(Image: Private Media)

After another rotten week for Scott Morrison, in which his mendacity, poor temperament and lack of judgment were spotlighted for everyone to see, all eyes today turn to… Peter Dutton at the National Press Club. The defence minister will rise at 12.30pm to deliver an address to a sold-out event.

Morrison has headed to South Australia, where he is now not building any submarines and is unlikely to ever do so. On current polling from Roy Morgan, things aren’t too bad for Morrison there: Labor only leads 55.5-44.5%, which is actually down a little. That would only pick up Boothby. Not as bad as further west — in WA, Labor would pick up three and go close to a fourth seat on a monster 9% swing. Or to the east — Labor leads 58-42% in Victoria, which would mean four seats, despite Labor’s already ridiculously high vote there.

But hey, who believes in polls any more? Admittedly it’s not a good sign that Labor now leads the LNP in Queensland, for the first time anyone can remember, 51.5-48.5%, an absurd number that would wipe out half the LNP federal representation. Morrison needs to hold the northern fortress, while he picks up seats in NSW — seats like Gilmore, Macquarie and Eden-Monaro. Annoyingly, Labor upped its lead there to 55.5-44.5%.

That’s before the Voices Of and other independent candidates pick away at faux-moderates like Trent Zimmerman, Dave Sharma and Tim Wilson in urban seats where the government’s climate denialism, and the support of Liberal moderates for inaction, is really starting to rankle. Tim Wilson is trying to portray his challenger, former ABC journo Zoe Daniel, as a “puppet”. As former MP Julia Banks noted, suggesting female candidates are controlled by men is a well-worn Coalition tactic. One wonders how well it will go down among female Liberal voters.

Even though the polls are moving the wrong direction, there’s time enough for Morrison to turn things around, surely? But Morrison’s problem is that he keeps making himself the issue. Whether it’s his lie about Hawaii, or about Sam Dastyari, or dozens of other matters where he has failed to be truthful, or about his inability to control his own party room such that he can’t introduce his own bills for fear of defeat, or his pandering to extremists, or his refusal to even discuss a proper integrity commission, Morrison has ensured the spotlight is on him all the time.

And, always, there’s that lack of judgment, like the Hawaii lie, like yesterday’s rush of blood to attack the NSW ICAC, and lying about its investigation into Gladys Berejiklian’s breach of public trust over the misallocation of grants. It’s unsurprising that the prime minister of the most corrupt government in federal history should attack a genuinely independent anti-corruption body, but yet again Morrison was focusing attention on his own failure — in this case to deliver an election commitment that the majority of Australians want.

Morrison would like to be talking about Labor, and Anthony Albanese, but he’s been frustrated by Albanese’s refusal to be goaded — either by the government or the media — into offering any policy targets, by Labor’s discipline and its successful targeting of Morrison’s credibility; even the propagandists at The Australian admit Labor has been “relentless”.

Dutton has no such problems. His message is that Labor is soft on China, which is fairly ridiculous since Labor was attacked as too hard on China just a few years ago, but forget consistency. Dutton’s job is to get the government as near as possible to a wartime election, and argue Labor are appeasers and traitors. The current target is China, but Russia could be of service if it invades Ukraine, even though that’s not exactly in our own region.

Dutton also handled his 7.30 spot with Leigh Sales well on Tuesday, having no trouble responding to graphic evidence of ADF bullying and worse, bluntly noting “we’ll deal with it very harshly” and “we have a professional expectation from our people, they deliver it and in the circumstances where they don’t, people can expect to be separated from the Australian Defence Force because they aren’t welcome within the ranks of the ADF”.

Who knows how Morrison would have handled that? Presumably not by saying that he understood the frustration of the perpetrators.

The other notable aspect of the week was the growing evidence that Morrison’s own backbench has reached the same conclusion that his critics reached some time back — that nothing he says can be believed, and there’s therefore no point listening to him.

Watch the media reaction to Dutton’s speech today. Some glowing reviews from the Murdoch press will be a Bat-signal that help is needed for the government, and the incumbent isn’t the person to provide it.