For three years the prime minister has schemed and strategised. Can Australians stomach any more?

Morrison is hammering this because the observation has salience.

But can we please get real?

Coming from Morrison, blank page is an ironic charge. He could easily be talking about himself in 2019. The last time Morrison faced an electoral contest, he donned a baseball cap and jetted around the country telling voters not to vote for Bill Shorten.

Being a blank page is also not a barrier to winning an election. Morrison himself is the proof point.

The frustration was about power without purpose. The economy was grinding, not thriving. There was angst about climate and energy policy and other hot button issues. Morrison was unhappy with the restiveness. As the months went on, the prime minister told the young and the restless to pull their heads in.

The coronavirus pandemic saved him, which seems an odd thing to say, given how much anxiety and adversity Morrison and his ministers faced, particularly over the first 12 months.

During the first 12 months, he was rewarded for his pragmatism in the pursuit of saving lives and livelihoods. But in the second, things became more fraught, and not only because the government initially botched the procurement of life-saving vaccines.

There were the sports grants. The car park grants. Excoriations by the Australian National Audit Office. Morrison promised to deliver a federal anti-corruption watchdog and failed to deliver. Morrison also promised to protect religious freedom. That promise was whittled back to an anti-discrimination package that some of his own people refused to support because of their moral discomfort about allowing vulnerable transgender kids to become casualties of concocted woke wars.

I said earlier Morrison was a blank page in 2019.

All this probably sounds like I think Morrison will lose the coming election.

So the devil you know might prove the winning pitch.

Polls show that. Vox pops around the country record the frustration. The Liberal candidates in marginal seats busily distancing themselves from him demonstrate that Morrison is a drag on their campaigns.