His type should never be seen again. Born from the dark well of swill and advertising, former Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison was always the apotheosis of politics’ worst tendencies: shallow form, public service for private interest, and, ultimately, the scrap for survival at the expense of the grand vision. Get the vote, keep the seat. Get the party in, forget the intellectual or social picture. Bugger the broader society with a hefty stick, sod the beastly populace, betray your colleagues and everybody else besides: there is only me, Scomo, the man who will reliably fail you at every turn and stab you in the front, given a chance.
In a January 23 Facebook post, Morrison announced his decision to – and here, his priorities are clear – “leave parliament at the end of February to take on new challenges in the global corporate sector and spend more time with my family.” Making the announcement now would “give my party ample time to select a great new candidate who I know will do what’s best for our community and bring fresh energy and commitment to the job.”
This was the sort of thing he should have done months ago, along with a few other former Coalition MPs. Depart, disappear, vanish into history’s chronicles on refuse. But Morrison is fastidious about soiling venerable institutions on his terms. He does not so much dismantle as vandalise them in his own inimitable way. Given the chance, he is likely to head off with his host’s toilet seat.
As a federal member for the seat of Cook, his lack of attention to the burghers must surely have been noted after his electoral defeat in May 2022. Local representation, if taken seriously, is a grind, a series of constituency concerns, attending events and yawning at meetings. It’s hard to tend to such things if you are on the payroll of the Hudson Institute being praised for countering “an increasingly assertive China in the Indo Pacific and beyond” or spending time in Israel praising that state’s execrable efforts in quashing aspirations for Palestinian statehood.
None of this bothers the departing Morrison as being inconsistent. He can still say in his official statement of departure that he was “able to deliver new and upgraded sport and community infrastructure, such as major upgrades to our local surf clubs and new artistic installations and visitor facilities being provided at Cook’s landing site at Kurnell.” And let’s not forget the charity work, the grants programs, and the activities he had a minimal hand in.
That remains Morrison’s talent: greased enough to wriggle out of failure; an opportunist determined to take credit for the successes of others. Take one example. Australia’s attempts to prevent the transmission and spread of COVID-19 during the global pandemic was mostly aided by the variable policies of the country’s states and territories. The Commonwealth merely turned off the tap to visitors and, scandalously, Australian citizens desperate to return to their homeland. Stranded, often impecunious, and left without resources in countries being ravaged by the coronavirus, such citizens were demonised rather than aided.
Morrison’s sole obligation, at that point, was to make sure that vaccines being developed would be made available to the public in due course. Instead of ensuring standard, ready supply when the time came, the rollout, as it was termed, was a stuttering affair. But the then Australian PM had a familiar retort: global supply lines had been “choked”. Again, he wasn’t to blame.
The list of errors and stumbles is extensive, showing varying degrees of callousness and indifference. When parts of Australia were being incinerated by bush fires in the latter part of 2019, he thought it wise to take an unannounced holiday to Hawaii. He was forced to admit “regret” for “any offence caused to any of the many Australians affected by the terrible bushfires by my taking leave with family at this time.”
Like a walking advertisement of anachronism, he loved the fossil fuel industry with such passion he brought a lump of coal into Parliament to assure fellow lawmakers that they need not fear it. He issued directives that the words “climate change” would not feature in environmental talks Australian diplomats would participate in. He scorned the Pacific Island states for worrying about disappearing under the sea because Australia was not pulling its weight in cutting green-house gas emissions.
As a proponent of cruelty and plain sadism, Morrison’s true Pentecostal spirit was also on show. As immigration minister, he presided over the “turn back the boats” policy of the Abbott government, treating the naval arrival of refugees and asylum seekers as a national security threat. Towing boats out to sea, bribing traffickers to return, and sending broken, traumatised people to such Pacific prison outposts as Manus Island and Nauru, were all cloaked in the secrecy of Operation Sovereign Borders. When the New York Times interviewed Morrison after becoming prime minister, the paper noticed that, “His office features a model migrant boat bearing the proud declaration ‘I Stopped These’.”
