When it comes to rating the performance of the treasurer, Scott Morrison, the economist, Saul Eslake, doesn’t mince words. He says Australian treasurers need to be good at three things. They need to make good decisions, then have the skills to communicate them, and have the gumption and the policy drive to get smacked down periodically by the prime minister of the day.

“It’s not clear that Morrison is good at any of those things yet,” Eslake tells Guardian Australia.

Morrison was dropped into the job with no prior experience. I believe it showed Saul Eslake

The independent economist, who has worked in the Treasury, the financial markets, thinktanks and in government advisory roles, says he was prepared to cut Morrison some slack early in his tenure.

He says Morrison was the first treasurer to be dropped into the position with no prior experience in an economic portfolio since Labor’s John Kerin, who replaced Paul Keating as treasurer in 1991, during Labor’s Hawke/Keating power struggle.

“It’s a tough portfolio. Morrison was dropped into the job with no prior experience,” Eslake says. “I believe it showed.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Scott Morrison is congratulated by his daughters, Abbey and Lily, after delivering the 2016 budget speech. Morrison lives with his wife, Jenny, and their children in Sydney’s Sutherland Shire. Photograph: Mike Bowers/The Guardian

Morrison, 49 next Saturday came into parliament as MP for Cook in New South Wales after a career mixing business, politics (as state director of the Liberal party in NSW) and government agencies (he was MD of Tourism Australia). He came to the treasury portfolio in September 2015 via social services, after a long stint in the immigration portfolio, a period he used to burnish his credentials with Coalition conservatives. Eslake points out the immigration stint was characterised by crude soundbite communications, and a systemic lack of transparency. It’s not a style that works in the treasury portfolio.

Eslake says since taking up the treasurer position, Morrison “readily resorts to slogans, and hasn’t shown a capacity to carry a sophisticated or nuanced argument”.

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In terms of the critical relationship between the treasurer and the prime minister, he says Morrison is not so much sat on by the prime minister, as airily “brushed aside” by a boss who doesn’t seem to rate him. Eslake says Morrison has “struggled to develop a coherent narrative”.

John Daley, who runs the Grattan Institute, sees a treasurer mired by the Treasury process. “He seems to be captive to the same forces that have held the last two treasurers captive,” he says.

Treasury produces four-year forecasts suggesting the budget will make an orderly transition back to surplus – a surplus that never arrives. “We’ve seen nothing from Morrison indicating he’ll do something different. When you are predicting you are going to be in surplus in four years time, why would you have the tougher discussion?”

Chris Richardson, who like Eslake started in Treasury, before building up a career as a private forecaster at Access Economics, now owned by Deloitte, is broadly on the same page as Eslake about Morrison’s communication deficiencies, but is more inclined to see a glass half full.

Either people aren’t listening, or the communications skills aren’t up to it Chris Richardson

He sees a treasurer with a point of view, facing a lot of challenges.

“Morrison is clearly a treasurer with strong values, and he seeks policy solutions to try and meet those values,” Richardson says. “But in a deeply divided Australia, either people aren’t listening, or the communications skills aren’t up to it.”

Morrison will preside over his second budget next Tuesday.

The Treasury is the second toughest job in Australian politics. Treasurers are responsible for not only government finances, they are held responsible for the performance of the economy. Morrison is trying to manage his two imperatives in complex times, and given most of the job is about saying no to colleagues, treasurers are rarely popular.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Scott Morrison and Malcolm Turnbull on the campaign trail in 2016. ‘There’s a belief he walked both sides of the street during Turnbull’s surgical strike against Tony Abbott – that he didn’t rally his supporters to shore up Abbott against the Turnbull incursion.’ Photograph: Mike Bowers/The Guardian

To impress in his job, Morrison has to have the policy grunt and sufficient command of his material to placate expert external constituencies – professional economists like Eslake, Daley and Richardson – who translate developments in economic policy to the Australian public through their regular media appearances and punditry.

Then there’s placating the fickle ratings agencies, hovering with intent about Australia’s AAA credit rating, and reassuring the financial markets.

Governments also have to also manage the rent seekers, the conga line of lobby groups that descend annually on the national capital to pontificate on the contents of the government’s annual economic statement.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Scott Morrison hands Barnaby Joyce a lump of coal during question time on 9 February. Photograph: Mick Tsikas/AAP

Behind the fog of special interests, stand the voters, sometimes barely visible.

Morrison has a Herculean task trying to repair the damage the government inflicted on itself with its first, politically toxic budget in 2014 – the budget that rapid set negative public perceptions about the Coalition government.

He has to slay the zombies of the Abbott period, literally in terms of nixing unpopular savings measures the government has no hope of legislating, and metaphorically in the sense of out-running a ghoul – a ghost of a disastrous government past.

