Illustration:John ShakespeareCredit:
But this is much bigger than one state,much bigger than fires alone. Australia is in the grip of a major drought and heatwave affecting multiple states,with all of the traditional short-term problems turbocharged by the long-run problem of climate change.
Towns and cities are running dangerously short of water,agriculture is shrinking,millions of hectares of bush burned out,some cities are choking on smoke haze,the population's physical health and mental welfare are damaged,South Australia and Victoria are struggling with electricity shortages. And most of the summer lies ahead.
"So all of that support is there,"Morrison continued in his 2GB interview with John
Stanley."But if I can return and provide some moral support to people who are out there doing it really tough,then that's what I can do and that's what I'll be very glad to do."Moral support will be much welcomed,but policy support would be even better.
As Australia enters a brutal downward spiral of hydro-pyro crisis,are we going to find ourselves with a prime minister or will he be content to remain prime minimal?
Illustration:Jim PavlidisCredit:
A developed democracy can weather an absence of leadership quite well for quite a long time. Even an absence of a government. In the case of Belgium,it was without an elected government for 589 days after its 2010 election. What happened to the country without a government for over a year and a half? Belgian filmmaker Dan Alexe reported:"The trains and buses still run. The police are still operating. The post is late,but then it always was late."The economy continued to grow. Exports rose.
A country with strong,independent institutions and a professional public service can operate perfectly well without an elected government or political leadership. In fact,after nine months in this state of limbo,Belgium's former deputy prime minister told me:"I worry that it's going too well."He fretted that the people would be quite content to live without a government,leaving important looming problems untended. This would only increase the eventual cost to the country.
National politics,at its best,is a problem-solving mechanism. Australia,after a decade lost to prime ministerial churn,needs its problem-solving mechanism back.
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Overall,Australia's situation remains relatively strong. But the big,deep wellsprings of national success are depleted. School performance in basic reading,writing and maths falls relentlessly. The economy's productivity – the ability of a country to produce more value from the same amounts of capital and labour – just suffered its weakest performance in a generation. Australian electricity is the world's most expensive and still too unreliable.
And,this week,the country suffered its hottest two days since the current data series commenced in 1908. This is not an aberration but a culmination. As the Bureau of Meteorology puts it,all its measurement sets"show a consistent picture of warming temperatures for Australia over the past 110 years,with most of the warming occurring since the middle of the 20th century". As the most vulnerable of the continents to harmful climate change,Australia should be leading in finding international solutions.
Morrison did not cause any of these problems. But he wanted to be prime minister. It's a big job,yes,and addressing these big problems is hard. But political leaders exist to solve problems,not avoid them. It may be that Morrison is simply too small-minded or too politically timorous to respond to his country's needs. In which case Australia will continue to drift into slow,genteel decline.
It could be worse. One thing worse than an absence of leadership is destructive leadership. That is what populism is delivering across many nations. Populism – of the left and the right – is a political style offering unworkably simplistic solutions to complex problems. Long-building public frustration at stagnant incomes and uncontrolled immigration exploded into convulsive populism in the last few years in the US,Britain and Europe.
Australia is far from that. Our leaders do not single out Muslims or Mexicans or other minorities for special exclusion. Our leaders do not risk national breakup by sponsoring divisive shocks,like the one now testing the unity of the United Kingdom.
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Our leaders may not be moving fast enough on climate change but they have not announced withdrawal from the Paris accord,either."Australia now looks like one of the few outposts of[the old] normal,"observes a political sociologist at the London School of Economics,Robin Archer.
Of course,big problems,left untended,could well lead to a populist eruption in Australia one day. But,for now,Australia continues to drift on a cloud of complacency,held aloft by the success of past reforms and real leaders long gone. Morrison is rushing back to Australia. But do we have a leader?