Post by pim on Feb 27, 2021 22:27:34 GMT 10
The reality: the guy has a tin ear and just doesn’t get it. George Megalogenis is quite scathing ...
Brittany Higgins exposes PM’s failure to lead
George Megalogenis 26 February 2021 www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/brittany-higgins-exposes-pm-s-failure-to-lead-20210226-p57628.html
Scott Morrison has talked himself into a unique place of discomfort for a prime minister. He has become the middle-aged white bloke who must decide whether to defend Australian masculinity, or place it on trial.
The idea that a question so fundamental to our sense of self as a people would arise on his watch would have been absurd a fortnight ago. But it was inevitable once we learned that a young woman who worked for Morrison’s government had been allegedly raped by a colleague in Parliament House. Inevitable because the Prime Minister’s first instinct was to see the story of Brittany Higgins politically. He sensed the issue would be damaging for his government, and took the short cut of denial. He wanted the public to know he wasn’t told by anyone in his office or his ministry before the news broke on February 15.
This is the prime miniature who reckons nobody tells him anything and whose ministers know better than to tell him stuff he doesn’t want to know about
He has taken that argument to the strangest place of all, where he says he is aware of rumours on the Labor side, as well as his own, but not the specific allegation of a violent crime against Higgins, committed just 50 metres from his own office. “Once again, the Leader of the Opposition can come to this dispatch box, seek to state these matters and seek to pointscore on them,” Morrison told Parliament on Wednesday. “But the issue that is here is the issue that we all must address. These matters, as we know, are not confined to any one side of politics in this building.”
That need to be blameless at all times echoes the self-sabotaging stand he took during the black summer of fires, when he said he didn’t hold a hose, mate. He didn’t start the fires, and it was the responsibility of the states to put them out.
What Morrison missed then, and needs reminding now, is that the public expects him to lead. At a time of national trauma, Australians want their Prime Minister to play two roles at once: to comfort and to inspire. “Here’s what we are doing to fix the immediate problem. Here’s how I will the turn the challenge of this crisis into an opportunity for reform.”
The leadership test for Morrison extends beyond the toxicity of his own workplace to the very foundation of our society. I’m not sure he understands how deep this scar runs. Misogyny is the second sin of Australia’s settlement after dispossession. It is there in his own family tree, if he cares to consider it from the perspective of the female convicts.
Remember that Morrison is unusually invested in two particular stories of Australian settlement: that James Cook was an enlightened man, and that the British convicts of the First Fleet suffered almost as much as the First Australians. Both fit with the narrative of national innocence that John Howard first fleshed out in the 1990s, when he said the present generation of Australians should not be expected to apologise for the past because they didn’t take the lands, or steal the children.
Leaving aside his occasional sloppy takes on colonial history, Morrison’s starting point has always been that we should judge the explorers and governors and the convicts and settlers in the context of their times, and marvel at what we have become: a prosperous, cohesive society. He has the story of his own convict ancestors to prove it. His fifth great grandfather William Roberts was transported on the First Fleet, and his fifth great grandmother Kezia Brown sailed on one of the death ships on the Second Fleet.
Roberts happened to be there on February 7, 1788 when our first governor, Arthur Phillip, held a formal ceremony to mark the establishment of the open-air prison camp at Sydney Cove. The convict women had come to shore the previous day, and historians have smateed for decades about the extent of the debauchery. What is beyond dispute is that on the morning of the seventh, Phillip “harangued the convicts, telling them … that he was now thoroughly convinced there were many amongst them incorrigable [sic], and that he was persuaded nothing but severity would have any effect upon them, to induce them to behave properly in future”.
Here’s the context of that time which sadly applies for all time in Australia: “He also assured them that if they attempted to get into the women’s tents of a night there were positive orders for firing upon them.”
Phillip knew something then that remains true to this day. Real leaders understand what some men are capable of. But they are prepared to address every man, young and old, to ensure the message of respect is understood. Morrison is not there yet, because he is still sweating the minutiae of blame-shifting.
Morrison would have noted this week that Higgins’ alleged attacker may have returned to Parliament House in the second half of 2019, after he was sacked from the office of the then minister of defence industry, Linda Reynolds, in March that year. The Guardian reported a former colleague saying the man was in the building for a small, private event associated with the 250th anniversary of Captain Cook’s Endeavour voyage.
What the Prime Minister learned last January, after returning from an ill-advised holiday to Hawaii, was that Australians are in no mood for platitudes when their community is under threat. Such an obvious point looking back, but he had to see it for himself, in the handshakes he couldn’t secure when he visited fire-ravaged townships. The lesson was tattooed across his forehead when the coronavirus launched its silent assault on Australia later that month. From now on, he would not just lead but listen to the experts and collaborate with the premiers and chief ministers.
In a rare moment of public self-reflection, while the fires still raged across the continent, Morrison was prepared to admit that he deserved to be yelled at. “Whether they’re angry with me or they’re angry about this situation, all I know is that they’re hurting,” he told Melbourne radio host Neil Mitchell. “And it’s my job to be there to try and offer some comfort and support. That’s my job. I don’t take these things personally.”
It says something about our leader, and about us as a people, that he had to be subjected to this level of disrespect before he changed course. But it is also important to note how quickly Australians were prepared to believe in Morrison once the pandemic struck. His job satisfaction rating has been above 60 per cent in every published poll since last April. In January 2020, it averaged just 38 per cent. It is time for the Prime Minister to listen again to the genuine anger of the women and men of Australia without taking it personally.
