Everything that is right about modern Australia in Scott Morrison’s mind can be found in the front bar of Launceston’s Sporties Hotel on Tuesday $20 steak night.
Tradies are having a beer over a game of pool after a hard day’s work, a young couple is discussing plans to have children and small businessmen are talking of expanding their wealth.
It is this scene that Morrison says Bill Shorten will destroy for at least the next decade if the Labor leader wins the May 18 election and takes his job.
Daily Mail Australia was with Morrison this week as he toured Tasmania and sat down with him for an exclusive interview about what makes him tick and where Australia is headed.
‘It’ll take us more than a decade to get over it,’ he said of what would happen under a Shorten government.
‘You vote Labor once you pay for it for at least a decade.’
Morrison is known as the man who stopped the boats carrying thousands of asylum seekers into Australia and who cut back welfare rorts in his previous ministerial roles.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison fears the Australia he knows and loves would be destroyed under a Labor government. He is pictured with ‘Johnsy’, a local at Launceston’s Sporties Hotel
‘It’ll take us more than a decade to get over it,’ Scott Morrison says of what would happen under a Bill Shorten government. ‘You vote Labor once you pay for it for at least a decade’
Scott Morrison carries himself in a pub setting like what he says he is: a normal suburban bloke. On Tuesday night at Launceston’s Sporties Hotel he was drinking Boags
He is portrayed by his opponents as not caring enough for the disadvantaged or vulnerable but the Pentecostal Christian talks a lot about preventing youth suicide and domestic violence.
His love for the Cronulla-Sutherland Sharks is real – he was the NRL club’s number one ticket holder more than two years before becoming prime minister.
But his penchant for baseball caps has been exaggerated since he first wore one for sun protection when he visited drought-ravaged Queensland shortly after taking office. People just keep giving him caps and he can’t really say no.
In a pub setting the 50-year-old father-of-two, who took up swimming laps to get a bit fitter six months ago, carries himself like what he says he is: a normal suburban bloke.
The Prime Minister liked what he saw when he walked into Sporties unannounced about 6.30pm on Tuesday, and the drinkers seemed to like him, with most referring to him as ‘ScoMo’.
Within minutes he had paid $5 to join the night’s pool competition and was downing the first of several schooners and pots of Boags.
The Liberal leader had been to Launceston plenty of times previously and called the northern Tasmanian city of 100,000 ‘Lonnie’ like the locals.
For the next two and a half hours – Morrison would be there long after the cameras had gone – he spoke with every man and woman about whatever they wanted.
He listened to why the region needed more apprentices, how power prices were rising and why voters were sick of politics and politicians.
He told drinkers that under a Labor government they would pay more for everything from the ute they drove to their work site to what they put in the kids’ lunch boxes for school.
Scott and Jenny Morrison, pictured with their daughters Abbey, 9, (left) and Lily, 11, moved from their home in Sydney’s Sutherland Shire to Kirribilli House in September last year
The prime minister threw in $5 to join the Sporties Hotel pool competition on Tuesday evening and was put up on the board as ‘SCOMO’. He lasted one game against local drinker ‘Johnsy’
He had a chicken parmigiana near at a bar table after refusing the publican’s offer of a private dining room and was beaten by five balls in two games of pool.
‘This is my favourite part of campaigning,’ Morrison told Daily Mail Australia.
‘The most honest conversations you have are standing in the park, at the footy, alongside the pool, or in the pub, because people are just telling what they really think.’
Scott Morrison says Bill Shorten (pictured) will ruin Australia if elected prime minister
Morrison’s first opponent over the pool table was local carpenter ‘Johnsy’ who said the prime minister was welcome and seemed like a ‘good bloke’.
Another carpenter, Jamie Goss, 31 said he found Morrison ‘down to earth.’
Traffic controller Jake Vlasveld, 25, said the Prime Minister genuinely understood his industry and ‘you can talk to him like a real person’.
When a young man told Morrison he and his partner wanted to have children but weren’t sure they could he told them of his own 14-year struggle with wife Jenny to conceive their first child.
‘He said “practice makes perfect”,’ the young man said. ‘”Just don’t wear yourself out”.’
Licensee Nick Daking did not know what to expect from Morrison but said: ‘He passes the pub test.’
‘There’s not one person here who hasn’t had a beer and a chat with him. Regardless of how they vote everyone left her thinking he’s a good guy.’