His qualifications as a dinner circuit speaker, boring lecturer, tedious advisor, and outrageously paid consultant, are next to nil. But near the universe of zero, the cusp of talent’s infinite absence, opportunities bloom. The corporate entities and think tanks, many keen to ensure the enduring power of the US imperium, will barely notice the man’s colossal ignorance, his cultural insensitivity, his lack of education. What mattered was that he could be Washington’s stalking horse in the Indo Pacific.
Eventually, the member for Cook proved to be more than just that. He would go so far as to sell off Australian sovereignty for a song via the AUKUS security agreement promising nuclear powered submarines, leaving the Australian taxpayer in bondage to Washington for the next half-century. What a triumph that was, and if Samuel Johnson was right in calling patriotism the last refuge of the scoundrel, he would have had someone like Morrison in mind: the figure who uses patriotism as a guise for his own scoundrel cunning.
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Scott Blocked-Bowel remains a leading candidate for worst ever public figure. Parasitical outlook, demented mentality, deluded duncery, podpolishing shiner, a burden on any employer, emotionally stunted, ethically deficient, morally arid, a manless, a gutless, a brainless, a turd among roses, a lingering stench, a filthy failure, king Maggot. Stifling superstitious shit stinks and infects.
Try substituting Albanese for Morrison in “shallow form, public service for private interest, and, ultimately, the scrap for survival at the expense of the grand vision. Get the vote, keep the seat. Get the party in, forget the intellectual or social picture. Bugger the broader society with a hefty stick, sod the beastly populace, betray your colleagues and everybody else besides: there is only me, Scomo, the man who will reliably fail you at every turn and stab you in the front, given a chance.”
Is there that much that’s different?
Scomo: the ultimate self serving, self praising con man.
Gonggongche,
Great comment. Albanese as useless and maybe even more duplicitous and cunning than Morrison.
Australia has been sucker punched with the b%^&*(^s supposed to be running the place.
A population of lemmings only interested in gambling, sport and the next celebrity “Breaking news” story.
What a waste
Gonggongche, so neatly put.
If it could be bottled, it’d be French champagne.
=======================
The bod some of them want is in fact, Abbott.
Silly Susssssssssssssssssan is for the block, not reactionary enough ( if you can believe it?)
A lucky country run by third rate chancers,aided and abetted by a colluding media and endemic apathy.
Fertile grounds for the neoliberal rapists.It has worked out so well.
Again, Binoy – you are too kind to the seemingly departed-from-the-scene ScoMo. He’s still around, in a sense. Like the less gloriously awful Christopher Pyne, dear Scott went straight into the welcoming arms of the weapons-making advisory industry.
And – to Gongongche – the comparison with Albanese is unfair. Albanese continues to try to do some good things, notably to separate Australian foreign policy from slavishly being glued to American policy. Albanese is doing this as much as any Australian Prime Minister could dare – bearing in mind what happened to Gough Whitlam, and will surely happen again if a PM were to be so rash as to confront the USA.
I was excited when shorten became leader as I remembered Beaconsfield. Sadly he didn’t and never addressed the loss in 2013. The rabbott proved shithouse, yet shorten never exposed him and the lnp weaknesses but the lnp knew, so changed leaders. Shorten still dithered and we got a tax avoiding twit. Then lnp used the same tactic with scummo taking the leader’s guernsey and shorten, still the silent hopeful, got his 3rd loss and we got our 3rd self interested ratbag pm.
Hi Noel
am I being unfair? Possibly of course.
