And the great contribution by acting Prime Minister McCormack? The Nationals Party leader, a politician unknown to most Australians and with all of the moral authority that that implies, lectured the protesters who dared call on Morrison to come home and do something. So is the Prime Minister learning the difference between occupying high office and exercising leadership? Is he rushing home for appearances' sake or to solve problems? The Labor leader, Anthony Albanese, refused to criticise Morrison's decision to leave the country this week on a family holiday. It turns out that Albanese was one of the only people in the country not wondering, as the star of the TV ad campaign that Morrison ran when he was Australia's tourism marketer, Lara Worthington (nee Bingle), posed this week, "Where the bloody hell are you?" Morrison said on Friday that he'd texted the Opposition Leader in advance to let him know he was handing responsibility to the dullard McCormack. But Albanese has been giving Morrison a few pointers on leadership in a crisis. First,

weeks ago, he called on the Prime Minister to convene a national heads of governments

meeting on disaster preparedness, including the state premiers. Good idea.

Then, two weeks ago, Albanese endorsed publicly the proposal from former fire chiefs for a national summit including scientists, farmers, the defence forces and fire chiefs to help develop a plan for "the resources and coordination to effectively manage future bushfires and natural disasters". Another good idea. Loading This week the Labor leader visited fire grounds and proposed some practical ideas for helping the volunteer firefighting force through a long and unrelenting season. After speaking with them, Albanese noted that they were fatigued after months, rather than the customary days or weeks, of callouts: "They can’t continue to just give up [their time], those who, many of them, aren’t being compensated at all, they still have to put food on the table, they still have to pay their mortgage. "And so, there is a range of measures that could be looked at, whether it is tax breaks, one-off payments, or some form of leave payment, support for businesses that are allowing people to leave. These issues have to be worked through. This is not business as usual. These people are showing their commitment to their community and to the nation. They deserve, I think, an equal commitment back." This is constructive leadership. From opposition. It's not blindingly original or especially entrepreneurial but it's the voice of an engaged political leader who is trying to help solve problems. All through these weeks, Morrison has been insisting that the status quo is fine and the system working well. He's been in denial, in hiding or in Hawaii. And sometimes all three at once. What's he so afraid of?

Even after his mea culpa on Friday morning, he insisted on 2GB that "every support that is being required of the Commonwealth and the Federal Government is being provided, that's already been allocated". This is the same passive stance he's assumed all along – not my problem, it's the states' responsibility and if they need something they can ask. Technically true, but is he an administrator or a leader? NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian has been doing a much more active job and, though she's not a born leader, she's at least been on the job and active. Illustration: John Shakespeare Credit: But this is much bigger than one state, much bigger than fires alone. Australia is in the grip of a major drought and heatwave affecting multiple states, with all of the traditional short-term problems turbocharged by the long-run problem of climate change. Towns and cities are running dangerously short of water, agriculture is shrinking, millions of hectares of bush burned out, some cities are choking on smoke haze, the population's physical health and mental welfare are damaged, South Australia and Victoria are struggling with electricity shortages. And most of the summer lies ahead.

"So all of that support is there," Morrison continued in his 2GB interview with John

Stanley. "But if I can return and provide some moral support to people who are out there doing it really tough, then that's what I can do and that's what I'll be very glad to do." Moral support will be much welcomed, but policy support would be even better. As Australia enters a brutal downward spiral of hydro-pyro crisis, are we going to find ourselves with a prime minister or will he be content to remain prime minimal? Illustration: Jim Pavlidis Credit: A developed democracy can weather an absence of leadership quite well for quite a long time. Even an absence of a government. In the case of Belgium, it was without an elected government for 589 days after its 2010 election. What happened to the country without a government for over a year and a half? Belgian filmmaker Dan Alexe reported: "The trains and buses still run. The police are still operating. The post is late, but then it always was late." The economy continued to grow. Exports rose. A country with strong, independent institutions and a professional public service can operate perfectly well without an elected government or political leadership. In fact, after nine months in this state of limbo, Belgium's former deputy prime minister told me: "I worry that it's going too well." He fretted that the people would be quite content to live without a government, leaving important looming problems untended. This would only increase the eventual cost to the country.

National politics, at its best, is a problem-solving mechanism. Australia, after a decade lost to prime ministerial churn, needs its problem-solving mechanism back. Loading Overall, Australia's situation remains relatively strong. But the big, deep wellsprings of national success are depleted. School performance in basic reading, writing and maths falls relentlessly. The economy's productivity – the ability of a country to produce more value from the same amounts of capital and labour – just suffered its weakest performance in a generation. Australian electricity is the world's most expensive and still too unreliable. And, this week, the country suffered its hottest two days since the current data series commenced in 1908. This is not an aberration but a culmination. As the Bureau of Meteorology puts it, all its measurement sets "show a consistent picture of warming temperatures for Australia over the past 110 years, with most of the warming occurring since the middle of the 20th century". As the most vulnerable of the continents to harmful climate change, Australia should be leading in finding international solutions. Morrison did not cause any of these problems. But he wanted to be prime minister. It's a big job, yes, and addressing these big problems is hard. But political leaders exist to solve problems, not avoid them. It may be that Morrison is simply too small-minded or too politically timorous to respond to his country's needs. In which case Australia will continue to drift into slow, genteel decline.

It could be worse. One thing worse than an absence of leadership is destructive leadership. That is what populism is delivering across many nations. Populism – of the left and the right – is a political style offering unworkably simplistic solutions to complex problems. Long-building public frustration at stagnant incomes and uncontrolled immigration exploded into convulsive populism in the last few years in the US, Britain and Europe. Australia is far from that. Our leaders do not single out Muslims or Mexicans or other minorities for special exclusion. Our leaders do not risk national breakup by sponsoring divisive shocks, like the one now testing the unity of the United Kingdom. Loading Our leaders may not be moving fast enough on climate change but they have not announced withdrawal from the Paris accord, either. "Australia now looks like one of the few outposts of [the old] normal," observes a political sociologist at the London School of Economics, Robin Archer. Of course, big problems, left untended, could well lead to a populist eruption in Australia one day. But, for now, Australia continues to drift on a cloud of complacency, held aloft by the success of past reforms and real leaders long gone. Morrison is rushing back to Australia. But do we have a leader?