Government reshuffle

[Paul1Perth]

What do you reckon to the recent sackings and replacements? 

I think SCOMO has made the biggest mistakes he could possibly make. Can't think of anyone worse than Michaelia Cash and Peter Dutton. One an awful, combative person and the other just useless.

Still better than the opposition but the gap is surely closing.

If Labour get a decent leader, Mark McGowan would be good, They would be in at the next election.

[Marisawright]

I think most women think it's a joke.  He thinks that putting more women into his Cabinet shows he's respecting equality, but it doesn't - because he didn't bother to do it before, he's only doing it now as a marketing exercise.  I can't stand Michaelia Cash or Peter Dutton either.

[Melbpom]

Exactly that Marissa, typical Scotty from Marketing.

[Paul1Perth]

1 hour ago, Marisawright said:

I think most women think it's a joke.  He thinks that putting more women into his Cabinet shows he's respecting equality, but it doesn't - because he didn't bother to do it before, he's only doing it now as a marketing exercise.  I can't stand Michaelia Cash or Peter Dutton either.

He's had to sack one woman and put one in, so it's not an increase. All this balancing up of gender is bullshit anyway, should be based solely on can you do the job.

I still like Scott Morrison and think he's doing a decent job. He's caught between a rock and a hard place at the moment.

[Rallyman]

1 hour ago, Paul1Perth said:

He's had to sack one woman and put one in, so it's not an increase. All this balancing up of gender is bullshit anyway, should be based solely on can you do the job.

I still like Scott Morrison and think he's doing a decent job. He's caught between a rock and a hard place at the moment.

I tend to agree , it should be who’s best for job , if that’s a woman so be it fine by me. 

 

[Ned Kelly]

Doing a decent job pffffftt, the guy is an absolute joke. His whole handling of the Brittney Higgins situation and his general disdain for females says it all.  These Libs are a shower of scum bags and to back them and suggest they are doing a good job is "Tory" behaviour.  Absolutely laughable Morrison is doing a good job

[Dusty Plains]

54 minutes ago, Ned Kelly said:

Doing a decent job pffffftt, the guy is an absolute joke. His whole handling of the Brittney Higgins situation and his general disdain for females says it all.  These Libs are a shower of scum bags and to back them and suggest they are doing a good job is "Tory" behaviour.  Absolutely laughable Morrison is doing a good job

What is your alternative ?  Oh, and by the way there are no "Tories" in Australian politics. 

 

Edited March 30, 2021 by Dusty Plains

[Skani]

2 hours ago, Ned Kelly said:

 Absolutely laughable Morrison is doing a good job

Be fair now...he's doing a good job of photo ops.  And slogans.     And providing fodder for cartoonists.   

[Dusty Plains]

42 minutes ago, Skani said:

Be fair now...he's doing a good job of photo ops.  And slogans.     And providing fodder for cartoonists.   

Sure I can be fair. I agree in part with your assessment of SCOMO. But is Albo the great saviour? 

[Marisawright]

10 hours ago, Dusty Plains said:

Sure I can be fair. I agree in part with your assessment of SCOMO. But is Albo the great saviour? 

He doesn’t have to be a great saviour. No politician ever is. Just competent would be a good start

[ramot]

It’s so easy to be critical of anyone in power, it reminds me that of course I know how to bring everyone else’s children up, it was only my own that I had a problem with.

[Bulya]

1 hour ago, Marisawright said:

He doesn’t have to be a great saviour. No politician ever is. Just competent would be a good start

Morrison competent??  This is a man sacked twice for fraud and theft, not sure he qualifies...

[Toots]

50 minutes ago, Bulya said:

Morrison competent??  This is a man sacked twice for fraud and theft, not sure he qualifies...

Isn't he a member of one of those Hillsong type of religions?  If he has "seen the light" all his past wrong-doings will have been forgiven.  

[Rallyman]

1 hour ago, Bulya said:

Morrison competent??  This is a man sacked twice for fraud and theft, not sure he qualifies...

Any details on your claims? 

[Toots]

38 minutes ago, Rallyman said:

Any details on your claims? 

I don't know the details but there were 'rumours' going around when he lost his high paying job as managing director of Tourism Australia years ago.

[Paul1Perth]

18 hours ago, Ned Kelly said:

Doing a decent job pffffftt, the guy is an absolute joke. His whole handling of the Brittney Higgins situation and his general disdain for females says it all.  These Libs are a shower of scum bags and to back them and suggest they are doing a good job is "Tory" behaviour.  Absolutely laughable Morrison is doing a good job

Brittney Higgins situation is pretty complex and it will be interesting when the whole story comes out, if it ever does. 

