The 'real' Scott Morrison: former PM says Australians didn't know ...

Australians did not know the “real” Scott Morrison when he occupied the nation’s top political office, the former prime minister says, adding he largely kept his faith private during his four years in power.

Morrison’s new book, Plans for Your Good: A Prime Minister’s Testimony of God’s Faithfulness, which will be released next week, also reveals he took anti-depressants in 2021 while serving as prime minister to deal with waves of acute anxiety he suffered in the nation’s top political job.

The admission is the first time a prime minister or former prime minister of Australia has spoken publicly about using medication to deal with the huge demands of the job and the toll they can take on a person’s mental health.

In an interview with this masthead before the book’s launch, Morrison hit out at critics who accused him of proselytising while in office: “People used to accuse me of peddling my faith, which I found outrageous by the way. If I was peddling my faith you would have known. Based on what you’ve now read, I kept all of that within.

“I did not engage in any sort of evangelical mission whilst in office.”

Asked directly if Australians had not known who he really was, Morrison said: “I think that’s true ... I think at the end of the day, to my detriment, they [voters] bought a narrative peddled by others to destroy me, which was effective, but they didn’t know [me] and frankly ... maybe if I had told them, they may have reacted more strongly. Who knows?”

While Morrison previously promised the book would not be a typical political autobiography, many readers will be stunned by the depth of Morrison’s Christian faith. The book frequently quotes Bible passages, and the role of God in the former prime minister’s life is the dominant theme. Morrison is an evangelical Christian, the nation’s first evangelical prime minister and worships at Horizon Church in the Sutherland Shire.

The book also sets out Morrison’s version of events about the lead-up to the 2018 spill in which he replaced Malcolm Turnbull as prime minister and his recollection of pulling together the AUKUS deal, including a detailed explanation of how French President Emmanuel Macron was informed that the contract for French submarines was imperilled.

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Time and again, Morrison discusses how God helped inform and guide him in making decisions at crucial moments, such as whether to stand for the country’s top political job, how he handled the impact of COVID-19 and even how it informed his handling of the delicate negotiations over the AUKUS submarine deal.

Nevertheless, the recently retired MP insisted he was “always quite conscious of trying to keep this balance”.

“I was very conscious that yes, I was an evangelical Christian, but the country had no national religion and nor should it. So I didn’t want to blur those lines. But equally, I didn’t want to undermine the integrity of my faith,” Morrison said.

Morrison’s revelation that he took antidepressants is contained in chapter six, which is about anxiety, and covers his government’s handling of the pandemic, the suicide of the brother of a childhood friend, the importance of R U OK?Day, his meeting with the Queen – while at the same time discussing how God set out a six-step plan for how humans should deal with their worries in St Paul the Apostle’s letter to the Philippians.

In the interview and the book, Morrison declined to say which medication he had taken and said that while he had got through the first year of the pandemic in 2020, in 2021 “that’s when the pile on really got under way”.

He writes that as the challenges of COVID, dealing with China and putting together the AUKUS deal grew, his anxiety got worse and when he finally saw a doctor, they were “amazed I had lasted as long as I had before seeking help”.

“I’m pretty high functioning in those environments and staff and colleagues will say the same. But when you’re trying to do all that, while trying to land AUKUS, we’re dealing with the Chinese ... and then I’ve got what started in February [2021, following Brittany Higgins’ rape allegations] … we had what was a pretty oppressive campaign of vilification going on daily and that was a pretty tough period,” he told this masthead.

“That’s when the premiers, particularly [then-Queensland premier Annastacia] Palaszczuk started to amp up a bit. And COVID went into a different phase, 2020 was a pretty co-operative year, 2021 it changed. And Labor then, they did what was required.”

There is little discussion in the book of some of the key controversies of his prime ministership, including the vaccine roll out and his infamous “it’s not a race” comment, the controversial holiday to Hawaii during the 2019 bushfires, Robodebt, while his decision to swear himself into multiple ministries is handled in just a single sentence about continuity of government during the pandemic.

But on the AUKUS deal, Morrison declares he had been happy to stand up to French President Emmanuel Macron who, he believed, “thought I was just playing him on the contract” and would have “would have killed it [the deal]” if given enough time and notice.

“It was a terrible failure of his intelligence service, by the way, which would be very embarrassing for him to admit.” Macron, he added, “underestimated me”.

Even on the submarines deal, Morrison said God played a part in guiding his decision-making because of “the confidence that I gain from having a secure identity ... my faith gives me a sense of security and grounded-ness which means that I could take on things like that and be prepared to wear what came afterwards.”

“I think people often misunderstood my faith thinking ‘oh, he’s a Christian, therefore he believes everything’s gonna turn out for him’. No, I don’t. I just know however it turns out, I’ll be fine. Win, lose or draw, I’ll be fine.”

The French president had been clearly told that Naval Group’s submarines “were going to be of no use to us and we’re looking at other options and that included nuclear”.

In the book, Morrison refers to a WhatsApp chat group he participated in with friends who were pastors, reveals that in response to the negative impact of reaching for his smartphone every morning, he resolved to read his Bible app first every day before he grappled with the incoming reports, texts and emails he received as prime minister.

In about 18 months, he had read the bible cover-to-cover and the evangelical Christian prime minister, Australia’s first, ruminates on King Hezekiah, the Old Testament character of Daniel who braved the Lion’s den and who had a job “like a prime minister” by providing advice to Kings and how “Daniel chose to stand firm for God rather than conform to the lifestyles and beliefs of the land he was now living in”.

Morrison discusses his fondness for praying out loud, noting that people should “cry, shout, groan, scream – do whatever comes out of your heart because you are pleading for God to take this burden of worry away from you”.

While discussing his attempts with wife Jenny to conceive children through IVF sessions, he recalls walking through a forest on the outskirts of Wellington, New Zealand, in 1999 and screaming out loud Psalm 37:4 – which is about trusting in God – to express his frustration at their failure to conceive.

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“If anyone was in earshot they must have thought I was a mad man,” he writes in the book. The couple conceived eight years later.

Asked if the launch of his book would mark the start of a new evangelical mission for Australia’s 30th prime minister, Morrison said “I wouldn’t say vocationally. I would certainly say that I now feel quite freed up”.

“I speak occasionally around Australia at churches and my own church and I preach there and I’m looking forward to doing more of that both in Australia and overseas,” he said.

The book is being published by religious publisher Thomas Nelson, which is based in the United States. After being launched in Sydney on May 9, a second launch will be held at the Australian Embassy in Washington DC on May 15 – alongside former prime minister Kevin Rudd and Donald Trump’s former CIA director, Mike Pompeo.

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