Scott Morrison’s new book ‘Plans for Your Good’ hit the shelves last week and The Chaser’s John Delmenico was one of the few hundred people who actually bought a copy.
Scott Morrison’s book describes itself as “less political memoir and more pastoral encouragement.” Which seems to mean that it was one part autobiography, one part sermon and many parts really fucking boring.
The book is ambitious in its aim: a guide on self reflection from a man who has never done any self reflection. A less self-assured man may have blushed at such lofty goals. What follows is his attempt to create a coherent story about his career, despite spending his entire career struggling to put together a coherent sentence. What emerges is the literary equivalent of an undercooked chicken curry.
That is not to say there is nothing to commend Scott Morrison for. I do believe that Scott Morrison wrote the book himself, mainly because no professional ghostwriter would have written something like what has been published.
And he did manage to spell almost all the words correctly.
The book opens with a quote that is also found on the back cover, a recommendation from former CIA director Mike Pompeo which says that the book is “fun; so read, learn and enjoy”. A statement that will go down in history as one of the most deceitful things Pompeo has ever said.
The official start of the book is the foreword by former US Vice President Mike Pence. Pence writes about the times he and Morrison would pray together and the history of America’s relationship with Australia, which he claims started in 1918 when the nations teamed up to drive the ‘Nazis’ out of France in World War I. Setting a bar for the attention to detail and quality of analysis that is seen throughout the book.
To be fair, the glaring error (that the Nazis did not exist in World War I) probably couldn’t be addressed by the editor as she would need to talk to Pence about it, but Pence famously doesn’t have meetings with women unless the meeting also involves his wife whom he calls ‘mother’.
Scott Morrison wastes no time getting to what he most desperately wants to talk about. Chapter One talks about how he lost the election due to an ‘unfair pile-on’ online. But before he can get to that, he manages to drop a “How good are the Sharks?” during the prefix before Chapter One. Let’s just say, it is not the last time the phrase “how good” is rolled out.
All up Scott Morrison says “How good” 7 times. He also says “AUKUS” 17 times, “The Shire” 19 times, “Jen” 98 times, “The Sharks” 3 times and “Curry” twice. This is a good book to read if you’re playing fuckwit bingo.
The book takes a unique approach to religious self help books, where in every chapter there is a new piece of advice for self reflection and the rest of the book is a delusional author unintentionally being a glaring example of someone in desperate need of self reflection.
For example, throughout the book Morrison says not to judge others or hold bitterness. Meanwhile he judges all other politicians, social media users, progressive Christians, social justice advocates, First Nations Australians who haven’t forgiven Australia for the Stolen Generation, and a columnist for The Australian whose name he spelled wrong.
In some chapters he talks about the importance of not casting those who disagree with you as “bad people”, in others he claims that the devil is the reason anyone has ever criticised him online.
It’s a good thing this book doesn’t say that playing victim and jacking yourself off is a sin because if it is one, this book alone is a way one ticket to hell.
The Bible is used throughout the book, with God’s name being said roughly 75,000 times (not including all the times that refer to God in any other way) and 108 Bible quotes appearing alongside many more references to the Bible. Sadly none of those quotes were “Thou shalt not secretly steal 6 ministries.”
Scott Morrison says that he wanted to study scripture but never did, something that is extremely obvious the moment he tries to analyse the Bible.
With comparisons of the Bible to the Marvel Cinematic Universe and Game of Thrones, this book answers the question “what if a youth pastor knew less about how to dissect the Bible than the children he desperately wants to convert to Christianity?”
One of the first pieces of analysis of a Bible passage is that of Genesis 32:24, which Scott Morrison expertly broke down by saying “It was pretty weird.”
However my favourite piece of insight that you wouldn’t get anywhere else was the following:
“I suspect Moses liked his staff. It was probably very familiar to him, like my favourite cap is to me. Let me tell you about my cap.”
The Bible wasn’t the only quotes he used and honestly, I am glad it wasn’t. Easily the most coherent parts of the book was when someone else was doing all the thinking.
However, the worst part of the book was the chapter dedicated to ‘cancel culture’ and young people being too ‘easily offended’ these days. Where he asks completely without irony “Are you offended by Jesus?”
This chapter is based on the work of Jordan B. Peterson, whom he quotes four times. One can only assume that Morrison is drawn to Peterson over their shared experiences of being discredited lunatics whose only fans are men who are not allowed to talk to their children.
The book, despite being really boring, does occasionally keep readers on their toes. Like in Chapter Two when Morrison says he will explain his cricket based nickname in baseball terms, before expertly subverting expectations by just explaining it in cricket terminology.
This is where I should acknowledge that I am not the target audience of this book, who are clearly Americans who have no fucking clue who Scott Morrison is.
This can be seen in the use of American terms like ‘mall’ and the use of the Imperial system when discussing temperatures, an act that should be considered treason against Australia of the highest order.
The type of American he wants to target is made clear in the sections when he pushes the Islamophobic narrative about the lead up to the Cronulla Riots that even the police have condemned as untrue, claims he never supported vaccine mandates, and where he twists why he was fired from Tourism Australia.
I guess saying that he massively blew the budget on an ad that was just a woman in a bikini saying “where the bloody hell are you?” wouldn’t go down well with the kind of people buying a book because Mike Pence recommended it.
The book ends with a lecture about the importance of forgiveness, and while I ponder on whether I will ever be able to forgive Scott Morrison for wasting my weekend with that fucking terrible book, I can say that this book has taught me that sometimes people with public profiles should use ghostwriters after all and reminded me that Scott Morrison is just a totally smug cunt.
