister was confronted at a new conference with leaked text messages reportedly exchanged between one of his ministers and a former state premier from his own Liberal Party. In them, then-New South Wales Premier Gladys Berejiklian allegedly called the prime minister “a horrible, horrible person” who was “actively spreading lies” about her.
The minister, who has not been named, reportedly responded that Morrison was a “complete psycho” and a “fraud.”
In another leaked text, the man who would become Morrison’s deputy prime minister called him “a hypocrite and a liar.”
The most scathing criticism came from Concetta Fierravanti-Wells, a senator from Morrison’s Liberal Party who had been dumped from the ticket. In a 10-minute departing speech on the Senate floor, Fierravanti-Wells called the prime minister an “autocrat [and] a bully who has no moral compass.”
She also cited claims that Morrison had made “racial comments” about a Lebanese Australian party rival back in 2007, when he first started in politics. That rival, Michael Towke, took to television last week to allege Morrison had spread false rumors that he was a Muslim.
Morrison has adamantly denied the claims, but the attacks on his credibility could take a toll on election day, experts say.
“The negative publicity he’s received in terms of his character, ideas that he’s a liar, ideas that he might be a bully … they are playing and resonating in the electorate at the moment,” said Katrina Lee-Koo, an associate professor of politics at Monash University in Melbourne. “And I think they’ll have more of an impact than we’ve seen in previous elections.”
When Morrison first ran for prime minister three years ago, the former marketing executive carefully cultivated his reputation as an Australian everyman, said Williams, the political scientist. But the friendly fire has chipped away at that image.
“It’s not ideological,” Williams said of the party infighting. “That is the damaging thing. The claims are personal: ‘He’s a liar, he’s a hypocrite, he’s a bully, he’s power mad.’ And that is starting to bite.”
Morrison nodded to the mistakes and criticism on Sunday when he said his government “is not perfect” and has some “flaws.” But he sought to portray his coalition as a known quantity, compared with the opposition.
With the campaign officially underway, the onus will be on Labor Party leader Anthony Albanese to introduce himself to voters. As Morrison announced the election date, Albanese was being photographed with puppies and fluffy chicks at the Sydney Royal Easter Show.
Speaking to reporters later, he painted himself as a working-class man with a unified team, in contrast to the infighting among his opponents.
“This government doesn’t have an agenda for today, let alone a vision for tomorrow,” Albanese said.
The election will determine all 151 spots in the House of Representatives, as well as half of the Senate’s 76 seats.
The official start of the campaign happened to coincide with Australia’s first Formula One race in three years. On Sunday morning, television stations cut away from coverage of the Grand Prix to show Morrison driving to see the governor-general, the Queen’s representative in Australia, whom he asked to dissolve Parliament. The dissolution, expected Monday morning, will mean a caretaker government takes over until after the election.
Frances Vinall contributed to this report.
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