How he could have handled it better I don't know. He sacked the lady because she called her a lying bitch or something. The ABC, SBS made it sound like she called her that over the allegations, not over the fact that she said she hadn't had support. Fact is she had been told to report it and she chose not to. She was called a liar over that.

Still only allegations at the moment too remember. In this climate though an accusation is enough for the end of a career. 

[Paul1Perth]

1 hour ago, Toots said:

I don't know the details but there were 'rumours' going around when he lost his high paying job as managing director of Tourism Australia years ago.

Ahh, rumours eh. They can end your career at the moment.

[NicF]

1 hour ago, Paul1Perth said:

Brittney Higgins situation is pretty complex and it will be interesting when the whole story comes out, if it ever does. 

How he could have handled it better I don't know. He sacked the lady because she called her a lying bitch or something. The ABC, SBS made it sound like she called her that over the allegations, not over the fact that she said she hadn't had support. Fact is she had been told to report it and she chose not to. She was called a liar over that.

Still only allegations at the moment too remember. In this climate though an accusation is enough for the end of a career. 

What has whether she reported the assault or not got to do with anything?  Are you saying that employers should only support employees that have been assaulted if they report it to the police?  If someone has been assaulted in the workplace and doesn't want to involve the police does that mean employers have no duty of care to them at all?

[Rallyman]

3 hours ago, Rallyman said:

Any details on your claims? 

Rumours and facts are very different, I prefer to deal with actual facts. 
First time I have herd anything like that about Scomo 

[Marisawright]

5 hours ago, Bulya said:

Morrison competent??  This is a man sacked twice for fraud and theft, not sure he qualifies...

I was talking about Albo not Morrison

[Peach]

49 minutes ago, Rallyman said:

Rumours and facts are very different, I prefer to deal with actual facts. 
First time I have herd anything like that about Scomo 

When Scott Morrison skipped out the doors of the Property Council of Australia (PCA) in 1995, where he had spent six years cutting his teeth as a spinner, lobbyist and propagandist, he landed in the tourism sector. Specifically, the Tourism Task Force (now the Tourism and Transport Forum) — a lobby group that in many ways mirrored the PCA.

For the next 12 years, he would switch between various roles in peak and government-run tourism bodies — and a brief unsuccessful stint in private practice — and the Liberal Party of Australia.

In among a string of election campaign failures, Morrison had a regular habit of leaving or being pushed out of jobs before his contracts were finished.

There were two stints that have, perhaps understandably, been scrubbed from his Wikipedia page.

The first was a period at big four consulting group KPMG in 2000, where he was attempting to start up a tourism practice. The second was an ill-fated turn as the strategic director for the campaign of New South Wales Liberal leader Peter Debnam during his failed 2007 election bid.

A self-styled “marketer” (he actually has a Bachelor of Science in applied economic geography from UNSW) Morrison instead hired others to do the marketing work, according to a number of people that worked with him in his various tourism jobs, while he focused largely on the networking. This networking brought him into contact with Liberal grandees who promoted him ever higher, until he landed in — or rather was parachuted into — federal parliament in 2007.

Morrison’s first role in the tourism sector was as deputy chief executive of the Australian Tourism Task Force, then-chaired by former Labor tourism minister John Brown. Showing his talent for ruthlessness, Morrison jumped ship to rival group Tourism Council of Australia (TCA) to became the general manager. The TCA was run by Bruce Baird, the former transport minister in the Nick Greiner and John Fahey NSW Liberal governments (1989-2005).

Morrison left the TCA in 1998 at the same time Baird entered federal parliament. By December 1999, the TCA was technically insolvent, despite a questionable “start-up” loan of $2.3 million by the Howard government. It was eventually tipped into administration under Grant Thornton in December 2001 and disbanded. “The damage was done by Bruce and Scott,” a former staffer noted.

In 1998, Morrison moved to New Zealand as the the inaugural director of the newly created Office of Tourism and Sport, reporting directly to NZ tourism minister Murray McCully. The two entered a widely reported power struggle with the independent NZ Tourism Board. In a 1999 report, NZ auditor-general criticised Morrison’s role, particularly his commissioning and handling of a report critical of the board. These events have been detailed in The Saturday Paper.

Returning to Australia, a year before his contract was up, Morrison took up a what appears to have been a short-lived stint at KPMG Consulting, where people in the industry said he was “knocking on doors trying to drum up work”.

The common thread here appears to be Tony Clark, former New South Wales MD for KPMG (he stepped down in 1998). Clark was famously John Howard’s golfing partner and was subsequently also a supporter of Tony Abbott when prime minister and was an attendee at Abbott’s post-budget “Jesuit old boys” dinner. Clark was at the same time serving as a long-time deputy chairman at Tourism Australia and its predecessor body the Australian Tourist Commission. 

