{"id":4639,"date":"2020-01-06T17:20:42","date_gmt":"2020-01-06T07:20:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sams-blog.com\/?p=4639"},"modified":"2023-06-20T14:30:34","modified_gmt":"2023-06-20T04:30:34","slug":"with-one-vote-majority-morrison-still-fears-he-will-lose-leadership","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sams-blog.com\/?p=4639","title":{"rendered":"With two-vote majority, Morrison still fears he will lose leadership"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>When Scott Morrison led the Liberal-National Coalition to victory in the last federal election in May, he was greeted as some kind of superman, mainly because all the polls had predicted a Labor win, and by a substantial margin too.<\/p>\n<p>All the political pundits crowed that this win gave the Australian Prime Minister complete authority to govern as he wished, and the chance to implement policies of his liking.<\/p>\n<p>Nobody pointed out that after the dust had settled, Morrison still only had a majority of two, just one more than his predecessor Malcolm Turnbull enjoyed for much of his tenure.<br \/>\n<!--more--><br \/>\nAnd that two-seat majority is the reason why Morrison has seemed to be deaf, dumb and blind to the horrific fires that have swept the country and that will continue to do so for a couple of months more.<\/p>\n<p>He cannot even entertain the thought of making a neutral statement on the question of climate change as he fears that could well open the door to another leadership challenge and the loss of the prime ministership.<\/p>\n<p>One is unsure why mainstream political writers have not noticed this simple fact. The group of MPs who are closely tied to the coal industry and who have been behind the Coalition&#8217;s leadership woes in 2018 are still very much there.<\/p>\n<p>Tony Abbott may have gone but everyone else is around and they are more than ready to rise up and agitate again if Morrison even breathes a word about energy policy.<\/p>\n<p>So Morrison has no choice but to pretend that nothing has changed from his earlier stance that there is no definite evidence that climate change is responsible for the intensity of the fires that have been seen.<\/p>\n<p>As a marketing man, his responses have been crude, but then that is par for the course. When have you seen someone in marketing act in a manner that can be called empathetic?<\/p>\n<p>Leadership hopefuls like Christian Porter and Peter Dutton may well be taking the temperature of the party and one should not be surprised if another leadership challenge is seen once the politicians return to Canberra.<\/p>\n<p>Everyone wants to be prime minister. Whether anyone can actually <strong>lead<\/strong> is an entirely different question.<br \/>\n<!-- Start of StatCounter Code for Default Guide --><br \/>\n<script type=\"text\/javascript\">\nvar sc_project=2720500; \nvar sc_invisible=1; \nvar sc_security=\"d25d8712\"; \nvar scJsHost = ((\"https:\" == document.location.protocol) ?\n\"https:\/\/secure.\" : \"http:\/\/www.\");\ndocument.write(\"<sc\"+\"ript type='text\/javascript' src='\" + scJsHost+ \"statcounter.com\/counter\/counter.js'><\/\"+\"script>\");\n<\/script><br \/>\n<noscript><\/p>\n<div class=\"statcounter\"><a title=\"Web Analytics\" href=\"http:\/\/statcounter.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"statcounter\" src=\"\/\/c.statcounter.com\/2720500\/0\/d25d8712\/1\/\" alt=\"Web Analytics\"><\/a><\/div>\n<p><\/noscript><br \/>\n<!-- End of StatCounter Code for Default Guide --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When Scott Morrison led the Liberal-National Coalition to victory in the last federal election in May, he was greeted as some kind of superman, mainly because all the polls had predicted a Labor win, and by a substantial margin too. All the political pundits crowed that this win gave the Australian Prime Minister complete authority &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/sams-blog.com\/?p=4639\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;With two-vote majority, Morrison still fears he will lose leadership&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3,21,27,18,28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4639","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-australia","category-climate-change","category-government","category-media","category-politics"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":5181,"url":"https:\/\/sams-blog.com\/?p=5181","url_meta":{"origin":4639,"position":0},"title":"Is Scott Morrison really a Christian?","date":"April 15, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"Politicians normally try to keep their private lives separate from their public personas. And the media generally respect this separation, unless any probing can be justified as being in the public interest. But some politicians purposely ventilate aspects of their private lives when they feel that it will help them\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Australia&quot;","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/sams-blog.com\/wp-content\/sams-blog.com\/2022\/04\/scott_morrison2-300x171.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2842,"url":"https:\/\/sams-blog.com\/?p=2842","url_meta":{"origin":4639,"position":1},"title":"Suffer little children: Scott Morrison is an expert","date":"September 29, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"But Jesus said, Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven. - Gospel of St Matthew, Chapter 19, verse 14 NO DOUBT, this morning, two practising Christians will attend their respective churches and worship their God. Tony Abbott, the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Asylum-seekers&quot;","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5106,"url":"https:\/\/sams-blog.com\/?p=5106","url_meta":{"origin":4639,"position":2},"title":"Blah, blah, blah: Scott Morrison goes on and on and on","date":"March 12, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"Listening to the Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison speak is a painful experience. The man does not seem to know when to stop, even when he is answering pointed questions; he just waffles on and on, giving one the impression that he is trying to exhaust the time available to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Australia&quot;","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i2.wp.com\/sams-blog.com\/wp-content\/sams-blog.com\/2022\/03\/paddle-steamer.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":5599,"url":"https:\/\/sams-blog.com\/?p=5599","url_meta":{"origin":4639,"position":3},"title":"COVID travel ban: Morrison Government opens itself up to claims of discrimination","date":"May 1, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"The Morrison Government in Australia has opened itself up to discriminating between countries when it comes to allowing people to enter the country after it put in place a ban on people from India coming into Australia after the outbreak of COVID-19 in India went out of control. When similar\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Australia&quot;","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4825,"url":"https:\/\/sams-blog.com\/?p=4825","url_meta":{"origin":4639,"position":4},"title":"AFR's Aaron Patrick shows us what gutter journalism is all about","date":"March 31, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"Australian journalists often criticise each other, with those on the right tending to go for those on the left and vice versa. But, generally, in these stoushes, details of people's private lives are not revealed. But there are exceptions, and one of those was witnessed on March 31, when Aaron\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Australia&quot;","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i2.wp.com\/sams-blog.com\/wp-content\/sams-blog.com\/2021\/03\/blah_blah.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2444,"url":"https:\/\/sams-blog.com\/?p=2444","url_meta":{"origin":4639,"position":5},"title":"Coalition dog-whistles as the election countdown continues","date":"February 28, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"THE Liberal-National coalition which forms the opposition in Australia has just confirmed that it is the party of xenophobes by proposing that whenever asylum-seekers are allowed to move into a neighbourhood on bridging visas, the people staying there and the police should be notified. This is dog-whistle politics of the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Asylum-seekers&quot;","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sams-blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4639","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sams-blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sams-blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sams-blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sams-blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4639"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/sams-blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4639\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5422,"href":"https:\/\/sams-blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4639\/revisions\/5422"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sams-blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4639"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sams-blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4639"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sams-blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4639"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}