As the most recent polls show, Australian PM Scott Morrison has been politically damaged by the fallout from this summer’s bushfires. No small blame is due to Morrison’s foolish miscalculation of the public mood, but much also stems from the subsequent hysterical opportunism of the political left and their camp-followers in the legacy media. But Morrison is nothing if not a survivor, as his wresting of victory in last May’s election shows.
Morrison is already moving to repair, not just the physical damage wreaked by the fires, but the political damage inflicted by his opponents. Many of whom he is moving to hold to account for their own disastrous failings.
Scott Morrison has flagged strengthening the constitutional and legal powers of the commonwealth to allow prime ministers to declare national disasters and call in the Defence Force rather than waiting for the states to ask for assistance.
The Australian understands the Prime Minister will also shift the Coalition’s posture on climate change and elevate preparation, resilience and adaptability to increasingly extreme events to a national security footing…He will also focus on the government’s economic plan as a successful formula by making a virtue of fiscal discipline that has given the government the ability to respond to disasters.
Some of this is plain, old political narrative-setting: Morrison is moving to ally the Coalition’s traditional strength – economic management – to emergency management. This is not all just spin, either. As the wildly differing outcomes from recent natural disasters around the world show, well-off, well-managed countries will sail all-but-unscathed through disasters that, in poorer, less-prepared countries, inflict staggering losses.
But Morrison is also sailing into untested constitutional waters.
Mr Morrison will call for a more immediate role for the ADF in future disasters and consider an overhaul of constitutional and legal frameworks to hand greater powers to the commonwealth to respond to natural disasters…
Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews called for Defence help in late December at the height of the bushfire crisis and the navy evacuated stranded holidaymakers from Mallacoota.
The NSW government early this month declined an offer from the Prime Minister to deploy a fleet of naval ships and military helicopters to help with evacuations from the state’s south coast.
Traditionally, conservative governments have zealously protected Australian federalism and states’ rights. But, in this case, the egregious failures of almost exclusively left-wing state governments seems to demand action. The simple fact is that under the constitutional rules as they are currently understood, the federal government cannot unilaterally send in the troops on Australian soil. Victoria waited until the last minute when thousands had fled to the beaches to escape the flames, to ask for Commonwealth assistance. NSW flatly refused. The Queensland premier didn’t even deign to interrupt her holidays.
Yet it was Morrison who copped the political blame from the public, and worse, from a legacy media either too ignorant or too biased to bother telling the public the truth. Unsurprisingly, Morrison seems determined that blame be sheeted home where it’s most richly deserved. Even if he has to re-write commonwealth-state relations in order to pull negligent states into line.
The Prime Minister will also pledge to introduce an enhanced national accountability for “natural disaster risk management, resilience and preparedness”.
Mr Morrison last week called for a national standard for bushfire hazard reduction burns and declared that tracking measures to cut fuel loads was at least as important as monitoring Australia’s carbon emissions.
theaustralian.com.au/nation/politics/scott-morrisons-bid-to-boost-defence-force-disaster-powers
Despite the fears of Coalition voters who emphatically rejected the sort of “climate action” demanded by the left, Morrison isn’t about to bow to the Krazy Klimate Kult. Instead, he’s determined to reset the national discourse, to focus on the real causes of Australia’s periodic mega-fires, rather than futile tilting at carbon windmills.
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