The first was delivered by the Western Australian election last Saturday, a landslide of epic proportions returning the Labor government of Mark McGowan. While the result was extraordinarily bad for the Liberals - their leader defeated and their seat count reduced to two or three, behind the Nationals - it was also an orthodox message that the Prime Minister could compute. Electoral politics is Morrison's bread and butter, an arena in which he is comfortable and experienced. He is a winner, with the 2019 "miracle victory" under his belt. He can rationalise the WA message and react to it, as can his political advisers.

Morrison therefore greeted the state election result with sang-froid. He trusts in his ability to master electoral politics and to defeat Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese in an election conducted on the economy and his leadership during the pandemic. There may be unpredictable hurdles and slips to overcome along the way, but he is ready and reasonably confident of victory.

Morrison may still lose the next election, but his interpretation of the WA result is not unreasonable. State and federal elections are distinct. All PMs, on both sides of politics, make this point. It is Labor's task now, in both Queensland and Western Australia, to translate good state results to the federal arena. There is no guarantee that they can do that, having failed to do so in the past. These two states cost Labor the 2019 federal election, and they may do so again.

The second element of this state result is that four straight state and territory elections have now returned Labor governments. These results have been interpreted by most commentators as being more about the advantages that incumbents have in elections during the pandemic era than about the strength of Labor or the weaknesses of the Coalition. Morrison hopes that is the case, and Albanese fears that he may be right.

The four state and territory elections should not be lumped in together. McGowan did best of all. Morrison will be hoping that he can emulate not McGowan but Annastacia Palaszczuk in Queensland, who entered the state election with a narrow majority and managed to improve it. Albanese will be hoping to make a better fist of it than the four state and territory opposition leaders, all of whom have now either been defeated, subsequently resigned, or lost their jobs. They were all ineffective and Albanese may prove not much better.

The second message was delivered by last Monday's March 4 Justice rally at Parliament House in Canberra and in major cities around Australia. Speakers such as Grace Tame and Brittany Higgins demanded justice and equality for women. It may even be a moment of change. A major social movement is once again on the march. This is an arena in which Morrison is clearly uncomfortable, and prone to regular mistakes. He doesn't get social movements at all because he is a political party animal. Unlike in electoral politics, he has a tin ear in this environment, one not attuned at all to reading the signs.

Morrison told the parliamentary chamber that the marchers were a sign of liberal democracy in Australia successfully at work, unlike those nations in which marchers can be shot. He refused to emerge from Parliament House to address them but invited a delegation inside to see him (an invitation which was rejected, because that would have been to meet on his turf). He grasps for the right words and regularly misses them on such occasions.

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The conjunction of the Western Australian election and the March 4 Justice raises the big question of how social change and political change should be viewed. How do they connect?

At a practical level, the two events also raise the question of how social change connects with party politics. Will Morrison hear both messages and survive them? Will one or the other bring him down at the next election and, if so, which is the greater threat to him?

The connection between social and political change has always been tenuous. It is a truism to say that a change of government changes the country. It certainly does at one level. But an election cannot by itself change the deeper culture of the nation, and that is what the March 4 Justice is seeking to do.

Social movements, like Aboriginal rights, climate activism and justice for refugees and asylum seekers, have struggled to harness electoral politics. Climate change, for instance, failed to win the last election for Shorten. There are two reasons for this. The first is that bread-and-butter economic self-interest and enduring party loyalties often trump the more altruistic causes. The second is that many voters, for good reasons, just do not trust the opposition to be much better than the government on these matters.

Despite the greater enthusiasm of Labor and the Greens in supporting the March 4 Justice, it is unclear that an alliance has been forged between them which can defeat the Morrison government. The aims of the social movement are much bigger than any one election anyway.

Morrison, like any marketing man, has a better ear for electoral messages than social movement messages. On the first message he is not yet out of the game by any means. On the second message he may also survive, despite his tin ear and clumsy and inappropriate responses, because social movement messages often have difficulty adapting to the narrow confines of electoral politics.

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