Elections are a test – the ultimate test, really – of those who serve as parliamentarians and those who aspire to serve. Scott Morrison asserted quite absurdly early in the 2022 campaign that the election was not a popularity contest. Clearly, the opposite is true. An election involving every eligible voter is by definition a popularity contest.
It was not hard to see why Morrison was trying to argue that day was night. With the early halo effect of the pandemic that boosted his popularity towards the stratosphere a distant memory, he was trying to overcome his rising levels of unpopularity. Ultimately, in the final days of the campaign, with his initial Lewis Carroll-esque stylings having failed to change the Liberals’ tracking polling, he pledged to become a different person.
