In Bulldozed, Niki Savva catalogues Scott Morrison’s nasty, duplicitous, nutty behaviour
- Written by Frank Bongiorno, Professor of History, ANU College of Arts and Social Sciences, Australian National University
Niki Savva doesn’t like Scott Morrison. In the very first chapter of Bulldozed, she describes him as “petty and vindictive.”
Savva was just warming up. After the revelations of Morrison having secretly taken multiple ministries, his colleagues presented him to her as “messianic, megalomanical, and plain mad.” “Often, he would screw his friends”, she quotes one as saying.
Review: Bulldozed: Scott Morrison’s fall and Anthony Albanese’s rise – Niki Savva (Scribe)
Fran Bailey, the former minister who pushed Morrison out of his job running Tourism Australia in 2006, thought him “missing that part of the brain that controls empathy.”
Voters “grew sick and tired of his weaving, wedging, dodging, fibbing, and fudging,” Savva judges. He was “Boris Johnson without the hair or the humour.”
In case we should remain in doubt after almost 400 pages, many of them given over to Morrison’s nasty, duplicitous and nutty behaviour, we get a summing up in the “acknowledgements” section. In most books, this is reserved for affectionate expressions of gratitude. Not here.
“He was woeful”, says Savva, “the worst prime minister I have covered.” “He simply wasn’t up to the job.” She apologises for whatever part she played in his rise.
Savva played little part in his rise but her commentary over recent years in the pages of The Age and Sydney Morning Herald probably did play some small part in his downfall. That said, there is sufficient damning material here to indicate that Morrison was primarily responsible for his own undoing.
He was also, as Savva shows, on the receiving end of a professional Labor outfit that, under Anthony Albanese, had learned from its previous mistakes and was single-minded in its pursuit of a pathway back to power.
Bulldozed is a big, sprawling book. Sometimes, it sprawls a little too much. The narrative can jump around in a way that might confuse those not already familiar with the broad outline of events. Savva is not one of the country’s great prose stylists, but there are lines here that only the humourless would complain about, such as Barnaby Joyce being “to Liberal voters what Roundup was to weeds”.
Phat Nguyen/AAPAs in Savva’s account of another lamentable prime ministership, The Road to Ruin: How Tony Abbott and Peter Credlin Destroyed Their Own Government (2016), she presents politics as a human drama, played out by real (if highly unusual) people with ordinary (and, too often these days, extraordinary) human frailties.
Savva was herself senior media adviser to former Liberal treasurer Peter Costello, and the sensation is often that of the insider looking out and explaining to the rest of us how the system works and what its players are like. Savva manages to do so without talking down to her readers or sounding full of herself.
Read more: View from The Hill: The Bell report on Morrison's multi-ministries provides a bad character reference[1]
Opportunism and capitulation
This is a book of cumulative detail – a great deal of it damning to the Morrison government and flattering to its opponents – rather than of the grand revelation. Savva has excellent sources, but it is obvious there are too many people still pulling their punches, or simply not speaking at all, to permit a grander exposé.
At the time of writing, some of Savva’s discoveries have already been reported in the media. For instance, we now know that Yarralumla is an underestimated Canberra performance space, where guests at Government House are expected to sing to one another, often using lyrics provided by the wife of the Governor-General[2], Linda Hurley, set to some familiar tune. You Are My Sunshine was, according to Savva, “a hot favourite”.
This is a Canberra bubble – to use one of Morrison’s own favourite terms – a city full of spineless senior public servants, a prime minister and governor-general bereft of judgement, and a frontbench of opportunists willing to agree to anything so long as it ensured a smooth passage for their own glorious careers.
Read more: Politics with Michelle Grattan: Niki Savva on her book Bulldozed, Scott Morrison and the Liberals' woes[3]
Some, including Morrison himself, appear not to have even a Year Nine civics class understanding of parliamentary government. Ben Morton, part of Morrison’s circle and an assistant minister, complains about people “hyperventilating” in the wake of the revelations about Morrison’s multiple ministries.