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The sitting Govt generally trails in the polls, the fact that it's taken until now is an indictment on the Greens -Labour coalition that failed so miserably at the last election. Some say ScoMo is or appears arrogant, short memories I say, Shorten was, apart from Rudd, the most arrogant PM in recent history. Most political leaders are arrogant, menzies, Turnbull, Hawke and of course Keating.

ScoMo handled the fires poorly from a PR pov but is handling what is potentially a far more serious situation with the Corona virus much better, arcing up the Christmas island detention centre as a staging point and health checkpoint for all Chinese incoming travellers. there are already 10,000 cases identified, the real number is likely way more than that.

Shorten has never been Prime Minister SS

My bad, must have been channelling a nightmare I had that he was!!

BC wrote: I agree with what you are saying Grump but I guess we need to understand that historically the states co-ordinate responses to situations like these and request assistance from the federal government on a needs basis. NSW for instance took ages to ask the feds probably due to the fact the Minister for Emergency Services decided to take a family holiday in London in the middle of it all. Morrison has changed that arrangement now so that the Federal government will decide when to act and not wait for the states. I do agree however that optics is everything in politics and ScoMo sunning himself in Hawaii whilst the nation burned was not a good look.

I cant remember any Federal involvement in the Ash Wednesday fires, it was all state based, and it was a bit of a balls up hence the formation of the Rural Fire Service, as the prior arrangement was a shambles, even more recently Black Saturday , the female Vic Police Commissioner dropped the ball but seemed to walk away unscathed.

Sco Mo thing was a bad look, on top of telling everyone to holiday in Oz, then doing the opposite, John Howard had a good feel for these things, Tony Abbott also stayed local, Harold Hold did as well down at his holiday house in Portsea, came at a price though...