Clark did not respond to a request for comment. Requests to both Morrison’s office and KPMG to detail his time there, went unanswered.

By late 2000, Morrison had been installed as the NSW director of the Liberal Party. He would get his first taste of the political power of “the boats” when the Tampa incident flipped the 2001 federal election the Howard government’s way. But the Liberal campaign for office under leader John Brogden in 2003 was a flop. The party lost a single seat on a flat vote percentage, compared to the previous poll, to the third-term Bob Carr-led Labor government.

But in the 2004 federal election, where Morrison apparently impressed then-PM John Howard, the Liberals picked up a handful of NSW seats. And after leaving his first stint at the Liberal Party, Morrison appears to have been handed the job of MD at Tourism Australia from 2004 — replete with a photo of John Howard in his office.

Morrison immediately brought in South African Ian McFarlane, who had worked with him in NZ and engaged M&C Saatchi to do the “100% Pure New Zealand” campaign, something McFarlane takes clear credit for on his LinkedIn page.

“It was clear that they wanted Saatchi again,” said one staffer, once McFarlane had arrived at TA. This time it was to develop the controversial “Where the Bloody Hell Are You” campaign.

Meanwhile in the office, it was case of where the bloody hell was Morrison? “He was an invisible MD, he wasn’t present he wasn’t around, he wouldn’t know anyone’s names,” one long-time staffer said, who also said McFarlane showed disdain for group processes. The Australian National Audit Office (ANAO) would have similar concerns in its 2008 report on the group.

Morrison’s three-year contract was cut short as he clashed with tourism minister Fran Bailey. “Two ‘A’ type personalities,” a TA staffer at the time, told Crikey. He was sacked in 2006 in a unanimous decision of the board led by former Nationals leader and deputy PM Tim Fischer, which has never been fully explained. It’s noteworthy, again, that Clark was the deputy chairman of TA. There also remain unanswered questions about tenders from the ANAO report that have still not been made public.

After dodging questions about his departure for years, Morrison finally spilled the beans in an interview with The Women’s Weekly in October 2018: “There were different constructions of words put together at the time, but that’s what it boiled down to,” Morrison said. “It was quite an event. There’s the humiliation and embarrassment.” In some views, this may breach the $500,000 payout he reportedly received for agreeing not to talk publicly about the termination, and says a lot about the ever creeping lack of transparency in taxpayer-funded institutions in Australia.

Morrison had fixed his eye on the federal seat of Cook, where his old boss Bruce Baird decided to step down rather than engage in a pre-selection battle, after an unfairly ignominious nine years in federal parliament where he was ignored for higher office by Howard.

In December 2006, as he was prepping for a tilt at Liberal pre-selection for Cook, Morrison made a return to politics as strategy director for the 2007 election campaign of NSW opposition leader Peter Debnam who had taken over from Brogden after he resigned following a series of events that began with revelations he had described Carr’s wife Helena, a successful businesswoman who immigrated to Australia from Malaysia, as a “mail-order bride”.

An early piece of Morrison’s strategy would be the appearance, in February 2007, of Debnam in Speedos creating much derision. Debnam would lose the March 2007 election to Carr’s successor, Morris Iemma, by 17 seats.

Following the second NSW state Liberal defeat in which Morrison had played a senior role, he quickly turned his attention to the seat of Cook. Despite references from senior Liberal figures including Howard, Morrison did not even make the final ballot in pre-selection, gaining only eight votes and losing to Michael Towke.

Morrison was only anointed as candidate when Towke ran into problems with the party’s state executive after a damaging series of stories alleging branch-stacking. Towke was dumped as candidate but would later win a defamation settlement against The Daily Telegraph, which had been prosecuting the case against him. Morrison was effectively parachuted in, endorsed without pre-selection.

Morrison won the seat with 56.9% of the vote but the Liberal vote went backwards in 2007, losing 6.9% in the two-party preferred vote. Morrison would regain 6.3% of that vote in 2010. In the 2013 Abbott landslide, he would pick up a further 3.7%, firmly establishing Cook as a safe Liberal seat, in 2017, his vote only edged back 0.3% per cent.

So, Cook at least appears safe for Morrison, but his pre-2007 career casts plenty of questions over his strategic campaigning abilities, his management skills and a distinct tendency towards a lack of transparency.

Source: https://www.crikey.com.au/2019/02/11/scott-morrison-career/

[Paul1Perth]

2 hours ago, NicF said:

What has whether she reported the assault or not got to do with anything?  Are you saying that employers should only support employees that have been assaulted if they report it to the police?  If someone has been assaulted in the workplace and doesn't want to involve the police does that mean employers have no duty of care to them at all?

