After the weekend’s Hunter Valley state by-election won by the Nats, PM Morrison is cock-a-whoop. He says:
- Working-class voters love the Coalition.
- They are aspirational not victims.
- Wages only rise when businesses grow.
The blundering Morrison has done a great job of refashioning his immense mistakes into a working-class welfare spendathon and now we get the rebranding for it. Let’s not forget that the truth of it is:
- Morrison gaffes have cut the Hunter off from its major export market in China.
- Morrison repeatedly tried and failed to reopen borders mid-pandemic.
- Morrison butchered the vaccine rollout but has now rebranded that as permanently closed borders.
- Rapegate and aged care failures have been rebranded with huge new spending creating big government.
- The Coalition has crushed wages for eight years via immigration.
But! Owing to backflips in the last six months on this ceaseless blundering, the Morrison Government is now a traditional Labor outfit supporting protectionism, closed borders, higher wages, middle-class welfare, big government and the advancement of women.
Of course, if he is re-elected, much of it will go into hard reverse, especially the hard borders.
But, for now, Morrison is more Labor than Labor has been for decades and with Albo running a small target strategy what is there to challenge it?
Finally, we might take a moment to ask does the Hunter result actually reflect the Morrison rhetoric? Or is it just more rebranding?
After all, the loss was largely driven by an 8.6% swing away from Labor to independent Kirsty O’Connell who is dead against coal mining.