If Bill Shorten seems most comfortable addressing workers in factories and on building sites, Morrison is at home chatting with average Australians enjoying the fruits of their toil.
Chalking his cue: Scott Morrison prepares to play in the Sporties Hotel pool competition before a chicken parmy. Publican Nick Daking says the prime minister ‘passes the pub test’
The polls – and bookmakers – suggest the prime minister will lose the election he announced on Thursday but he says he is up for the fight of his political life and still believes he can win
The polls – and bookmakers – suggest the prime minister will lose the election he announced on Thursday but he says he is up for the fight of his political life and still believes he can win.
‘Of course it’s big and of course we’re the underdog,’ he said.
The day after his night at Sporties Morrison told Daily Mail Australia what he liked about being prime minister and why Australians should give him another go.
The best part of this job is I get to meet everybody. I get to meet so many different people from all around the country and they tell me their stories.
‘The best part of this job is I get to meet everybody, he said. ‘I get to meet so many different people from all around the country and they tell me their stories.
‘They tell me what’s going on with them. I get an insight into Australian life that I think few people do, if any, because of the privilege of being prime minister.
‘People will come and they’ll share their stories with you and that’s their joys and their sorrows.
‘I just like hanging out with Australians, from all walks of life.’
Asked why he deserved to remain prime minister, Morrison said: ‘Because I believe Australians want to keep their economy strong, because they know that everything else flows from that.’
‘Of course we all want better health care, of course we all want our schools funded, we all want medicines funded, we all want cancer care, we want all these things.
Yet another baseball cap: People have been giving Scott Morrison caps since he was photographed wearing one while visiting drought-ravaged Queensland in August last year
‘Australians understand all that. We all share that but the difference between us and Labor is they can never pay for it.
‘They just have no form on managing money and that’s why the economy is central to the election.’
Morrison said Shorten would trash the economy and ruin Australians’ current way of life.
‘He has a plan that sets Australians against each other,’ he said.
‘He has a plan that is driven by envy not by aspiration and he has a negative view I think of how our country works together.
‘It’s an us and them struggle, whereas we don’t see it like that.
‘This is why my tax plan actually provides tax relief for everybody, not some at the expense of others.
‘It says the harder you work the better you do – good for you. That’s actually how you make a stronger economy. It’s not rocket science, it really isn’t.
‘This is why I saw you vote Labor once you pay for it for more than a decade. Because that’s what’s happened.
‘I don’t want to see another decade start like that where Labor just basically takes us back to square one again. We can go on from here and that’s why I say we can’t turn back now.
‘We’ve done the hard stuff and we’ve got the economy heading in the right direction and we’re going to need it to because we’re up against some pretty big challenges in the years ahead.’
‘I love it that kids still play footy on the nature strip in my electorate – I think that’s awesome. When I see the kids doing that when I’m driving home… I love it,’ the prime minister says
Morrison said to change government now would ‘change everything’ including what he saw as a typical Australian way of life.
‘I’m a suburban boy from Sydney,’ he said. ‘I love the suburbs, I grew up in the suburbs.
‘I love it that kids still play footy on the nature strip in my electorate – I think that’s awesome. When I see the kids doing that when I’m driving home… I love it.
‘That still happens in suburbs in Sydney today as I’m sure kicking an AFL ball – a Sherrin – around in the suburbs of Melbourne still happens, or Tasmania or in Adelaide or in Perth.
I love it that kids still play footy on the nature strip in my electorate – I think that’s awesome. When I see the kids doing that when I’m driving home… I love it.
‘That’s what the character of where we live should remain, so I’m very passionate about that.’
Morrison no longer drives home through the suburbs to Pork Hacking in the Sutherland Shire, after moving into Kirribilli house when he replaced Malcolm Turnbull as prime minister in August last year.
But he did not want his suburban dream to be destroyed by Labor policies he said would hurt small business, put Australians out of work – and force them to drive electric cars they don’t want.
‘I think there is a bit of a thing in the suburbs which says we just want to live our lives the way we want to live our lives,’ he said.
‘And if that means we want to hook up the boat to the back of the car or go fishing, or the tinny or the trailer or whatever it is.
‘If someone wanted to drive an SUV because they had three kids they should be able to, or they might decide we want to hook up the boat to the back of the car or go fishing, or the tinny or the trailer or whatever it is.’
