Why Scott Morrison struggles so much when facing tough questions
Prime Minister Scott Morrison struggles with his responses to the Brittany Higgins allegations and the vaccine rollout – and there’s a reason for that.
Professor of Linguistics Nick Enfield, of the University of Sydney, has analysed Mr Morrison’s responses to three questions and revealed why the PM is not coming across well.
“Currently he is having these high profile awkward exchanges, why is he not handling these well?” Prof Enfield asked.
“His priority seems to be defending himself on technicalities rather than dealing with the problem.”
The Labor Party has accused Mr Morrison of misleading parliament about an inquiry into what his office knew about Ms Higgins’ alleged rape, after it was revealed the investigation was suspended on March 9 – something the PM failed to tell Parliament.
“You reveal who you are by the specific things you chose to focus on in your words,” Prof Enfield said.
“And what is he (Mr Morrison) focusing on? What he said, and what he’s accused of.
“Someone else might focus on the matter at hand, which is the crisis – the sexual assault at parliament or getting vaccinations done – instead he’s choosing to focus on himself.”
Prof Enfield said Mr Morrison’s tendency to fall back on technicalities may be due to the type of training he has had and his personality.
“He is famously referred to as the ‘marketing guy’,” he said.
And it appeared the PM was speaking with one motto in his mind: “never admit”.
Prof Enfield said the PM’s answers made him appear “shifty” and that he would retreat to a technicality when trying to get out of something.
He said the PM could just be a clumsy speaker, but in the three examples, the PM does come across as “less interested in fact than with dealing with everything in a political way”.
“What comes to my mind is that he’s defending himself all the time, his language reveals his orientation towards defending his own self as a priority,” Prof Enfield said.
“If he’s serving us, the country and trying to protect us, what should he be doing? He should be solving the issue.”
1. Who was aware of Brittany Higgins’ allegations?
The Prime Minister has repeatedly been asked when a report would be completed that looks into whether anyone in his office knew of Ms Higgins’ rape allegation.
Labor leader Anthony Albanese noted last week it had been 30 days since Mr Morrison had asked his secretary Phil Gaetjens to look into it.
At the time, Mr Morrison said: “He (Mr Gaetjens) has not provided me with a further update about when I might expect that report.”
But the PM was accused of misleading Parliament when just three days later, Mr Gaetjens told Senate Estimates that his investigation had actually been suspended, something he told Mr Morrison almost two weeks earlier on March 9.
When asked during a press conference on Tuesday whether Mr Morrison had “misled Parliament by omission”, the PM said the reporter had “mischaracterised what I said in the House”.
“I said that I hadn’t been updated on when I had received the report, and I hadn’t been updated when I had received the report,” Mr Morrison said.
He went on to explain that no finishing date had been provided to him by Mr Gaetjens “because he could not provide me with one”.
“I was asked in the House about when I would receive it, and that is what I responded to,” he told reporters on March 23.
“What I would ask is that these statements not be mischaracterised.”
Of the exchange, Prof Enfield said Mr Morrison could have apologised for the misunderstanding and then clarified the situation but he didn’t appear to want to give up an inch.
“Given his position, you could understand he may want to avoid blame, or suggestions he was lying, but this is on another level – he is not accepting blame for not communicating clearly,” Prof Enfield said.
“You can’t just say that the problem of communication is the fault of those interpreting the message.”
Prof Enfield there was a “co-operative principle” in conversation where people anticipate what others were actually saying.
“If you say to me, ‘Can you open a window?’ and I just say, ‘Yes’, and don’t do anything, technically that’s answering the question in a truthful way but it’s not in the spirit of what I was asking and you know it,” he said.
By answering in the technical way that he did, Mr Morrison was responding in a way more typically associated with a courtroom.
“You can technically defend it but it’s not ethically within the confines of how human beings generally use languages as a co-operative exchange of information,” Prof Enfield said.
He said most people would anticipate what was really being asked.
“People who use language in a normal way, anticipate the real issue and address that,” Prof Enfield said.
2. Backgrounding against Brittany Higgins
There have been reports the Prime Minister’s media team was backgrounding against Brittany Higgins’ loved ones in the aftermath of the rape allegation.
“I watched as the Prime Minister of Australia publicly apologised to me through the media, while privately his media team actively undermined and discredited my loved ones,” Ms Higgins told the March 4 Justice rally.
