Scott morrison

‘Scott Morrison is empathetic – without the “em”.’ Those words, spoken on Friday by the Labor party frontbencher Jason Clare, on a national breakfast programme, perfectly encapsulated how Scott Morrison was defeated in the Australian election on Saturday. Morrison wasn’t saved by his economic management (this Friday Australia’s unemployment rate was confirmed as 3.9 per cent, the lowest in 50 years). Nor by the fact that Australia’s post-Covid economic bounce-back was one of the biggest and quickest in the OECD. He wasn’t saved by his government’s management of the Covid pandemic either, which contained the threat, kept Covid-related death rates exceptionally low and achieved a national double vaccination rate of

While the main electoral attraction of the moment is the French presidential showdown between Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen, it is not the only significant election underway in the western world. On 21 May, Australia goes to the polls. The contest is between the nominally centre-right coalition of the Liberal and National parties led by prime minister Scott Morrison, and the Australian Labor party led by a long-term, socialist left-wing MP, Anthony Albanese. On the face of it, Morrison should be re-elected on his record. In his three-year term, he has seen Australia through natural disasters, including the massive bushfires affecting the south-east of the country in 2019 and