The bus and the bubble: Scott Morrison’s road trip

Then, there was Morrison’s grasp for authenticity, which all politicians attempt, particularly during election campaigns, and which seems to have backfired as spectacularly as Julia Gillard’s “Real Julia” play in 2010.

Morrison’s version of authenticity has centred on tropes seemingly lifted from a back-collection of Ralph magazines from the 1990s, full of fair dinkums and maytes, black-slapping beer skolls and macho pie-eating.

“Beefy’s Pies is a prime example where you have a company that is prepared to have a go and is getting a go!” he told cameras, before having a go at one himself.

Even his pro-strawberry video was blokey: “Back on the strawberries!” he declared, as he manhandled a tray of them.

At its most startling, this schtick involved a heavy-breathing locker room gag about American TV star Pamela Anderson, who has called upon Morrison to repatriate Julian Assange to Australia.

Asked about this during an interview with a Gold Coast radio station called Hot Tomato FM, Morrison chuckled and said: “I’ve had plenty of mates who have asked me if they can be my special envoy to sort the issue out with Pamela Anderson.”

It was a bizarre remark, unbecoming of any prime minister, let alone one with a strong Christian background. I guess it’s OK to make jokes about Anderson’s badual availability because … she has big bads?

Perhaps Morrison should look up from the Canberra bubble he keeps talking about and read the mood of the times on this sort of stuff.

Malcolm Turnbull’s appearance on Q&A on Thursday night showed how large the former prime minister’s shadow looms over the Liberal Party.

Morrison seems intent on defining himself in opposition to his wealthy and urbane predecessor, which only highlights Turnbull’s ongoing importance.

During doorstops and press conferences this week the Prime Minister repeatedly referred to the “Canberra bubble” and the “narks in Canberra”, even accusing one journalist of taking questions down the phone from colleagues in the press gallery.

The Prime Minister talks about the “Canberra bubble” as though he has not spent nearly his whole professional life in it; as though he is not a creature of it himself.

As though that bubble was not the sole cause of his party’s disastrous decision to dump Turnbull – a rare politician who was well-regarded outside the bubble (among actual voters).

Turnbull was ousted by people whose primary source of power exists only within the Canberra bubble, extended to encompbad the after-dark Sky News shows the politicians watch as they sit lonely in their Canberra hotel rooms, bitterly texting each other on WhatsApp.

It is the laziest trick in the political playbook to accuse journalists of obsessing about inside-the-beltway stuff when they’re asking questions that discomfit you.

In this case, Morrison reacted most irritably when asked about his empty bus, and when asked about voters’ concerns over his party’s instability.

“I think the ABC should stop coming up to press conferences and repeating the lines of the Labor Party,” he snapped on Wednesday.

On Tuesday there was an exchange about the bus so surreal it was worthy of a Samuel Beckett script.

“Will you be taking the bus to Rockhampton from here?” asked the journalist.

“Yes. The bus will be going to Rockhampton from here. That’s right,” replied the Prime Minister.

“With you on it?” the journalist pressed.

Under further questioning, the Prime Minister conceded time constraints meant he had to fly to Rockhampton, and that he would be flying to Townsville too.

“And your point is what?” he said.

“I’m just interested in the point of the bus if you’re not on it,” the journalist countered.

“I am on it,” said Morrison. “I just got off it.”

The lamentable thing about the week was how quickly the story ran away from the Prime Minister.

By any objective measure, Morrison was growing into his role as treasurer, albeit helped by a resurgent economy. He can feasibly distance himself, at least a little, from the malice and dysfunction of the coup against Turnbull.

But it is difficult to escape the conclusion his government is tired, fractious, and out of ideas.

It seems paralysed on key policy issues, notably climate change and religious freedom/discrimination law.

When asked about the timing of the next federal election, members of the government keep repeating that Australians expect their governments to run full-term.

It is true that the electorate is so fed up with politicians that if we were forced to the polls now, we would likely see a wave of rejectionalism that would take the Coalition two terms to recover from, and could risk further flight to fringe parties in the Senate.

But it also doesn’t seem right to put us all through the condescension of an election campaign, without the campaign’s essential point: the voting part.