Defeat stalks Australia's Scott Morrison as May poll looms
Speculation that ruling party could switch leaders before general election
Political historian Chris Wallace is an associate professor at the University of Canberra and the author of "How to Win an Election."
Australia's conservative Liberal-National government reeled last week as internal ructions and pandemic policy incompetence made a change of government likely at an election that must be held by May 21.
Opinion polls point to a loss for the ruling coalition as political misjudgments, policy missteps and internal factional fights catch up with Prime Minister Scott Morrison.
On Thursday Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce offered to resign when a March 2021 text in which he described Morrison as a "hypocrite and liar" was made public. His resignation was declined.
Leaked text messages dating from Australia's catastrophic 2020 bush fires between one of his own cabinet ministers and then-New South Wales state Premier Gladys Berejiklian described Morrison as a "fraud," a "psycho" and a "horrible, horrible person" who put politics before people.
During the bush fire crisis, Morrison controversially holidayed with his family in Hawaii and only reluctantly returned home to help. He restored his battered political fortunes, however, and enjoyed a sustained popularity advantage over low-key Labor opposition leader Anthony Albanese.
The reluctance to take responsibility and show national leadership Morrison revealed during the bush fire crisis nevertheless turned out to be characteristic of his prime ministership overall.
Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, Morrison has deflected to state premiers the role Australians traditionally expect their prime minister to fulfill, and in areas of inescapable national responsibility like vaccines and aged care the government has done too little, too late.
This culminated in the stark symbolism last month of the aged care services minister, Sen. Richard Colbeck, who refused to attend a parliamentary hearing into sharply rising nursing home COVID deaths, pleading pressure of work, spending three days attending a cricket match between Australia and England instead.
Though cronyism, poor performance and prime ministerial prevarication have long been evident, Morrison has benefited from a benign environment where media proprietors favor conservatives and journalists have proved unable to puncture the word salad defensive technique the prime minister shares with his British counterpart, Boris Johnson.
The AUKUS deal for the acquisition of nuclear submarines, which saw the government clumsily ditch its $64.2 billion submarine deal with French defense contractor Naval Group, proved a turning point.
When Australian journalists asked French President Emmanuel Macron in November whether he thought Morrison had lied to him about the submarine deal's future, while the AUKUS agreement was secretly being finalized by Australia, Britain and the United States, Macron said, "I don't think -- I know."
The French president's candor proved a reality check for Australian politics. Morrison's ebbing popularity turned into a sharp downhill slide, hastened by mounting pandemic policy failures. Morrison is now a millstone around his own government's neck, emboldening rivals.
This complicates the election scenario since Morrison must now factor in the chance of a last-minute challenge to his leadership. Treasurer Josh Frydenberg and hawkish Defense Minister Peter Dutton, whom Morrison outmaneuvered during the 2018 ousting of Malcolm Turnbull as prime minister, are the leading potential successors.
With a preelection budget scheduled for Mar. 29, the three most likely dates for the election are May 7, May 14 and May 21. Morrison would relish attending a Quad meeting during the campaign to boost voter perceptions of him as a leader of international standing.
Still, he will only be secure in the leadership once parliament has been dissolved and an election date set. Should a challenge appear likely, Morrison could defer the budget and hold an election any Saturday from March onward.
The steady performance of opposition leader Anthony Albanese, backed by a capable front bench, has set the scene for the likely Labor victory.
Albanese has learned and applied the lessons of Labor's 2019 election loss: Policy is not complicated or extravagant, and competence is promised. Discipline has been maintained, with the result that focus is kept on the government's faltering performance.
Albanese hails from an earlier era of Australian politics. The 58-year-old Sydney University political economy graduate was inculcated in the mores of the Hawke and Keating governments as a young political staffer and was elected to parliament in an inner-city Sydney seat in 1996.
The fact he is the son of a single mother, growing up in straitened circumstances in a public housing estate, is a matter of some pride. Albanese enthusiastically recounts his origin story on the campaign trail, where for many Australians, he is still a relatively unknown quantity.
Albanese is a centrist progressive set to bring the kind of open, internationally oriented perspectives to Australia's major contemporary challenges, like climate change and inequality, that were a hallmark of previous Labor governments led by Bob Hawke and Paul Keating. Infrastructure and transport, for which he had responsibility under Prime Ministers Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard, are particular ongoing interests.
As leader of the House -- the minister responsible for the management of government business in Australia's House of Representatives -- in the Rudd and Gillard governments, Albanese's aptitude for negotiation and deal-making shone through. He successfully negotiated an extensive legislative agenda through parliament with the support of independent MPs when Labor lacked a majority.
This talent would prove invaluable if the election results in a hung parliament, where Labor would try to govern with the support of independent MPs as Gillard did.
Shadow foreign minister Sen. Penny Wong, Albanese's closest ally in parliament, would continue Australia's strong commitment to Japan and actively support the Quad security dialogue.
Labor wants to restore Australia's standing as a sophisticated and reliable international citizen after Morrison's ham-handed handling of AUKUS. That opportunity is likely just a few months away.