I have thought long and hard about Morrison's Press Club address of two weeks ago. Not because of the media attention on leaked texts from other politicians telling of the PM's habit of lying, as that issue has been well and truly analysed.
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Instead, I have been pondering on the wider implications of his speech.
They don't lead to optimistic conclusions, for essentially what Morrison did, as Mike Scrafton pointed out in Pearls and Irritations, was to "infantilise" voters.
Scrafton argues that Morrison "believes the voters, cocooned in their cloistered suburbs, are oblivious to the threats that will crush their children's future prospects".
Let's see if he's right and what the implications are for all of us.
Australians have modest expectations; the PM tells us all.
They just want to "run their businesses, own their own home, raise and educate their kids the way they want to do it, save for their retirement".
For these supposedly happy masses, "there is no more important vision than having a country where we enable our kids to realise their dreams about what they want for their life".
Seemingly oblivious to any encroaching dangers, Morrison maintains that Australians "remain well prepared for the future".
On this, he is completely wrong.
For example, the upcoming federal election should be about global warming, increasing wealth inequality, irreversible environmental degradation, widespread species extinction, ever-rising house prices, and the seemingly inevitable march to war that the PM and Defence Minister are barracking for.
And, most critically, about the never-ending thirst for economic growth lying behind these threats.
Election campaigns never rise much above budgetary headlines, three-word campaign slogans, pork barrelling, name-calling and personal slurs, and straight-out lies.
The electorate and the mainstream media have been conditioned to expect nothing more profound or visionary from their leaders.
This approach to electioneering is undoubtedly based on practices that have worked in the past. However, the long-term crises facing not just Australia but the world demand decisive long-term policy actions.
On the global warming debate, it is worth noting that the next parliament will run until 2025.
If radical action is not taken to reduce emissions, to transition Australia to a low-carbon economy and adjust settlement patterns and government services to a new, hotter, less predictable and violent environment, then calamity will be on us. These are issues for which electors should see plans being made.
Perhaps more significantly, for the billions of people that rely on environmental services for clean water, food and health, the priority is reversing environmental degradation. Even here, we read stories of poisoned rivers and seas, plastics polluting every nook and cranny on the planet, land-clearing destroying human and animal habitats, dirty air killing urban dwellers, and environmentally generated pandemics. Land degradation contributes to species extinction and global warming. Yet, at election time, we see nothing on these issues.
Now, let's look at what causes this dystopian future. The phenomenon that drives these crises is economic growth. Some aspects of it are understandable, for everyone who is poor or in an under-developed country quite reasonably wants more. They want to be housed and to have access to food, health and education for their children.
But at the other end of the spectrum are the capitalists, financiers, exploiters and rent seekers. No government is going to force a major redistribution of wealth or put the system that produces jobs and revenue at risk. There is no appetite for it among political elites.
As an opinion piece questioned in the DA last week, "Is endless growth a fairy-tale?". The short answer is 'yes'.
It can be done. There's no need for totalitarian communism, though a Bernie Sanders' style socialism would be a good alternative.
But short of that, the most pressing need is to find a way to regulate and direct economic activity while maintaining prosperity. Clean, green, ethical, circular and sustainable economic growth must be possible, otherwise global warming, inequality, environmental degradation and species extinction will overwhelm us.
The amazing thing is we all know this. Yet Australian governments can spend hundreds of billions of dollars on armaments, including nuclear-powered submarines, for example. Time is running out and the best way to begin would be to acknowledge and discuss the threats during the election campaign. Voters need to demand the discussion, otherwise it won't happen.
