For those puzzled by Morrison’s good luck, and the apparent lack of widespread outrage about incompetence and corruption and lies and contempt for once-accepted standards, a concept derived from fishing research provides a useful framework for understanding how it happens.

Shifting baseline syndrome was a term coined in 1995 by a French-born marine biologist Daniel Pauly. He studies human impacts on global fisheries and is a professor and the project leader of the Sea Around Us Project at the Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries at the University of British Columbia. read more

A new sign of the ineptness of the Federal Labor Opposition is the campaign by Tony Burke, Opposition business manager, to pressure Government backbenchers in marginal electorates over voting to shut down debate in parliament.

The killer message: they have been too busy silencing the Opposition to pass legislation. read more

Morrison might not be as good a marketer or miracle worker as he and others think but he does possess a far more important thing – good luck.

First he got Bill Shorten as Labor Leader and now he has Anthony Albanese – a leader seemingly so concerned about not offending various interest groups that he is pleasing no one. read more

Where do we start when considering the $100 billion JobKeeper scheme?

Should we focus on the opaque nature of the scheme in which less than 3% – $3 billion of JobKeeper payments have been disclosed in public company accounts and there is no way of finding out who got what and how much?

Is it the fact that JobKeeper has enabled Solly Lew and others to boost profits and pay massive bonuses to senior staff? As Solly also stiffed his landlords should we be surprised? read more

If you think US polarisation is ending soon – think again. While there is frightening evidence of current US polarisation longer term research shows just how deep-seated it is.

While it is astonishing that between 70% and 80% of Republican voters believe the recent Presidential election was rigged this is not an outlier product of the Trump years but more a reflection of steadily developing attitudes over some decades. read more

Kishor Napier-Raman posed a question about the Australian political future when he wrote (crikey 15 January 2021) that: “The question is no longer whether Trumpian politics are on the rise in Australia, it’s now a question of how severe the damage will be.”

The reality is that this is the wrong question and that the right questions are about what is distinctive about Australian populism and right wing politics; how much Australian political problems are home-grown; and, our continuing delusions about our relationship with the US. read more

Paranoid politics always seem to be with us in some form or other. It has ebbed and flowed for centuries but in the past year it has seemed more like a flood than a flow culminating in the insurrectionist storming of the US Capitol.

How successful the spread has been is exemplified by the attitudes to the Capitol storming. A YouGov survey of 1,397 American voters for The Economist found that “more Republicans said they supported the actions of the pro-Trump extremists than opposed them (45% to 43% respectively). In contrast, nearly every Democrat polled, and two out of three independents, said they opposed the rampage.” read more

One of the most successful three word slogans in recent-ish political history– the Thatcher Opposition’s Labour Isn’t Working – almost didn’t get seen by the client.

Tim Bell, once one of the UK’s most successful PR people until his career ended in scandal, claimed to have created Labour Isn’t Working for Maggie Thatcher for the campaign against Jim Callaghan’s Labor Government. read more

If Scott Morrison is to be remembered for more than knifing Malcolm Turnbull, the 2019 election, bushfires, corruption and climate denial it will be his propensity to relentlessly  deploy two or three word slogans.

It’s not that he actually is Scotty from marketing or great marketer himself – as shown by his experiences at the New Zealand and Australian Tourism boards – but that he employs people who dream up variations on a traditional and effective marketing device. read more

Will he run in 2024? Will he set up a new Trump TV channel? Will he continue to dominate the Republican Party and Tweet it into loyal submission?

Any of the above possibilities are being regularly canvassed in the US. And after his 2016 win and the relative closeness of 2020 it would be unwise to make any firm prediction about what he might do and how successful he might be. read more