I'm saying the ABC and other usual suspects made out that she was called a liar about the rape, not about whether she had support from her employer, who advised her to report it.

If someone has been assaulted in the workplace and they don't want to involve the police what else can the employer do but advise them of the correct action?

[ramot]

1 hour ago, Peach said:

When Scott Morrison skipped out the doors of the Property Council of Australia (PCA) in 1995, where he had spent six years cutting his teeth as a spinner, lobbyist and propagandist, he landed in the tourism sector. Specifically, the Tourism Task Force (now the Tourism and Transport Forum) — a lobby group that in many ways mirrored the PCA.

For the next 12 years, he would switch between various roles in peak and government-run tourism bodies — and a brief unsuccessful stint in private practice — and the Liberal Party of Australia.

In among a string of election campaign failures, Morrison had a regular habit of leaving or being pushed out of jobs before his contracts were finished.

There were two stints that have, perhaps understandably, been scrubbed from his Wikipedia page.

The first was a period at big four consulting group KPMG in 2000, where he was attempting to start up a tourism practice. The second was an ill-fated turn as the strategic director for the campaign of New South Wales Liberal leader Peter Debnam during his failed 2007 election bid.

A self-styled “marketer” (he actually has a Bachelor of Science in applied economic geography from UNSW) Morrison instead hired others to do the marketing work, according to a number of people that worked with him in his various tourism jobs, while he focused largely on the networking. This networking brought him into contact with Liberal grandees who promoted him ever higher, until he landed in — or rather was parachuted into — federal parliament in 2007.

Morrison’s first role in the tourism sector was as deputy chief executive of the Australian Tourism Task Force, then-chaired by former Labor tourism minister John Brown. Showing his talent for ruthlessness, Morrison jumped ship to rival group Tourism Council of Australia (TCA) to became the general manager. The TCA was run by Bruce Baird, the former transport minister in the Nick Greiner and John Fahey NSW Liberal governments (1989-2005).

Morrison left the TCA in 1998 at the same time Baird entered federal parliament. By December 1999, the TCA was technically insolvent, despite a questionable “start-up” loan of $2.3 million by the Howard government. It was eventually tipped into administration under Grant Thornton in December 2001 and disbanded. “The damage was done by Bruce and Scott,” a former staffer noted.

In 1998, Morrison moved to New Zealand as the the inaugural director of the newly created Office of Tourism and Sport, reporting directly to NZ tourism minister Murray McCully. The two entered a widely reported power struggle with the independent NZ Tourism Board. In a 1999 report, NZ auditor-general criticised Morrison’s role, particularly his commissioning and handling of a report critical of the board. These events have been detailed in The Saturday Paper.

Returning to Australia, a year before his contract was up, Morrison took up a what appears to have been a short-lived stint at KPMG Consulting, where people in the industry said he was “knocking on doors trying to drum up work”.

The common thread here appears to be Tony Clark, former New South Wales MD for KPMG (he stepped down in 1998). Clark was famously John Howard’s golfing partner and was subsequently also a supporter of Tony Abbott when prime minister and was an attendee at Abbott’s post-budget “Jesuit old boys” dinner. Clark was at the same time serving as a long-time deputy chairman at Tourism Australia and its predecessor body the Australian Tourist Commission. 

Clark did not respond to a request for comment. Requests to both Morrison’s office and KPMG to detail his time there, went unanswered.

By late 2000, Morrison had been installed as the NSW director of the Liberal Party. He would get his first taste of the political power of “the boats” when the Tampa incident flipped the 2001 federal election the Howard government’s way. But the Liberal campaign for office under leader John Brogden in 2003 was a flop. The party lost a single seat on a flat vote percentage, compared to the previous poll, to the third-term Bob Carr-led Labor government.

But in the 2004 federal election, where Morrison apparently impressed then-PM John Howard, the Liberals picked up a handful of NSW seats. And after leaving his first stint at the Liberal Party, Morrison appears to have been handed the job of MD at Tourism Australia from 2004 — replete with a photo of John Howard in his office.

Morrison immediately brought in South African Ian McFarlane, who had worked with him in NZ and engaged M&C Saatchi to do the “100% Pure New Zealand” campaign, something McFarlane takes clear credit for on his LinkedIn page.

“It was clear that they wanted Saatchi again,” said one staffer, once McFarlane had arrived at TA. This time it was to develop the controversial “Where the Bloody Hell Are You” campaign.

