While neither The Lodge, Kirribilli House or even Scott Morrison's personal digs in The Shire have come close to even being singed by Australia's trial by fire, recent events have been almost as calamitous for the PM and his government as for those at ground zero.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
Who would have thought the "miracle government" poised to begin 2020 on a high note would be on the ropes before the end of the first week in January?
And, worst of all, the Prime Minister has nobody but himself to blame. He, after all, set the stage by allowing the scandal surrounding Angus Taylor to drag on for far too long.
John Howard would have lightened the sleigh by feeding the embattled climate change denier to the wolves long ago.
That said, Taylor, who, in addition to being an embarrassment at home, was castigated for "throwing monkey wrenches into the works" during the Madrid climate conference, is the least of the Coalition's worries.
It's most immediate crisis is the by now widespread public perception that when decisive national leadership was urgently needed neither its leader, or the rest of the government, was able to deliver.
Morrison is not the only senior Coalition figure who has failed to step up in the last fortnight. Where is Peter Dutton? Surely many of the matters now under urgent consideration fall within his super-portfolio. Michael McCormack, never highly visible at the best of times, has disappeared since the PM's belated return from Hawaii.
Why is it that the National Security Committee of Cabinet is only meeting for the first time to discuss this issue on Monday? Was the PM reluctant to call his colleagues back from leave at a time of national emergency?
Why is it no steps have been taken to call a Council of Australian Governments meeting?
And why is it that no steps have been taken to call a Council of Australian Governments meeting?
By dealing with this crisis on a state-by-state basis the Coalition has made it almost impossible to develop a national response to what is obviously a national catastrophe.
These failures cut to the very heart of what appears to be the Prime Minister's problem. That is that he, and the members of this government, appear to be the only people left in the country who consider this to be "business as usual".
Virtually everything Scott Morrison has said and done to date makes it obvious that as far as he is concerned this is just another fire season; albeit one of the worst we have seen for awhile.
Wrong Prime Minister. Very wrong. Cast your mind back a few years. People talk about the disastrous NSW fires, the terrible Victorian fires, the devastating Tasmanian fires and so on.
What we are seeing right now is very different; enormous areas of the country stretching across Western Australia, South Australia, the Northern Territory, Queensland, NSW, Victoria and Tasmania are ablaze.
The ACT is the only major jurisdiction that has not burnt to date.
We haven't seen anything like this week's images of people being evacuated to navy ships from the fire ravaged town of Mallacoota since Cyclone Tracy struck Darwin; an event that may soon be overtaken as the worst natural disaster in our history.
To suggest, as the PM has now done on two separate occasions, the fires are unfolding against the backdrop of the cricket, was unbelievably insensitive. So was the decision to even proceed with Thursday's Kirribilli House reception in the first place.
As a result of these, and other gaffes, the Coalition has now passed the point of no return.
Regardless of what it says and does from here on, the public perception will be that it is a day late and a dollar short.
