This week, Australians said goodbye to former Prime Minister Scott Morrison, who will be swapping his seat in parliament for a plum role working for a private defense company in the USA.
The overwhelming sentiment from Australian workers? Good riddance, the Americans can have him.
In true Scomo style, Morrison was keen to distract from his destructive legacy in his final speech to Parliament on Wednesday, more enthusiastic about showing off his Taylor Swift friendship bracelet than demonstrating a shred of reflection on the damage he has caused working people.
As the sun sets on Morrison’s political career, let’s take a trip down memory lane to a time not so long ago, when one man’s actions – and inaction – failed working people, time and time again.
Morrison Missing
Scott Morrison’s prime ministership was defined far more by his absence and lack of accountability than his presence and leadership. The first sign of his escape artist tendencies came to light in the devastating 2019-20 bushfires.
‘I don’t hold a hose, mate.’
Facing criticism for taking a holiday to Hawaii during the 2019-20 Black Summer bushfires, Morrison announced he would be returning to the country, but said his ability to contribute to firefighting efforts was limited: ‘I don’t hold a hose, mate. And I don’t sit in the control room’.
This comment, emblematic of Morrison’s leadership approach, dogged him all the way to the 2022 election. It spoke to one of Morrison’s defining character traits: at the first sign of copping any criticism, he was quick to absolve himself of even the smallest amount of blame.
He led a government wracked by scandals, which deliberately and consistently sought to undermine the pay and conditions of working people. A government that entrenched low wage growth as a matter of policy by:
- Failing to act on wage theft
- Promoting insecure work and the rise of underemployment
- Pretending wages growth is just around the corner
- Failing to act on the gender pay gap
- Undermining collective bargaining
- Capping Commonwealth public sector pay
- Failing to advocate for real wage rises for 1 in 4 workers
- Pretending that fair wage rises cause inflation
On each of these issues he either did nothing, avoided all responsibility, or actively opposed solutions.
‘It’s not a race.’
Another classic Scomo-ism that summed up his mishandling of the Covid-19 pandemic: assuring Australians there was no hurry when it came to implementing a well-organised, comprehensive and accessible vaccination campaign. Instead, he left much of the Covid-19 response to state governments instead.
The slow and messy vaccination of aged care residents resulted in avoidable deaths, and the last-minute dash to vaccinate Indigenous communities exposed the shameful priorities of Morrison’s shambolic Government.
He did do one thing right: listening (reluctantly) to the union movement’s calls for a wage subsidy, designed to support workers and businesses, by implementing JobKeeper. JobKeeper saved workers’ livelihoods and rescued businesses from near-inevitable closure. Its legacy will be protecting workers and the economy in one of the world’s most notable Covid-19 success stories. And that’s a union legacy.
Actively undermining pay and conditions of working people
Morrison was never a friend of working people.
Big banks, though, absolutely: he voted 26 times against a banking Royal Commission, always willing to bat for his big business mates.
But when it came to ordinary Australians, he either implemented egregious anti-worker policy, or was nowhere to be found.
He had zero interest in dealing with the scourge of insecure work, and millions of Australians found themselves caught in Morrison’s trapdoor economy, living in a world where a lost shift or unexpected sick day would tip them into economic and financial distress without support.
This, of course, was by design – and had been Coalition policy for many years.
Former Liberal Treasurer, Matthias Cormann, summed up the Coalition’s position concisely, describing downward wage growth as a ‘deliberate design feature of our economic architecture’. This was an ideological position Morrison doubled down on.
Morrison’s wage-stalling put extreme pressure on family budgets, and the consequences of almost a decade of Coalition wage flattening are still being felt today in the current cost-of-living crisis.
Be a part of the mighty union movement
Morrison’s successor, Peter Dutton, is following in his predecessor’s footsteps: relentlessly opposing the rights of working people; demonstrated by doing everything in his power to oppose the Closing Loopholes Bill, which contained essential reforms for working Australians.
Dutton is even promising to wind back important reforms like the recently-won Right to Disconnect if elected.
For all the damage Morrison did during his time in office, substantial progress is being made to repair and rebuild thanks to the efforts of union members.
The Closing Loopholes Bill Parts 1 and 2 have passed Parliament, securing a slew of wins for working Australians. From criminalising wage theft to to same job same pay laws in the labour hire industry, as well as new rights for union delegates and a commonsense definition of casual employment (replacing changes that Morrison made to the law in 2021 that meant fewer rights for casual workers).
Union members also helped put pressure on the Albanese Government to revise Morrison’s inequitable Stage 3 tax cuts. Thanks to these efforts, now every Australian will receive a cost-of-living bonus this year.
Change doesn’t happen overnight, but we are already seeing positive trends, with wages growing by 4.2% in late 2023, the highest increase in over 14 years.
As the past two years have shown, when unionists come together to win change, we have the power to vote out anti-worker governments and lead transformative social change.
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Good riddance, Scomo