“But what does Anthony Albanese actually stand for?” You’ve probably heard this question a few times in the last few weeks. It started as a catch cry of right-wing journos who were sick of covering the Coalition’s constant cock-ups, and wanted to turn the blowtorch back on Albanese, but in recent weeks it’s seeped into the more mainstream media, like The Age and the ABC. 

It’s completely fine to ask what Anthony Albanese stands for, but you only get to ask that question if you can answer this question: What does Scott Morrison stand for? Seriously, what does he actually believe?

Morrison is like the T-1000 from Terminator 2, constantly shapeshifting forms to gain people’s trust, quite often just before he destroys them. And just when you think Morrison’s copped the killer blow, he somehow slithers back into a gelatinous mass and rises up to take another form. 

What does Scott Morrison believe? As much as it could be fatal for my mental health to think about former Liberal leaders, I can line up every Liberal PM from the last thirty years, and recall at least a few of their basic beliefs. 

John Howard believed in “work choices”, long walks in Australian team tracksuits, and gun control. Yes, it took a horrific massacre to get him there, but he was willing to stand in front of thousands of gun nuts in a bullet proof vest to prove he believed it. 

Tony Abbott believed in God, the Royal Family and that it was okay for a grown man to walk around in public in tiny red speedos (it’s not and it never will be). And he believed if someone offered you an onion, the right thing to do was to take a bloody big bite out of it. 

Malcolm Turnbull was bursting with beliefs, it’s just a shame they all evaporated the moment he became Prime Minister. To be fair, he did always believe in building the NBN, he just never mentioned it would be the technological equivalent of an arthritic, malnourished mouse, stumbling  inside a wheel.

But Scott Morrison… He believes in… Gimme a second… I’ll think of something… Actually what the fuck does Scott Morrison believe? I have sat here for twenty minutes and tried to conjure some kind of core belief that truly touches the man’s core, but I can’t. 

Of course, there’s a few things Morrison desperately wants us to believe he believes in.

Like the Cronulla Sharks. But, in all those photos at Shark’s games, Morrison doesn’t look like a die hard fan, he looks like a bloke who went along because his mate had tickets to a corporate box. And the scarf always looks way too perfect, like he snatched it from the merch stand on the way in. If Morrison is such a devoted life-long fan of the Sharks, then where’s the photo of him, as a kid, wearing his first Shark’s jersey? It doesn’t exist, and we know this because if it did exist, we would have been subjected to this image four million times by now. 

“Morrison believes in Australia”. Fuck off. If Scott Morrison believed in Australia he wouldn’t have been splayed on a Hawaiian beach, while his own country burned to the ground. And if he did care about the country maybe he would have listened to the former fire chiefs who tried to warn him the country was about to burst into flames. 

“Morrison believes in a fair go”. Yeah. Nah. If he believed in a fair go, he wouldn’t have his mates like Gerry Harvey hoarding rapid antigen tests and flogging them for an inflated price while the rest of us are walking into chemists like Oliver Twist clutching a begging bowl.

“Morrison believes in his family”. Only so far as using them as a human shield, to protect himself from the barrage of bullshit he’s caused himself. Like the 60 Minutes puff piece this week in which his family sit around and watch him play ukulele. Any parent who forces their kids to watch them play ukulele deserves an immediate visit from the DHHS. 

And just on the whole 60 Minutes saga, which dumb fuck adviser let him crack out the ukulele,

an instrument so closely linked with Hawaii? And of all the songs, he chose April Sun in Cuba, a song literally about fucking off to an island paradise, even though everyone told you stay! I’m starting to see why Scott was never much chop as a marketing manager.  

“Morrison believes in Jesus”. I wanna give him this one, I really do, but having grown up in a Christian family, and spent every Sunday in half empty churches, I’ve heard enough sermons to know that Jesus believed none of us are perfect, and we all must ask for forgiveness and take responsibility for our shortcomings. But Scott Morrison never says sorry. He is responsible for nothing and answers to no one. 

Yes, he did recently say sorry to Brittany Higgins, but that was after he needed his wife to tell him why a young woman being raped is a bad thing. And he wasn’t even going to give that apology until he found out Anthony Albanese was going to speak on the matter. And all this after his office backgrounded against Brittany Higgins and her boyfriend. Just putting it out there, but sincerity isn’t dripping from this apology. 

So does Scott Morrison actually believe in anything? Well, he still seems to believe he can win the next election. But hopefully that turns out to be just as much bullshit as all his other beliefs.