“shallow form” – gaslighting and smearing the Greens at every opportunity, bald-faced lies to the public, a pattern of dismissive behaviour;
“public service for private interest” – look at the money going to rugby;
“the scrap for survival at the expense of the grand vision” – name one desparately needed but politically risky reform that has been undertaken;
“Get the vote, keep the seat. Get the party in, forget the intellectual or social picture.” – opening new gas and coal fields, gambling reform;
“Bugger the broader society with a hefty stick, sod the beastly populace” – AUKUS, subservience to the US and Zionists;
“betray your colleagues” – Tanya?”everybody else besides” – AUKUS
“there is only me, ‘the teen raised in a commission home doing his best to help his mum’, the man who will reliably fail ‘people living in poverty’ at every turn and stab you in the front, given a chance.”- ‘No one will be left behind’
Yeah, you might be right, but I was only scratching the surface of examples; shall we agree to watch this space.
“Albanese continues to try to do some good things, notably to separate Australian foreign policy from slavishly being glued to American policy.” My opinion: it’s plausible deniability, they are just doing enough to satisfy the public with ‘we did this, this, this’ whilst not solving any problems that Labor’s donors wouldn’t like solved. It’s political theatre.
I believe Australia needs to desparately get out of the ‘Labor is trying’ mindset and take an objective look at what is happening under Labor. To cut it short, under Labor, the wealthy and corporate elites are getting far, far richer and the poor are getting poorer.
Likewise with “notably to separate Australian foreign policy from slavishly being glued to American policy”; AUKUS, support for a depraved, sadistic genocide, support for an unprovoked attack on Iran, rejection of cooperation with China for each others mutual benefit in combating the tariffs, accelerated building of US bases on Australian soil to threaten China, there has been so much in the news over Labor’s term to suggest otherwise, that I don’t think I could say anything that is going to change your mindset.
No doubt, many, possibly including yourself, would be saying I’m the one with a closed mind; and maybe with good cause, biases and cognitive disonance are easier to spot in others than oneself.
Noel
Thanks for bringing up Christopher Pyne. This is the guy who accelerated Australian weapons manufacture for export. When asked something along the lines of aren’t these weapons for killing people, Pyne’s response was (again, I believe something along the lines of) oh, no harms going to come from this, and everyone’s doing it so why should we miss out.
Well, he, Hockey and Morrison certainly seem to be making sure they’re not missing out on the deep trough AUKUS will be; they’ve been positioning they’re snouts in wait for the goodies, like some Israeli sniper overlooking a Gazan playground.
Don’t watch the media that Pyne infests, but I’ve not seen any reports of him saying ‘oh, what’s the harm in the odd genocide.’ Has he gone all quiet on the harm weapons cause?
Why has Scott Morrison not been arrested for Robodebt? Has the High Court of Australia or our Constitution granted him immunity from prosecution too? Not just a criminal and corruption, but a crime against the whole nation affecting millions in which many suffered and some died, even apart from his crimes against humanity, both refugees and Australians. And now he’s jumped ship for Trump in USA, undermining ‘hurting Australia’ playing defacto ‘poxy’ proxy Prime Minister. He should be deported and charged for treason.
And the current gov is too scared to sink the Aukus Subs. This rat made sure the rats have multiplied.
Why haven’t Albanese, Dreyfus and Wong been referred to the ICC by now as war criminals?
https://johnmenadue.com/post/2025/10/time-for-a-just-peace-for-all-peoples-in-palestine/
Macron and, I believe, the Netherlands leadership have been referred to the ICC.
There’s ample evidence.
Striking how much the photo of Morrison resembles ‘Jabba The Hut’ of Star Wars!
I agree with Noel,
Maybe never has politics & diplomacy been so complex and fragile. Oz, to a large extent is beholden to foreign policy, which at present is a nightmarish navigation, especially given the predominance of T-Rump transactional vengeance. Albo seems to be doing a pretty good job given the multi-directional shifting ground. And sadly, that may mean keeping stum, and our powder dry.
And amongst all that, competing for markets, investment and skilled labour shortages, whilst governing for all in Oz.