Meanwhile in the office, it was case of where the bloody hell was Morrison? “He was an invisible MD, he wasn’t present he wasn’t around, he wouldn’t know anyone’s names,” one long-time staffer said, who also said McFarlane showed disdain for group processes. The Australian National Audit Office (ANAO) would have similar concerns in its 2008 report on the group.

Morrison’s three-year contract was cut short as he clashed with tourism minister Fran Bailey. “Two ‘A’ type personalities,” a TA staffer at the time, told Crikey. He was sacked in 2006 in a unanimous decision of the board led by former Nationals leader and deputy PM Tim Fischer, which has never been fully explained. It’s noteworthy, again, that Clark was the deputy chairman of TA. There also remain unanswered questions about tenders from the ANAO report that have still not been made public.

After dodging questions about his departure for years, Morrison finally spilled the beans in an interview with The Women’s Weekly in October 2018: “There were different constructions of words put together at the time, but that’s what it boiled down to,” Morrison said. “It was quite an event. There’s the humiliation and embarrassment.” In some views, this may breach the $500,000 payout he reportedly received for agreeing not to talk publicly about the termination, and says a lot about the ever creeping lack of transparency in taxpayer-funded institutions in Australia.

Morrison had fixed his eye on the federal seat of Cook, where his old boss Bruce Baird decided to step down rather than engage in a pre-selection battle, after an unfairly ignominious nine years in federal parliament where he was ignored for higher office by Howard.

In December 2006, as he was prepping for a tilt at Liberal pre-selection for Cook, Morrison made a return to politics as strategy director for the 2007 election campaign of NSW opposition leader Peter Debnam who had taken over from Brogden after he resigned following a series of events that began with revelations he had described Carr’s wife Helena, a successful businesswoman who immigrated to Australia from Malaysia, as a “mail-order bride”.

An early piece of Morrison’s strategy would be the appearance, in February 2007, of Debnam in Speedos creating much derision. Debnam would lose the March 2007 election to Carr’s successor, Morris Iemma, by 17 seats.

Following the second NSW state Liberal defeat in which Morrison had played a senior role, he quickly turned his attention to the seat of Cook. Despite references from senior Liberal figures including Howard, Morrison did not even make the final ballot in pre-selection, gaining only eight votes and losing to Michael Towke.

Morrison was only anointed as candidate when Towke ran into problems with the party’s state executive after a damaging series of stories alleging branch-stacking. Towke was dumped as candidate but would later win a defamation settlement against The Daily Telegraph, which had been prosecuting the case against him. Morrison was effectively parachuted in, endorsed without pre-selection.

Morrison won the seat with 56.9% of the vote but the Liberal vote went backwards in 2007, losing 6.9% in the two-party preferred vote. Morrison would regain 6.3% of that vote in 2010. In the 2013 Abbott landslide, he would pick up a further 3.7%, firmly establishing Cook as a safe Liberal seat, in 2017, his vote only edged back 0.3% per cent.

So, Cook at least appears safe for Morrison, but his pre-2007 career casts plenty of questions over his strategic campaigning abilities, his management skills and a distinct tendency towards a lack of transparency.

Source: https://www.crikey.com.au/2019/02/11/scott-morrison-career/

As I haven’t voted yet I would be interested in a similar breakdown of Albanese’s career.

[Paul1Perth]

1 hour ago, Peach said:

When Scott Morrison skipped out the doors of the Property Council of Australia (PCA) in 1995, where he had spent six years cutting his teeth as a spinner, lobbyist and propagandist, he landed in the tourism sector. Specifically, the Tourism Task Force (now the Tourism and Transport Forum) — a lobby group that in many ways mirrored the PCA.

For the next 12 years, he would switch between various roles in peak and government-run tourism bodies — and a brief unsuccessful stint in private practice — and the Liberal Party of Australia.

In among a string of election campaign failures, Morrison had a regular habit of leaving or being pushed out of jobs before his contracts were finished.

There were two stints that have, perhaps understandably, been scrubbed from his Wikipedia page.

The first was a period at big four consulting group KPMG in 2000, where he was attempting to start up a tourism practice. The second was an ill-fated turn as the strategic director for the campaign of New South Wales Liberal leader Peter Debnam during his failed 2007 election bid.

A self-styled “marketer” (he actually has a Bachelor of Science in applied economic geography from UNSW) Morrison instead hired others to do the marketing work, according to a number of people that worked with him in his various tourism jobs, while he focused largely on the networking. This networking brought him into contact with Liberal grandees who promoted him ever higher, until he landed in — or rather was parachuted into — federal parliament in 2007.