Mr Morrison described himself as the ‘custodian of the Menzies-Howard legacy’ and said ‘I really want to take the tax monkey off people’s back.’ He announced an election on Wednesday
Morrison said while his government had a plan for the future, if he won the election voters could also expect ‘steady as she goes’.
‘Oh, for sure – getting the budget back into surplus and keeping it there without increasing taxes, so you can grow the economy and you can continue to roll out the infrastructure and services which people are relying on.
‘Labor have learned nothing from their time when they were in government and they’ve demonstrated nothing of that learning while they’ve been in Opposition.
‘So Labor haven’t changed but as I’ve said they will change it all, they will change it all, in every sense.’
Morrison also had a message for those who might be contemplating change for change’s sake: ‘Don’t risk it.’
‘Last time this risk was taken it’s taken us more than a decade to get back to where we were. You change governments you change the country.
‘We didn’t get to where we are by putting up taxes and slowing the economy. We got there by cutting taxes, building infrastructure and growing the economy and Labor doesn’t want to pursue that approach.
‘The economy’s not theoretical, it’s real – it’s as real as the air you breathe. Because it determines what you get paid, it determines whether you have a job, it determines how much resource there is in your community.
‘So it’s very, very real and I’d say you can’t take that for granted. It can change and Labor will change it.’
Morrison described himself as the ‘custodian of the Menzies-Howard legacy’ and said ‘I really want to take the tax monkey off people’s back’.
On the tongs: Mr Morrison is the number one ticket holder of the Cronulla-Sutherland Sharks NRL club. He is pictured with Liberal candidate Eleni Petinos at the last NSW state election
Small business, in particular, had to be supported if the country was to continue forging ahead.
‘That’s what I know keeps the whole show going,’ he said.
‘So long as small business is doing well in this country then our economy’s in good shape.
‘When they are struggling for oxygen because they’re being weighed down by taxes then that’s when our economy will really, really hurt.’
I did say though a couple of years ago that I think Australians have turned down the sound on Canberra.
Morrison did not believe Australians had an increasing distrust of politicians or disengagement with politics.
‘I did say though a couple of years ago that I think Australians have turned down the sound on Canberra,’ he said.
”There is the bubble, as I’ve described it, that Australians don’t live in. They live outside the bubble.
‘I think when I said that it resonated quite strongly with Australians that there’s a whole bunch of people making decisions down in that bubble.
‘It goes back to that question, why do I like being in places like Sporties? It isn’t in the bubble.
‘You will find no bubble-dwellers in Sporties. You’d never find Johnsy in the bubble, I can assure you of that.’
Mr Morrison said he had given no thought to what he would do if he did not win the election. ‘I don’t contemplate it – because that’s not my job,’ he said. He is pictured on Thursday
Morrison said if people had disconnected from politics they would re-engage now that a Budget had been delivered and an election announced.
‘They have listened to that Budget and now they know going into an election that the ears if you like are reluctantly opening up, the eyes are reluctantly opening and there’s nothing wrong with that.
‘It’s one of the things I’ve got to say I really love about Australia and Australian politics is people are far more interested in the things that are happening in their life.
‘People are more interested in other things but that doesn’t mean that things in politics are unimportant to them. Of course they’re very important.
‘Health care’s important. Education’s important, defence and national security’s important.
‘You wouldn’t want to confuse a lack of interest in those topics with turning the sound down on Canberra.’
‘It’s one of the things I’ve got to say I really love about Australia and Australian politics is people are far more interested in the things that are happening in their life,’ Mr Morrison said
While Shorten is less popular with the electorate than Morrison, neither of them will wage a campaign based on their personalities.
‘People I think have grown tired of the personalities of politics,’ Morrison said.
‘Australians are interested in has the government got the budget back into balance? Are they delivering the roads we want? Has the funding gone into hospital and schools?
Morrison said he had given no thought to what he would do if he did not win the election.
‘I don’t contemplate it – because that’s not my job,’ he said.
‘It’s my job as prime minister to secure re-election to keep doing what we believe in. There are no second prizes in politics.’
‘The coverage of politics focuses on the personalities and the activities of politics,’ Mr Morrison said. ‘Australians aren’t too interested in that.’ He is pictured in another baseball cap