Nick Butterly: ScoMo in great rush to connect with voters

When The Great Madness seized the Liberal party room in August, one of the main arguments put in favour of a change in leadership to Peter Dutton was that he would make a better election campaigner than Malcolm Turnbull, particularly in Dutton’s home State of Queensland.

Dutton backers pointed to his record of successfully defending his marginal Brisbane seat, claiming he was the party’s best hope to sandbag or even wrest back other Queensland seats.

The Sunshine State is the key to the modern political contest.

Forget the one or two seats that might switch hands each election in WA — Queensland offers the major political parties a cornucopia of wildly swinging seats, many of which will turn on super local issues such as road projects or suburban health clinics.

The Liberal National Party holds eight seats in Queensland with a margin of less than 4 per cent, meaning on current polls they are likely to fall to Labor — potentially handing government to Bill Shorten before the vote in other States is even tallied.

So when Scott Morrison came through the middle as the compromise leadership candidate, Dutton backers who jumped camps to Morrison consoled themselves with the hope they had still backed a better man to run an election campaign than Turnbull.

Recent evidence has given those MPs pause for thought.

Morrison ran a scrappy campaign in Wentworth, marked by missteps such as the crudely timed announcement the Government was considering moving its embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.

After the loss of the seat, coalition MPs maintained Wentworth was a special case, and voters there were not representative of the broader population.

And campaigning in Queensland this week, Morrison gave worried backbenchers more cause to squirm.

Blitzing marginal seats in Brisbane and the Sunshine Coast, Morrison morphed into a caricature somewhere between Barry McKenzie and Ted Bullpitt, cramming his face with pies and swigging XXXX Gold, while posting a series of cringe-worthy videos to social media in an attempt to speak directly to voters.

Like a teenager who has just discovered Facebook, Morrison appeared guilty of over-sharing.

He spoke to an FM radio station about his “first pash” and released a Spotify playlist of his favourite music, complete with a tune from Wa Wa Nee.

The guitarist from that 1980s synth pop group, Steve Williams, later took to Twitter to disassociate himself from the Prime Minister.

A staged bus tour up the Bruce Highway aboard the “ScoMo Express” emblazoned with the PM’s face came unstuck when local media twigged that Morrison was actually flying aboard a government jet for large parts of the trip.

The theory behind the ScoMo blokey road trip was sound on paper: expunge the Turnbull Toff image that had reportedly landed like a Polly Waffle in a pool in those vital Queensland battleground seats.

But in trying to turn the dial from Mr Harbourside Mansion to League-loving Everyman, Morrison went too far, risking accusations of fakery — maybe the greatest of political sins in the eyes of the Australian voter.

Morrison also risks throwing away any authority that might still come with the office of Prime Minister.

Labor strategists noted this week that the PM seemed determined to play the role of Opposition Leader.

Morrison’s haste to establish himself with voters is palpable.

The Prime Minister now has at best only three or four weeks to attempt to tell his story to the electorate before the dead zone of the Christmas period descends over the political cycle and voters head for the beach to tune out.

After Christmas, the Government will effectively be in an election campaign. The last possible date for a general election is May 18.

A suggestion this week that Morrison might hold a half Senate election in May and push the House of Representatives poll out to later in the year was quickly shot down by the PM, but the fact such a drastic notion was being even vaguely considered shows how time-critical matters have become.