Backgrounding refers to the practice of information being provided to journalists “on background” but not to be attributed to the source.
Mr Morrison was asked several times whether the claim was true and whether he was looking into if his office had been doing this.
“I have no knowledge of that and would never instruct that, Mr Speaker,” Mr Morrison told Question Time on March 15.
“I would never instruct such a thing, Mr Speaker. I would never do that.
“The apology offered to Brittany Higgins in this place was sincere and was genuine and I’m happy to restate it.”
On Thursday, Mr Morrison was asked whether he could “categorically say that your office hasn’t been backgrounding against one of her (Ms Higgins’) loved ones?”
Mr Morrison answered: “No one, there has been no one in the gallery, nothing has been raised with my office from anyone in the gallery making any of those accusations or any discomfort about anything that my office has done.
“People make allegations all the time second, third-hand. But there’s no one who has raised that with my Chief of Staff out of the gallery, no,” he told ABC’s Sabra Lane.
In a similar way, Prof Enfield said Mr Morrison could have addressed the backgrounding question differently.
“He could have said, ‘That’s awful if that’s happened and I’m determined to find out the truth and I would love to hear any evidence from anyone who knows about it, and those responsible will be fired on the spot’.
“You could say something like that and it would still sit perfectly well with the claim that he knew nothing about it,” Prof Enfield said.
Instead Mr Morrison chose to defend his lack of knowledge rather than deal with the actual issue.
“His answer is weird, it’s orthogonal to the real problem and comes back down to how he can be trusted,” Prof Enfield said.
He also pointed to Mr Morrison’s answer that his apology was “sincere”.
“When do you say that? Only if someone says it wasn’t sincere,” Prof Enfield said.
“So he’s revealing himself, everything he is talking about is very defensive.
“That’s his combination of training and personality – is to defend at all costs.
“Unfortunately for him, I don’t think it’s a good move PR wise – it comes across as defensive and it comes across as some sort of guilt.”
Ms Higgins has now filed a complaint over the alleged backgrounding.
3. Vaccine rollout delay
The Morrison Government previously said it wanted all adults to be vaccinated by October, which would involve an ambitious pace of 200,000 vaccinations a day that some experts doubted could be achieved.
On March 2, reporters asked Health Minister Greg Hunt whether October was still a realistic time frame.
“That remains our objective and our time frame,” Mr Hunt said.
But on March 11, Health Department secretary Brendan Murphy told the Senate Select Committee for COVID-19 that Australia was unlikely to meet the October target, partly because there needed to be a 12-week gap between the first AstraZeneca jab and the second dose.
Dr Murphy said all first doses would be delivered by October but conceded some people might not receive their second dose until mid-December.
The Prime Minister told reporters on March 12 that this was “not news”.
“That was made very clear by the Health Minister a month ago. So that isn’t new information,” Mr Morrison said.
It’s true Mr Hunt had earlier raised this as a possibility on February 16, when the longer gap was first approved by the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA).
But when he was asked whether it would delay the vaccination program, Mr Hunt said Australia was “absolutely on track” for every Australian who wanted the vaccine, to at least get their first dose. “We’ll look at what it means in regards to the second dose,” he said.
Again, Prof Enfield said Mr Morrison could have just acknowledged the delay and that the vaccine wouldn’t be available for some people in October.
“Just say that,” he said. “He’s consistently making the story about his own words and his plans rather than sticking to the real issues.
“He’s focusing too much on trying to stay squeaky clean and all that really does is expose himself as being overly interested in that, which in turn, makes him look like he’s hiding things.”
Prof Enfield acknowledged that politicians did have a tough job answering questions at press conferences, which is why it was better always to be as straight as possible.
“You have to be pretty bloody good – if you are being misleading – to not come across as misleading,” he said. “As soon as you try to massage the truth, you just trip over yourself, especially under pressure.
“And people are very sensitive to language, to the precise ways that people talk and that doesn’t go away when they are looking at a politician in a press conference.
“In a high stakes setting, it’s just very hard for anyone to perform without giving themselves away.”
https://www.news.com.au/national/politics/why-scott-morrison-struggles-so-much-when-facing-tough-questions/news-story/a5affbaa7f2be336e0a8a4ba204daddb
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