Morrison’s first role in the tourism sector was as deputy chief executive of the Australian Tourism Task Force, then-chaired by former Labor tourism minister John Brown. Showing his talent for ruthlessness, Morrison jumped ship to rival group Tourism Council of Australia (TCA) to became the general manager. The TCA was run by Bruce Baird, the former transport minister in the Nick Greiner and John Fahey NSW Liberal governments (1989-2005).

Morrison left the TCA in 1998 at the same time Baird entered federal parliament. By December 1999, the TCA was technically insolvent, despite a questionable “start-up” loan of $2.3 million by the Howard government. It was eventually tipped into administration under Grant Thornton in December 2001 and disbanded. “The damage was done by Bruce and Scott,” a former staffer noted.

In 1998, Morrison moved to New Zealand as the the inaugural director of the newly created Office of Tourism and Sport, reporting directly to NZ tourism minister Murray McCully. The two entered a widely reported power struggle with the independent NZ Tourism Board. In a 1999 report, NZ auditor-general criticised Morrison’s role, particularly his commissioning and handling of a report critical of the board. These events have been detailed in The Saturday Paper.

Returning to Australia, a year before his contract was up, Morrison took up a what appears to have been a short-lived stint at KPMG Consulting, where people in the industry said he was “knocking on doors trying to drum up work”.

The common thread here appears to be Tony Clark, former New South Wales MD for KPMG (he stepped down in 1998). Clark was famously John Howard’s golfing partner and was subsequently also a supporter of Tony Abbott when prime minister and was an attendee at Abbott’s post-budget “Jesuit old boys” dinner. Clark was at the same time serving as a long-time deputy chairman at Tourism Australia and its predecessor body the Australian Tourist Commission. 

Clark did not respond to a request for comment. Requests to both Morrison’s office and KPMG to detail his time there, went unanswered.

By late 2000, Morrison had been installed as the NSW director of the Liberal Party. He would get his first taste of the political power of “the boats” when the Tampa incident flipped the 2001 federal election the Howard government’s way. But the Liberal campaign for office under leader John Brogden in 2003 was a flop. The party lost a single seat on a flat vote percentage, compared to the previous poll, to the third-term Bob Carr-led Labor government.

But in the 2004 federal election, where Morrison apparently impressed then-PM John Howard, the Liberals picked up a handful of NSW seats. And after leaving his first stint at the Liberal Party, Morrison appears to have been handed the job of MD at Tourism Australia from 2004 — replete with a photo of John Howard in his office.

Morrison immediately brought in South African Ian McFarlane, who had worked with him in NZ and engaged M&C Saatchi to do the “100% Pure New Zealand” campaign, something McFarlane takes clear credit for on his LinkedIn page.

“It was clear that they wanted Saatchi again,” said one staffer, once McFarlane had arrived at TA. This time it was to develop the controversial “Where the Bloody Hell Are You” campaign.

Meanwhile in the office, it was case of where the bloody hell was Morrison? “He was an invisible MD, he wasn’t present he wasn’t around, he wouldn’t know anyone’s names,” one long-time staffer said, who also said McFarlane showed disdain for group processes. The Australian National Audit Office (ANAO) would have similar concerns in its 2008 report on the group.

Morrison’s three-year contract was cut short as he clashed with tourism minister Fran Bailey. “Two ‘A’ type personalities,” a TA staffer at the time, told Crikey. He was sacked in 2006 in a unanimous decision of the board led by former Nationals leader and deputy PM Tim Fischer, which has never been fully explained. It’s noteworthy, again, that Clark was the deputy chairman of TA. There also remain unanswered questions about tenders from the ANAO report that have still not been made public.

After dodging questions about his departure for years, Morrison finally spilled the beans in an interview with The Women’s Weekly in October 2018: “There were different constructions of words put together at the time, but that’s what it boiled down to,” Morrison said. “It was quite an event. There’s the humiliation and embarrassment.” In some views, this may breach the $500,000 payout he reportedly received for agreeing not to talk publicly about the termination, and says a lot about the ever creeping lack of transparency in taxpayer-funded institutions in Australia.

Morrison had fixed his eye on the federal seat of Cook, where his old boss Bruce Baird decided to step down rather than engage in a pre-selection battle, after an unfairly ignominious nine years in federal parliament where he was ignored for higher office by Howard.

In December 2006, as he was prepping for a tilt at Liberal pre-selection for Cook, Morrison made a return to politics as strategy director for the 2007 election campaign of NSW opposition leader Peter Debnam who had taken over from Brogden after he resigned following a series of events that began with revelations he had described Carr’s wife Helena, a successful businesswoman who immigrated to Australia from Malaysia, as a “mail-order bride”.

An early piece of Morrison’s strategy would be the appearance, in February 2007, of Debnam in Speedos creating much derision. Debnam would lose the March 2007 election to Carr’s successor, Morris Iemma, by 17 seats.

