But how much of Morrison's win was driven by values or policy difference rather than a very skillful, slogan-based marketing campaign against an unfortunate opponent, Bill Shorten, who was almost universally disliked and not trusted? This week, the Australian National University's voter behaviour project concluded from fresh data that the biggest drain on Labor's support in the month before the election came from Shorten's personal unpopularity rather than Labor policies. Loading Clearly, Shorten was Morrison’s best asset in the campaign. Shorten’s policy agenda didn’t help, but I also doubt it was definitive. I also doubt Morrison slogans claiming a strong economy in which the “fundamentals are strong”, and his commitment to “keep it strong”, were definitive. They didn’t resonate with the lived experience of most Australians – flat wages, record debts and mounting job insecurity. It became a choice between the lesser of two evils. Now Australians are living with “the evil of two policy lessers”.

Morrison has opted to sustain the fiction that he should govern in the interests of the quiet Australians. He attempts this, as if still in campaign mode, by focusing on the opposition and wedging Labor with parliamentary votes on what he claims are “values” issues. Loading “I thought I should just ask them a few questions” Morrison said of extending the cashless welfare debit card and drug-testing welfare recipients, while ignoring the chorus of calls for an increase in the Newstart allowance and deporting a Tamil family. Wedging will get Morrison a standing ovation at a Liberal Party state executive meeting – but it won't deliver good government. By pursuing these narrow interpretations of values, rather than governing in the broader national interest, Morrison is in danger of painting himself and his government into a very small electoral corner. For what it’s worth, the latest Newspoll is 51/49 in the government’s favour – so little has changed. The biggest danger for Morrison is that he starts to believe his own rhetoric and favourable initial media.

I had hoped, perhaps naively, that Morrison would turn his miracle into genuine good government and reform, particularly with productivity, innovation, tax and transfers, climate and energy, and relations with China and our near region. Unfortunately, Morrison is proving to be no better than his predecessors, with little interest in a long-term policy agenda, preferring to run on prejudice and opportunism. Loading Recent days have exposed the hollowness of the government’s economic policy rhetoric. Growth is not at all "strong”. It is weak. Sure, the government is paying out on its campaign promises to deliver tax cuts and a budget surplus. There is a real question as to whether these will be affordable or sustainable as we move to the realities of the 2020s: the global drift towards recession, an accelerating trade war, and extreme volatility in financial markets that harbor bubbles in stock, property, bond, commodity and currency markets. There is early evidence, in terms of retail sales and business conditions and confidence, that the recent tax and interest rate cuts won’t be enough to offset our structural weaknesses and global uncertainties. The risk is a further drift toward recession as the government continues to ignore its policy inadequacies and inconsistencies.