He's done this in the past, to his detriment. In 2006, when he was managing director of Tourism Australia, Morrison was sacked after falling out with the board and the federal Liberal tourism minister, Fran Bailey.

Years later, in 2018, The Australian Financial Review quoted Tim Fischer, who'd chaired Tourism Australia at the time, saying "a lot of us could see it coming as relations between Scott and Fran Bailey had deteriorated over a range of issues. But Scott didn't seem to see it."

Morrison was close to then prime minister John Howard, and he thought - erroneously - Howard would step in and save him from Bailey. But Howard supported his minister.

Fast forward to 2021, and Morrison's grappling with a broad "women problem". And women playing hardball are all around the place.

Take just two current examples: Christine Holgate and Grace Tame.

In a submission to a Senate inquiry released this week, Holgate, the former Australia Post chief executive, has launched a comprehensive counter-attack to her being effectively forced out of her job last year after a ferocious prime ministerial attack.

On a very different front, Tame, the young and feisty Australian of the Year, has targeted Morrison's choice of Amanda Stoker to become the new Assistant Minister for Women.

Morrison in October excoriated Holgate over her rewarding four employees with Cartier watches (worth an average of $5000) for landing a lucrative deal with banks, which sustained Post's network of franchises around the country.

Immediately after Holgate told a Senate committee about the watches, a furious Morrison let loose in Parliament. Declaring the action disgraceful, he said: "The chief executive has been instructed to stand aside and, if she doesn't wish to do that, she can go."

A devastated Holgate, regarded as a high-performing CEO, soon left her position.

A later inquiry found no dishonesty or intentional misuse of Post's funds, although it did find the purchase of the watches was inconsistent with the legislative obligation imposed on Post.

The controversy has now resurfaced with a Senate inquiry, instigated by Pauline Hanson, at which Holgate will appear next week.

Holgate argues in her submission the watches' purchase was "legal, within Australia Post's policies, within [her] own signing authority limits, approved by the previous chairman, expensed appropriately".

While Holgate in her submission focuses her ire on Post's chairman, Lucio Di Bartolomeo, rather than on Morrison, the affair goes directly to the PM's original reaction, which blackened her reputation.

Regardless of whether Post, as a government business, should have used watches as rewards, Morrison's outburst was extreme and ill-judged.

It led to a highly competent chief of a government business being publicly trashed and unnecessarily sacrificed, over not very much.

Holgate, who attracted sympathy from many CEOs and support among Australia Post small businesses, has yet to be replaced - a long, expensive process.

Morrison obviously thought "Cartier" would resonate (negatively) with his "quiet Australians". If the employees had been given $5000 cash bonuses, would he have reacted in the same way? The answer seems clear.

A harder question is, if the CEO had been male, would the PM's temper tantrum have been as unrestrained?

Impossible to say, of course. But many people, especially women in this current climate of heightened sensitivity, would believe he'd have been more measured.

Grace Tame - whose passionate words when awarded Australian of the Year influenced Brittany Higgins in going public with her rape allegation - is potentially an ongoing thorn in the side of a PM trying to assure women he "gets it".

She's a strong woman who finds herself, suddenly and unexpectedly, with a megaphone - and she'll use it all year.

In nominating Stoker, who is socially conservative and can be combative, as Assistant Minister for Women, Morrison was inviting trouble.

Apart from dealing with the Christian Porter and Linda Reynolds problems, the PM's reshuffle was an effort to improve his and his government's credentials on women's issues.

It promoted female ministers and inserted references to "women" in various ministerial titles.

Yet he put Stoker into a position that would inevitably spark an adverse reaction among some women's advocates.

Tame claimed Stoker had "supported a fake rape crisis tour aimed at falsifying all counts of sexual abuse on campuses across the nation".

She said Stoker had also "supported" men's rights advocate Bettina Arndt, "who gave a platform [in an interview] to the paedophile who abused me".

Stoker returned fire, defending her record promoting justice for women and saying, "I did not attend Ms Arndt's campus tour. I raised it in Senate estimates to highlight the universities' inconsistent approaches to free speech and deplatforming."

Leaving aside the nitty gritty of their dispute, in the circumstances Morrison made a provocative choice, when he could have allocated the post to a less controversial frontbencher.

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Meanwhile, this week saw initiatives on the women's front, while behind the scenes, work on the budget has women in mind.

On Wednesday the government announced a July National Women's Safety Summit.

On Thursday Morrison and new Attorney-General Michaelia Cash unveiled the government's full response to the sex discrimination commissioner's Respect@Work report.

Capitalising on the mood, on Friday Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk proposed the national cabinet should host a summit on the economic and social inequality facing women.

Morrison hadn't been keen when she floated the idea before the meeting. But he also sniffed the wind, and quickly moved into contain and control mode.

So the national cabinet in July will consider economic issues relating to women - with an eye, Morrison says, "to a national plan process on women's economic security, as we have on the protection of women against violence".

He expected there'd also be "a summit ... as part of the program".

It was a compromise, but a strong woman Premier had moved forward the agenda.