In Indonesian there’s a saying serba salah. It is difficult to translate into English.

The literal sense is ‘everything wrong’. It’s used to describe the state of a person who, whatever they do or, seems to fall out of favour. Every step is a misstep, every act is just seen as illegitimate, erroneous, unwanted, just wrong wrong wrong.

Scott Morrison, outgoing Prime Minister, is now in a state of serba salah with the majority of Australian voters. Whatever he says or does comes across as cynical, artificial, self-serving or downright empty.

Witness his announcement yesterday about superannuation. In case you missed it, the first prong is allowing young people to dip into their super to purchase a first home. The chaser is for retirees to get a big tax-free deposit into their superannuation for selling a house.

This centrepiece announcement of the Liberal Party campaign launch was widely derided instantly. Even senior figures on ‘his side’ of politics are or have been notably against the concept, from former Finance Minister Mathias Cormann to former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull. Economists were even more scathing.

The Coalition has not landed a single bullseye in this campaign. A big part of the problem, a giant steaming turdsworth of it, is Scott Morrison himself.

You can wear out a pair of sneakers trying to find anybody who genuinely likes the man. The leaked text messages from colleagues are now legendary, and need no further explanation.

Exit Morrison, Stage Left 6

The Labor Party has homed in the propensity of Mr Flim-Flam to go absent in times of need, with attack ads featuring the infamous ‘I don’t hold a hose mate’ and ‘It’s not my job’ throwaways.

The Coalition campaign has been about a third ‘announceables’ a.k.a. promises, for which Scott Morrison has gained a reputation for not delivering: bushfire recovery funding, a federal integrity commission, submarines, etc…I could go on but life is short.

Another third has been a scare campaign, Green-tinged here in Tasmania, about how uncertain it is to ‘gamble’ on Labor and its leader Anthony Albanese. This has all been a bit daft, considering Albanese has been in the Australian Parliament for 26 years, including six as a Cabinet minister, indeed a spell as Deputy Prime Minister to Kevin Rudd. His front bench – Penny Wong, Tanya Plibersek, Chris Bowen, Mark Dreyfuss, et al – all have long parliamentary records. They are all very much known quantities.

The last third has been a dismal rallying of the conservative diehards, ranging from fairly standard tax cuts for the wealthy through to the dog-whistle ‘religious freedom’ bill, complete with soft-soaping of toxic transphobe Catherine Deves in Warringah.

None of it really feels like it’s going to win him a majority, not in the current vibe. All major polls – this aggregator gives a good overall picture – have had the Coalition primary vote in serious trouble for some time now, and there’s no sign of bad ukulele clips turning the dreadnought of doom around.

Exit Morrison, Stage Left 7

The whole thing has been a tired, nay, long-COVID exhausted, call by the privileged and the unaccountable for us to allow them to continue to swing their wrecking ball into wages, housing affordability, Medicare, public service standards and procurement, financial transparency, NDIS, defence and foreign policy, health facilities, human rights, Centrelink and indeed every shred of goddamn decency in public life we ever head.

It’s been so bad for so long, someone had to make a list: Achievements of the Coalition Government.

And while plenty of senior ministers have been AWOL the everpresent with his cris-cross-the-country mobile husting has been Morrison, a busking clown begging for votes because it won’t be easy under Albanese, eh.

Credit where due, even when there’s no longer anyone listening he’s still honking his big red nose for the show, doing daily dress-ups for brain-farts, juggling dexterously his endless pitch of faff and utter lies to the tune of whatever terrible Christian prog-rock song his fake church have implanted in his pumpkin.

The only blip in the Scott Morrison – no I am not calling him ScoMo, not now, not ever – smirkathon came on Saturday when he did a half-arsed mea culpa for the press pack. The Flapdoodler-in-Chief blathered a bit about ‘being a bulldozer’ and being able to change. Reading between the lines, the focus group feedback leading up to that must have been awful.

Anyroad, when given a chance to explain more about this new personal insight, the following exchange took place at Ringwood (Victoria) on Saturday morning:-

JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, you just then said that and you said this again yesterday, that you haven’t always made the right decisions.

PRIME MINISTER: Sure.

JOURNALIST: And it goes in with your sort of comments about being a bulldozer in the past. Could you tell Australians what specifically you think were the wrong decisions that you made or the incorrect decisions?

PRIME MINISTER: Well, the one I most commonly referenced was at the start of the vaccine program and how that was driven by the Department of Health. Now in hindsight, bringing in General Frewen was something I would have done earlier because when I put General Frewen in charge, we fixed the problem and we ended up ensuring the highest vaccination rates in the world.

Health Department under the bus, and on we go. The brief glimmer of opportunity for some genuine self-reflection about the endless cruelty, incompetence and corruption of his government disappeared faster than pita bread on World Hummus Day.

Simply put, ‘I’ll change’ is a form of falsifying the future, gaslighting extended from the here and now into the there and then. It’s a manipulative tactic to give someone the benefit now for a theoretically possible change in future. It is often a lie, and we know that terrain is Scott Morrison’s (white) bread and butter. The real predictor of future conduct is past conduct.

For heaven-help-us how many years we have been crying out for leadership and integrity, but we got Scott Morrison. I can’t recall a single Liberal campaign message that has lauded his achievements. And frankly we all know exactly why that is.

If you’ve taken a liking to watching Ukrainians kick the imperial Russian army’s arrogant arse, you’d recognise the Morrison campaign in this election as being the failed encirclement of Kyiv, the abandoned tank invasion column, the torpedoed Moskva now at the bottom of the ditch and the recently-botched Severskiydonetsk river crossing all rolled into one shrill blue shitshow.

A lot of the shrillness comes from the ridiculous claims that independents running effective campaigns in key Liberal seats are insincere puppets. Seats that are ‘by rights’ Liberal according to former Tony Abbott staffer and now Sky News flog Peta Credlin. Petal clearly needs a refresher in how voting works in a democracy.

Morrison’s death spiral is either pathetic or immensely satisfying, depending how much schaden you like stirred in your freude.

Or you can feel nothing, and just watch the smug ninnyhammer limp on for another five days of fibberish, posing regularly with the glazed-ham-in-suit candidates the Liberal Party prefers, or its female equivalent the screeching bottle-blonde harridan low-dealing a deck of victim cards.

But at least put some popcorn aside for the Liberal Party ructions after the 21 May walloping. You’d want to be ringside as the hand-wringing so-called moderates have it out with VoldeDutton’s ragtag death-eaters who survived in what’s left of blue ribbon seats.

The only certainty is that in fifty years’ time there will be a wan Canberra suburb named Morrison – perhaps largely vacant car parks surrounding warehouses of pork – plus a portrait of Australia’s most mendacious Prime Minister (and I use the term loosely) hanging in the Great Hall of Parliament House, looking vaguely respectable.

Oh, but those of us who survived these grim and cynical years, we’ll still remember who he really was. And how we turfed the clueless, coal-cuddling schmuck out.

Alan Whykes is Chief Editor of Tasmanian Times. He is not affiliated with any political party but has previously been a member of the Country Liberal Party (NT), Labor and the Greens.

Exit Morrison, Stage Left 8

Helter Shelter by Glen le Lievre. Support independent journalism! You can find more cartoons, gifs and videos on Patreon: https://patreon.com/glenlelievre.