Bulldozed by Niki Savva

Author:Niki Savva
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: POL000000, POL015000, POL055000, POL008000
Publisher: Scribe Publications Pty Ltd
Published: 2022-12-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER ELEVEN

No Way to Reset the Reset

The night before Morrison’s fateful 1 February 2022 appearance at the National Press Club, Tony Abbott christened his new office at 25 Martin Place in Sydney. The blessing was delivered by his friend and father confessor, George Pell, with guests including luminaries such as the New South Wales premier, Dominic Perrottet, former prime minister John Howard, Brian Loughnane, Dallas McInerney, and Piers Akerman.

Abbott told his friends that night that Morrison’s problem was that he was not giving people a compelling reason to re-elect him. It was impossible to argue with that. There was a sense of impending doom. Omicron had wrecked the summer, wrecked any chance that an election would be called on Australia Day for March, and almost certainly wrecked Morrison’s re-election prospects.

Morrison was in deep trouble, with no clear way of getting himself out of it. He did not have a a single policy to bless himself with.

Around the same time, Labor’s national secretary, Paul Erickson, who never allowed himself to dream of victory, surveyed the polls — public and private were aligned — saying that if the Coalition was still as far behind by the time of the budget, scheduled for 29 March, it would be carrying such a heavy load it would be unlikely to get lift-off.

His counterpart, the Liberals’ federal director, Andrew Hirst, could read the polls as well as Erickson. He knew how tough it was going to be, as did Morrison, who was telling colleagues what was happening was ‘existential’.

There was no proper explanation for the shortage of rapid antigen tests. Apart from the fact that the Australian Medical Association had advised a national strategy was needed, the government itself knew how vital they would be. On 14 September 2021, the health minister, Greg Hunt, was gung-ho about RATs, promising they would be available soon:

Rapid antigen testing will play a big part in Australia’s pathway out of lockdown, and so I have asked the TGA [Therapeutic Goods Administration] to rapidly consider the role of rapid antigen tests, and they will be going through that process.

They are already assessing and approving the rapid antigen tests themselves, and now on the basis of their medical advice, I’m hopeful that these tests will be available at the earliest possible time for workplaces and then subsequently, once we have the support of AHPPC [Australian Health Protection Principal Committee], within the home.

But rapid antigen tests will be available in workplaces and soon enough in the home environment.

They weren’t. So, in January 2022, Morrison said it was up to the states to secure supplies for their needs — which, strictly speaking, was true, but he was the national leader of the national cabinet. Again, it sounded like blame-shifting.

His first real opportunity to claw back some ground after being dragged down again, to reset his agenda — or indeed to set one — was at the National Press Club on 1 February.

First up, he refused to accept Laura Tingle’s invitation to make a clean

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