The government has to break the negative impressions created by the disastrous opening in 2o14. The government’s persistently poor poll performance in 2017 tells us the imperative of political reinvention is urgent. But the government as a collective has also learned turning the ship of state isn’t easy, particularly in an atmosphere of rolling internal insurgency.

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Morrison is clearly trying to execute a pivot. He’s attempting to turn the conversation about debt and deficit away from the hysterical “disaster” rhetoric of Tony Abbott and Joe Hockey. He’s trialling a more constructive characterisation: productive debt, which funds infrastructure and unproductive debt, which funds excessive recurrent spending.

Landing the budget’s infrastructure package is a critical component of project reinvention. The implacable austerity of the Abbott period has to make way for prudent nation building. Morrison has to find the dexterity to reposition, without reducing a complex policy argument to facile pantomime. For the treasurer, this will be a significant test.

With only limited room to move in a fiscal sense, Morrison also has to send some positive messages on health and education – issues voters connect with and care about – and given he’s raised expectations, produce some measures on housing affordability, which is a major political preoccupation in Sydney and Melbourne.

Budgets are as much about political storytelling as they are about accounting. Next Tuesday night, Morrison has to make a politically productive break from past mistakes, and land a document that feels internally coherent and makes sense.

And while the government’s external constituencies will be rating the budget for clarity, consistency and courage – their various feelpinions thundering across the airwaves as soon as the 7.30pm embargo lifts – Morrison’s most existential and pressing challenges are internal.

He’s a man without a tribe in the middle of the Coalition’s clash of clans

Morrison has gone in a short period of time from being next cab off the rank, the Liberal party’s next natural leader, once the Turnbull cycle inevitably exhausted itself, to watching his stocks plummet.

He’s lost ground internally, muddied up in the government’s protracted war of the tribes: the small “l” liberals and libertarians versus the conservatives – Team Malcolm versus Team Tony.

In recent times, the treasurer has had to wear the ignominy of being publicly dropped by the Sydney radio host Ray Hadley. Politicians can often learn the hard way that their media friends and boosters – people they have spent years courting and flattering and indulging – are fickle, and temperamental.

But Hadley’s decision wasn’t a quixotic shock jock outburst. Declaring himself post-Morrison was a brutal judgment call, a reading of the internal tea leaves. The gesture says Morrison is not currently the red meat conservative’s leadership alternative of choice. Immigration minister Peter Dutton has leap-frogged Morrison, and Tony Abbott (re-embraced by Hadley) remains relentlessly in public view.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A man without a tribe? Morrison isn’t a natural ally of moderate Liberals, but isn’t completely trusted by conservatives either. Photograph: Mike Bowers/The Guardian

Morrison is not friendless, he has a group of loyal supporters, but he’s a man without a tribe in the middle of the Coalition’s clash of clans. One colleague is caustic in his assessment. “He’s the nowhere man.”



Around the government, you will hear consistent critiques about Morrison. He’s got a bit of a short fuse. He can rub people the wrong way. He can be brittle. He lacks the capacity to tell a compelling economic story – he can’t stitch big themes together – and he lacks finesse managing expectations, which is an essential art form for treasurers, and half the battle in landing a budget successfully.

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There is also concern around the government that Morrison has fumbled the politically sensitive housing issue prior to the budget, raising expectations that the government can’t possibly meet, and effectively giving the federal government ownership of a problem that could have been sheeted home to the states.

Some colleagues who have offered the treasurer policy suggestions designed to raise the government’s level of ambition have been warned off by Morrison declaring the ideas won’t meet the Daily Telegraph test – an arbitrary benchmark that doesn’t thrill everyone.

One colleague who has time for Morrison points out the treasurer has been prepared to push the envelope – to take on big challenges, and try and hold the line when things get tough – but remarks the strength can also be a weakness. Sometimes, he won’t take a hint that’s he overextended. Sometimes, he won’t take advice when he needs to.

Conservatives have particular complaints about Morrison. There are two perceived transgressions. There’s a belief he walked both sides of the street during Turnbull’s surgical strike against Abbott – that he didn’t rally his supporters to shore up Abbott against the Turnbull incursion.

Some colleagues also see him as being insufficiently committed to a robust savings agenda, which is an article of faith for fiscal conservatives.

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In the eyes of some internal critics, Morrison in the Treasury has been too inclined to look at revenue options: adjusting super concessions for high income earners, a foray that still reverberates internally. “Treasury has the revenue lever, so they focus on that, and Scott has allowed that to continue. He’s been focused on one side of the equation – that’s how the base sees it,” says one colleague. “It’s cost him support.”

Other colleagues point out some of the current internal criticism of Morrison might reflect a combination of personal ambition, judicious score settling, and bed wetting.

One puts it this way. “There are many people who might fancy his portfolio, but do we think anyone would find the job easy? All treasurers struggle for the first couple of years. Does anyone really think there is someone out there now, hovering in the wings, who will do a better job?”