(Image: Tom Red/Private Media)
Scott Morrison’s address to the Australian Christian Churches (ACC) gathering on the Gold Coast last week began with a roll call of Christian influence on the government. The words were music to the ears of an adoring audience of Pentecostal Christians lapping up the proof of how far they’d come with one of their own in the highest political office in the land.
“Brother Stewie,” the prime minister said, name-checking Employment Minister Stuart Robert, a fellow Pentecostal. Robert has recently been promoted to the government’s powerful Expenditure Review Committee.
Then there was “brother Matt”, who’d “recently joined us”. This was West Australian Liberal Matt O’Sullivan, elected to the Senate in 2019, who graduated into politics via billionaire Christian businessman Andrew “Twiggy” Forrest’s Minderoo Foundation. In his brief time in Parliament, O’Sullivan has already distinguished himself as a defender of the government’s robodebt scheme (which was incidentally introduced on the watch of Scott Morrison as social services minister).