Scott Morrison and the Coalition are fiddling as Australia burns

Let’s start by acknowledging a few things. December, for prime ministers juggling agendas and commitments on multiple fronts, can be trying. Parliament is over for the year and people want things to be quiet, but politics in the run down to Christmas is about as orderly and elegant as a bus hurtling in the direction of a hairpin bend.

The attorney general, Christian Porter, and the
prime minister, Scott Morrison, release a second
 version of the proposed religious freedom laws
 amid the bushfire crisis.

So this is my way of saying Scott Morrison is a busy bloke with a lot on his mind. He’s got a minister under police investigation. He’s got the midyear economic forecast next week. On Monday, cabinet was wrestling with big issues, like the location of defence work and the price regulations governing airports – and that was before a volcano eruption in New Zealand loomed shockingly into view.

The prime minister also managed to avert what would have been a full-on brawl in his party room last week by kicking the release of the latest iteration of the government’s religious discrimination bill into this week. The price for deferring an unseemly fight at an inconvenient juncture was coughing up the new version of that proposal, pronto – hence Tuesday’s hey presto press conference.

While the country was burning.

Read the story from The Guardian by Katharine Murphy - “Scott Morrison and the Coalition are fiddling as Australia burns.”