Scott Morrison will exit politics today in a blaze of theology, if his remarks to his News Corp handlers are anything to go by — “urging Australians to reconnect with the Judaeo-Christian values that underpinned the country’s successful representative democracy”, in the words of Murdoch drone Simon Benson.
“We should be careful about diminishing the influence and voice of Judaeo-Christian faith in our Western society,” Morrison himself tells Benson, “as doing so risks our society drifting into a valueless void. It is about respecting each other’s human dignity through our creation, by God’s hand, in God’s image, for God’s glory, where each human life is eternally valued, is unique, is worthy, is loved and capable.”
There’s some irony in Benson relaying these words, given he carefully kept secret that Morrison misled his own colleagues and the country about swearing himself into multiple ministries in a power grab that ultimately has no explanation other than Morrison’s self-conception as personally chosen by God.
That belief in divine selection — revealed by David Hardaker in a brilliant Crikey investigative series in 2021 — was always the key to understanding Morrison. According to his supporters and New Corp’s culture warriors, critics attacked Morrison’s faith. But the problem was never his religion. Australia has had prime ministers of strong, mediocre and no faith at all. The problem was how Morrison saw himself through his own strange composite of a faith, and his belief he was above the basic standards of accountability and behaviour of the secular world. It wasn’t until after he was ejected from the Lodge that the full scope of his belief in his own divine exceptionalism became clear to his colleagues.
So Morrison’s ardent belief in individual “human dignity” mainly applied to himself. He was the one chosen by God and everyone else was on a lower level. Colleagues he kept in the dark and gaslighted. Voters he lied to. If it served Morrison’s political purposes, human life didn’t have much value or dignity at all. Reza Barati, murdered on Manus Island trying to flee his attackers, was afforded none by then immigration minister Morrison. Robodebt victims got none from social security minister Morrison. COVID-19 victims in nursing homes got none. Women victimised by political predators got none.
Like Morrison’s God, who interfered in the 2019 election but apparently sat out in 2022, Morrison’s idea of human dignity is selective.
But, fair cop, Morrison isn’t the first and will hardly be the last politician to display a vivid contrast between his behaviour in public office and his professed religious ideals. Morrison was pursuing a bigger agenda — to reestablish religion in the public sphere. Indeed, posit religion as superior to fallible human institutions. “God’s kingdom will come. It is in his hands, we trust in Him. We don’t trust in governments,” he said in 2022. But simultaneously, he insists those “fallible” institutions are the product of the West’s cultural superiority, our “Judaeo-Christian values” which are under threat from the “drift of secularism”.
This is a long-running culture war trope — the assertion that Western institutions and modes of thought are the peculiar product of Christianity, rather than a long struggle for individual freedom of thought and expression from organised religion, and economic changes that drove trade, urbanisation, specialisation and the emergence of class. As Morrison can attest so well, what are now accepted Western ideas about human dignity — that arbitrarily selected groups like women, or LGBTGIA+ people, are not targeted for discrimination — continue to be contested by the “Judaeo-Christian” institutions he himself champions.
Part of this culture war is the insistence that the only alternative to “Judaeo-Christian values” is a secular “void” — ironic because it’s a charge that primarily comes from the side of politics that has championed the ultimate values “void” that is neoliberal economic policies. The almost 40% of Australians who say they have no faith at all can explain to Morrison why they don’t exist in a “void” as he suggests they do, but let’s look instead at Morrison himself.
With his “Judaeo-Christian values”, he lied in office, pursued unlawful policies that immiserated people, misled his own colleagues, and placed short-term political gain ahead not merely of proper leadership but basic decency. If Morrison wants to talk about a valueless void today, he could start with his own record.