Following the second NSW state Liberal defeat in which Morrison had played a senior role, he quickly turned his attention to the seat of Cook. Despite references from senior Liberal figures including Howard, Morrison did not even make the final ballot in pre-selection, gaining only eight votes and losing to Michael Towke.

Morrison was only anointed as candidate when Towke ran into problems with the party’s state executive after a damaging series of stories alleging branch-stacking. Towke was dumped as candidate but would later win a defamation settlement against The Daily Telegraph, which had been prosecuting the case against him. Morrison was effectively parachuted in, endorsed without pre-selection.

Morrison won the seat with 56.9% of the vote but the Liberal vote went backwards in 2007, losing 6.9% in the two-party preferred vote. Morrison would regain 6.3% of that vote in 2010. In the 2013 Abbott landslide, he would pick up a further 3.7%, firmly establishing Cook as a safe Liberal seat, in 2017, his vote only edged back 0.3% per cent.

So, Cook at least appears safe for Morrison, but his pre-2007 career casts plenty of questions over his strategic campaigning abilities, his management skills and a distinct tendency towards a lack of transparency.

Source: https://www.crikey.com.au/2019/02/11/scott-morrison-career/

Crikey.com. that explains a lot. 

Even if that is all true he somehow got enough support to get elected PM, in my opinion is doing a decent job and did a decent job in his portfolios before getting the leadership, specially immigration.

[Dusty Plains]

1 hour ago, Peach said:

When Scott Morrison skipped out the doors of the Property Council of Australia (PCA) in 1995, where he had spent six years cutting his teeth as a spinner, lobbyist and propagandist, he landed in the tourism sector. Specifically, the Tourism Task Force (now the Tourism and Transport Forum) — a lobby group that in many ways mirrored the PCA.

For the next 12 years, he would switch between various roles in peak and government-run tourism bodies — and a brief unsuccessful stint in private practice — and the Liberal Party of Australia.

In among a string of election campaign failures, Morrison had a regular habit of leaving or being pushed out of jobs before his contracts were finished.

There were two stints that have, perhaps understandably, been scrubbed from his Wikipedia page.

The first was a period at big four consulting group KPMG in 2000, where he was attempting to start up a tourism practice. The second was an ill-fated turn as the strategic director for the campaign of New South Wales Liberal leader Peter Debnam during his failed 2007 election bid.

A self-styled “marketer” (he actually has a Bachelor of Science in applied economic geography from UNSW) Morrison instead hired others to do the marketing work, according to a number of people that worked with him in his various tourism jobs, while he focused largely on the networking. This networking brought him into contact with Liberal grandees who promoted him ever higher, until he landed in — or rather was parachuted into — federal parliament in 2007.

Morrison’s first role in the tourism sector was as deputy chief executive of the Australian Tourism Task Force, then-chaired by former Labor tourism minister John Brown. Showing his talent for ruthlessness, Morrison jumped ship to rival group Tourism Council of Australia (TCA) to became the general manager. The TCA was run by Bruce Baird, the former transport minister in the Nick Greiner and John Fahey NSW Liberal governments (1989-2005).

Morrison left the TCA in 1998 at the same time Baird entered federal parliament. By December 1999, the TCA was technically insolvent, despite a questionable “start-up” loan of $2.3 million by the Howard government. It was eventually tipped into administration under Grant Thornton in December 2001 and disbanded. “The damage was done by Bruce and Scott,” a former staffer noted.

In 1998, Morrison moved to New Zealand as the the inaugural director of the newly created Office of Tourism and Sport, reporting directly to NZ tourism minister Murray McCully. The two entered a widely reported power struggle with the independent NZ Tourism Board. In a 1999 report, NZ auditor-general criticised Morrison’s role, particularly his commissioning and handling of a report critical of the board. These events have been detailed in The Saturday Paper.

Returning to Australia, a year before his contract was up, Morrison took up a what appears to have been a short-lived stint at KPMG Consulting, where people in the industry said he was “knocking on doors trying to drum up work”.

The common thread here appears to be Tony Clark, former New South Wales MD for KPMG (he stepped down in 1998). Clark was famously John Howard’s golfing partner and was subsequently also a supporter of Tony Abbott when prime minister and was an attendee at Abbott’s post-budget “Jesuit old boys” dinner. Clark was at the same time serving as a long-time deputy chairman at Tourism Australia and its predecessor body the Australian Tourist Commission. 

Clark did not respond to a request for comment. Requests to both Morrison’s office and KPMG to detail his time there, went unanswered.