George Megalogenis 26 February 2021 www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/brittany-higgins-exposes-pm-s-failure-to-lead-20210226-p57628.html
Scott Morrison has talked himself into a unique place of discomfort for a prime minister. He has become the middle-aged white bloke who must decide whether to defend Australian masculinity, or place it on trial.
The idea that a question so fundamental to our sense of self as a people would arise on his watch would have been absurd a fortnight ago. But it was inevitable once we learned that a young woman who worked for Morrison’s government had been allegedly raped by a colleague in Parliament House. Inevitable because the Prime Minister’s first instinct was to see the story of Brittany Higgins politically. He sensed the issue would be damaging for his government, and took the short cut of denial. He wanted the public to know he wasn’t told by anyone in his office or his ministry before the news broke on February 15.
This is the prime miniature who reckons nobody tells him anything and whose ministers know better than to tell him stuff he doesn’t want to know about
He has taken that argument to the strangest place of all, where he says he is aware of rumours on the Labor side, as well as his own, but not the specific allegation of a violent crime against Higgins, committed just 50 metres from his own office. “Once again, the Leader of the Opposition can come to this dispatch box, seek to state these matters and seek to pointscore on them,” Morrison told Parliament on Wednesday. “But the issue that is here is the issue that we all must address. These matters, as we know, are not confined to any one side of politics in this building.”
That need to be blameless at all times echoes the self-sabotaging stand he took during the black summer of fires, when he said he didn’t hold a hose, mate. He didn’t start the fires, and it was the responsibility of the states to put them out.
What Morrison missed then, and needs reminding now, is that the public expects him to lead. At a time of national trauma, Australians want their Prime Minister to play two roles at once: to comfort and to inspire. “Here’s what we are doing to fix the immediate problem. Here’s how I will the turn the challenge of this crisis into an opportunity for reform.”
The leadership test for Morrison extends beyond the toxicity of his own workplace to the very foundation of our society. I’m not sure he understands how deep this scar runs. Misogyny is the second sin of Australia’s settlement after dispossession. It is there in his own family tree, if he cares to consider it from the perspective of the female convicts.
Remember that Morrison is unusually invested in two particular stories of Australian settlement: that James Cook was an enlightened man, and that the British convicts of the First Fleet suffered almost as much as the First Australians. Both fit with the narrative of national innocence that John Howard first fleshed out in the 1990s, when he said the present generation of Australians should not be expected to apologise for the past because they didn’t take the lands, or steal the children.
Leaving aside his occasional sloppy takes on colonial history, Morrison’s starting point has always been that we should judge the explorers and governors and the convicts and settlers in the context of their times, and marvel at what we have become: a prosperous, cohesive society. He has the story of his own convict ancestors to prove it. His fifth great grandfather William Roberts was transported on the First Fleet, and his fifth great grandmother Kezia Brown sailed on one of the death ships on the Second Fleet.
Roberts happened to be there on February 7, 1788 when our first governor, Arthur Phillip, held a formal ceremony to mark the establishment of the open-air prison camp at Sydney Cove. The convict women had come to shore the previous day, and historians have smateed for decades about the extent of the debauchery. What is beyond dispute is that on the morning of the seventh, Phillip “harangued the convicts, telling them … that he was now thoroughly convinced there were many amongst them incorrigable [sic], and that he was persuaded nothing but severity would have any effect upon them, to induce them to behave properly in future”.
Here’s the context of that time which sadly applies for all time in Australia: “He also assured them that if they attempted to get into the women’s tents of a night there were positive orders for firing upon them.”
Phillip knew something then that remains true to this day. Real leaders understand what some men are capable of. But they are prepared to address every man, young and old, to ensure the message of respect is understood. Morrison is not there yet, because he is still sweating the minutiae of blame-shifting.
Morrison would have noted this week that Higgins’ alleged attacker may have returned to Parliament House in the second half of 2019, after he was sacked from the office of the then minister of defence industry, Linda Reynolds, in March that year. The Guardian reported a former colleague saying the man was in the building for a small, private event associated with the 250th anniversary of Captain Cook’s Endeavour voyage.
What the Prime Minister learned last January, after returning from an ill-advised holiday to Hawaii, was that Australians are in no mood for platitudes when their community is under threat. Such an obvious point looking back, but he had to see it for himself, in the handshakes he couldn’t secure when he visited fire-ravaged townships. The lesson was tattooed across his forehead when the coronavirus launched its silent assault on Australia later that month. From now on, he would not just lead but listen to the experts and collaborate with the premiers and chief ministers.
In a rare moment of public self-reflection, while the fires still raged across the continent, Morrison was prepared to admit that he deserved to be yelled at. “Whether they’re angry with me or they’re angry about this situation, all I know is that they’re hurting,” he told Melbourne radio host Neil Mitchell. “And it’s my job to be there to try and offer some comfort and support. That’s my job. I don’t take these things personally.”
It says something about our leader, and about us as a people, that he had to be subjected to this level of disrespect before he changed course. But it is also important to note how quickly Australians were prepared to believe in Morrison once the pandemic struck. His job satisfaction rating has been above 60 per cent in every published poll since last April. In January 2020, it averaged just 38 per cent. It is time for the Prime Minister to listen again to the genuine anger of the women and men of Australia without taking it personally.