Read a Q&A with Sean Kelly | The Game

Sean Kelly worked as an adviser to Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd. He is now a columnist for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age. The Game: A Portrait of Scott Morrison is his first book.

Today, Sean Kelly is on the blog to answer a few questions about The Game! Read on …

Sean Kelly

Please tell us about your book, The Game: A Portrait of Scott Morrison.

SK: This is a portrait of Scott Morrison as a man and as a prime minister – and what that says about us as a nation at this point in time.

Here we have a man who treats politics as a game – which is a very dangerous thing. And he is extraordinarily good at that game. What tricks does he use, and how does he convince the rest of us – journalists and voters – to go along with them?

So it’s about Morrison, but it’s also about politics, and media, and what this one man’s rise tells us about the sort of country we’ve become.

Why was it important to you to write this book?

SK: We’re heading into an election, and I think it’s really important to try to understand our Prime Minister. I’ve tried to do what you just can’t do in the daily news cycle: take a really close look at him, try to figure out how he thinks, and the types of tactics he uses.

When you choose a Prime Minister, you are choosing the type of country you want to live in. Whatever decision you end up making, it’s important we all think hard about that.

Do you think that Scott Morrison has been the kind of Prime Minister that Australia expected him to be? Why?

SK: Yes. I think we got exactly what it said on the box. He promised not to change anything, and he hasn’t changed anything. He said, in effect: Australia is perfect, we should be proud of what we are, let’s keep it that way. And that’s still his attitude today. For many, many people, that’s a tremendously soothing message.

Do you think that Australians of 2021 would vote in the same way that they did in 2019?

SK: That’s the million-dollar question! My grandfather was a journalist, and he always used to quote the journalist Alan Reid: a political writer should never write in the future tense. I don’t know what will happen at the next election. That said, the government, right now, is in a very similar position to this time in the last electoral cycle, and it looks like running a very similar campaign – and there will always be a large appetite for a man who tells you that you’re perfect as you are!

How did your own opinion of Australia’s Prime Minister develop over the course of writing this book? Did any of your initial impressions change?

SK: The odd thing is that when I was first asked to write a biography of the PM, I said no. I’m pretty ruthless when it comes to writing – if it doesn’t interest me it won’t interest readers either.

But as time went on, a funny thing happened. People used to find Morrison boring. But now they’re asking: who is this strange man? To many people he is an enigma. And that’s what I found most interesting in the book, too. Here is this man who is on display all the time, constantly performing; but at the same time, we seem to know so little about him.

So how is it possible that both of those things are true? That’s part of what the book tries to answer.

Can you tell us a little bit about your journey towards becoming a political adviser and journalist?

SK: I’ve been very lucky that good people put their faith in me. I worked first as a journalist, writing about medical politics. Then I went to work for a company that ran political campaigns. That got me a job with Nicola Roxon, which got me a job with Kevin Rudd. In the turmoil that followed Kevin’s removal I was offered a job with Julia Gillard. I wasn’t sure that I should stay, at the time – it was a horrible, gutting period, and a very difficult decision – but I’m very glad that I did. It was an incredible few years.

There were two things I really wanted to do when I was younger. I wanted to work in politics, and I wanted to write. I never really had a plan, but somehow I’ve been able to do both.

What do you enjoy the most about political journalism?

SK: One of the reasons I was drawn to politics was the way it uses stories: how do you tell a convincing story about the type of country you want to build? With time, I’ve become quite suspicious of those stories. Political stories are almost always very simple. And simple stories are very often false. That’s what drives a lot of my writing about politics, trying to dig into that.

What is the last book you read and loved?

SK: No Document by Anwen Crawford is a fascinating, bold book – it’s about too many things to list, but you should read it.

What do you hope readers will discover in The Game: A Portrait of Scott Morrison?

SK: I hope that they will think about politics in new ways – the way our politicians are like fictional characters, the way that politics often seems like a game.

I hope, too, they will ask themselves some tough questions. A lot of us like to complain about our country as though we are somehow separate from it. We should all think much harder about our own complicity in the problems we see around us.

And finally, what’s up next for you?

SK: Apart from The Best Summer Ever? Another book – perhaps something more personal. And spending a lot of time with my son, who is seven months old and hasn’t yet seen a time when I wasn’t writing this book.

Thanks Sean!

—The Game: A Portrait of Scott Morrison by Sean Kelly (Black Inc. Books) is out now.

The Game

A Portrait of Scott Morrison

by Sean Kelly

What happens when the prime minister views politics only as a game?

Australia wanted Scott Morrison. In a time of uncertainty, the country chose in 2019 to turn to a man with no obvious beliefs, no clear purpose and no famous talents. That we wanted Scott Morrison was the secret we did not know about ourselves. What precisely that secret is forms the subject of this book. In The Game, Sean Kelly gives us a portrait of a man, the shallow political culture that allowed him to succeed and the country that crowned him...

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