By late 2000, Morrison had been installed as the NSW director of the Liberal Party. He would get his first taste of the political power of “the boats” when the Tampa incident flipped the 2001 federal election the Howard government’s way. But the Liberal campaign for office under leader John Brogden in 2003 was a flop. The party lost a single seat on a flat vote percentage, compared to the previous poll, to the third-term Bob Carr-led Labor government.

But in the 2004 federal election, where Morrison apparently impressed then-PM John Howard, the Liberals picked up a handful of NSW seats. And after leaving his first stint at the Liberal Party, Morrison appears to have been handed the job of MD at Tourism Australia from 2004 — replete with a photo of John Howard in his office.

Morrison immediately brought in South African Ian McFarlane, who had worked with him in NZ and engaged M&C Saatchi to do the “100% Pure New Zealand” campaign, something McFarlane takes clear credit for on his LinkedIn page.

“It was clear that they wanted Saatchi again,” said one staffer, once McFarlane had arrived at TA. This time it was to develop the controversial “Where the Bloody Hell Are You” campaign.

Meanwhile in the office, it was case of where the bloody hell was Morrison? “He was an invisible MD, he wasn’t present he wasn’t around, he wouldn’t know anyone’s names,” one long-time staffer said, who also said McFarlane showed disdain for group processes. The Australian National Audit Office (ANAO) would have similar concerns in its 2008 report on the group.

Morrison’s three-year contract was cut short as he clashed with tourism minister Fran Bailey. “Two ‘A’ type personalities,” a TA staffer at the time, told Crikey. He was sacked in 2006 in a unanimous decision of the board led by former Nationals leader and deputy PM Tim Fischer, which has never been fully explained. It’s noteworthy, again, that Clark was the deputy chairman of TA. There also remain unanswered questions about tenders from the ANAO report that have still not been made public.

After dodging questions about his departure for years, Morrison finally spilled the beans in an interview with The Women’s Weekly in October 2018: “There were different constructions of words put together at the time, but that’s what it boiled down to,” Morrison said. “It was quite an event. There’s the humiliation and embarrassment.” In some views, this may breach the $500,000 payout he reportedly received for agreeing not to talk publicly about the termination, and says a lot about the ever creeping lack of transparency in taxpayer-funded institutions in Australia.

Morrison had fixed his eye on the federal seat of Cook, where his old boss Bruce Baird decided to step down rather than engage in a pre-selection battle, after an unfairly ignominious nine years in federal parliament where he was ignored for higher office by Howard.

In December 2006, as he was prepping for a tilt at Liberal pre-selection for Cook, Morrison made a return to politics as strategy director for the 2007 election campaign of NSW opposition leader Peter Debnam who had taken over from Brogden after he resigned following a series of events that began with revelations he had described Carr’s wife Helena, a successful businesswoman who immigrated to Australia from Malaysia, as a “mail-order bride”.

An early piece of Morrison’s strategy would be the appearance, in February 2007, of Debnam in Speedos creating much derision. Debnam would lose the March 2007 election to Carr’s successor, Morris Iemma, by 17 seats.

Following the second NSW state Liberal defeat in which Morrison had played a senior role, he quickly turned his attention to the seat of Cook. Despite references from senior Liberal figures including Howard, Morrison did not even make the final ballot in pre-selection, gaining only eight votes and losing to Michael Towke.

Morrison was only anointed as candidate when Towke ran into problems with the party’s state executive after a damaging series of stories alleging branch-stacking. Towke was dumped as candidate but would later win a defamation settlement against The Daily Telegraph, which had been prosecuting the case against him. Morrison was effectively parachuted in, endorsed without pre-selection.

Morrison won the seat with 56.9% of the vote but the Liberal vote went backwards in 2007, losing 6.9% in the two-party preferred vote. Morrison would regain 6.3% of that vote in 2010. In the 2013 Abbott landslide, he would pick up a further 3.7%, firmly establishing Cook as a safe Liberal seat, in 2017, his vote only edged back 0.3% per cent.

So, Cook at least appears safe for Morrison, but his pre-2007 career casts plenty of questions over his strategic campaigning abilities, his management skills and a distinct tendency towards a lack of transparency.

Source: https://www.crikey.com.au/2019/02/11/scott-morrison-career/

Fair enough but I can't see that any of these factors are necessarily earth shattering, really. Especially when you consider that in March 2020 Scomo closed the borders in light of the worldwide spread of Covid 19 and at the same time advising expats to "make their way home" as soon as possible. That act alone probably saved countless lives in Australia, and at a time when other world leaders were twiddling their thumbs.  Whether or not such actions will be remembered at the next election remains to be seen.  I think however that Albo a.k.a."Mr 26% (approval rating)" has a far greater challenge ahead than SCOMO