Impervious. A political machine. A Teflon man.
These are some of the colourful descriptions given to the man with the keys to The Lodge.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison has been a tour de force on the 2022 campaign trail, touching down in a number of marginal electorates across the first four weeks.
For the final two, he'll zip across the wide brown land, making his last pitches and pledges to marginal seats in the hope he can return for a second term in the top job.
But the 53-year-old - who will turn 54 the week before polling day - is still made of flesh and blood like anyone else.
The man, who represents Sydney's Sutherland Shire, has ducked and swerved tough questions that would put most politicians on the back foot.
For a man that doesn't "hold a hose", he's remarkable at putting out political spot fires.
Insiders in both major parties applaud his campaigning efforts, which focus on tightly-controlled TV and picture-friendly moments assisted by a disciplined team of advisers and advancers.
But Morrison's daggy yet assertive "ScoMo" image is facing external pressures, outside of his control, which threaten to unravel the character he's created.
On Tuesday, 47 minutes after the central bank delivered the news of a rate hike, the cracks in the facade widened - just slightly.
As he violently gripped the lectern, he stuck to his key messages - his government's economic shield had kept Australians safe from the impacts of the pandemic. A Labor government would have left the country worse off.
For a brief moment, he peered off camera as his colleague Josh Frydenberg answered the question.
A handler, it appeared, had gotten his attention and Morrison, with a hint of frustration behind his signature furrowed brow, was now adjusting his tie.
Opinion polls have proven an inaccurate indicator before, but they haven't been in Morrison's favour for some time despite slip-ups from his political foe, Anthony Albanese.
With the major setbacks directly contradicting his two key messages - a strong economy and strong borders - are we finally seeing a glint of the Scott John Morrison he's been hiding?
Every politician will face scrutiny during their political life.
A good politician will face the tough questions head on, and provide responses that satisfy the media and the public.
That might come in the form of an acknowledgement, an apology or a promise to do better.
It's a tactic Albanese used on day one of the campaign - fessing up about his cash rate fumble.
But for Morrison, saying sorry is no easy feat.
He's said it a handful of times over his time in the top job. He was sorry for going to Hawaii while much of Australia's east coast was under threat from bushfires. He was sorry for failing to hit the targets he had set on the vaccine rollout.
And he was sorry for Parliament House's toxic culture and what former Liberal staffer Brittany Higgins experienced, a year after it was first publicly revealed.
Apologies help, says marketing expert Dr Andrew Hughes, but Morrison's image is centred on power and command.
His Trumpian control of press conferences, where he runs the show, work well for a Coalition government but Dr Hughes is less convinced that's what voters want post-pandemic.
"We need to have a bit more sense he listens to us and engages with us and that sense isn't coming across," he says.
In a small fruit shop in Melbourne's Mornington Peninsula, Morrison greets shoppers with his familiar charm, asking questions about their lives he knows he can easily link back to his government's achievements.
It's one of a few times the Prime Minister has visited a public space during his heavily curated tour of the country.
"Go Albo," a woman in a grey jumper yells as he first arrives. She's voting Labor this election but wishes she was in Goldstein so she could scratch in a number one for teal independent Zoe Daniel.
Undeterred, the Prime Minister continues on.
Unlike the Labor leader, Morrison's eyes don't frantically search for minders to pull him out of awkward conversations or how he should pour his frothed milk at a cafe visit.
He knows better - the cameras are always watching, and boom microphones always switched on.
But the stench of disapproval ratings follows him like a cloud during the campaign.
The bushfires, the vaccine rollout, the Solomon Islands saga and the internal bickering from members within his party has taken a toll.
Former Labor campaign strategist, Kos Samaras, believes the tide is changing and voters are paying attention.
"Most people were willing to forgive his antics during the pandemic, where he was playing political games with premiers," he says.
"The last six months is what stripped that Teflon off."
The fourth week of Morrison's campaign had a distinct flavour. Two of the planned events were in aged care or retirement facilities.
And despite spending two nights in Melbourne, Kooyong or Goldstein, where his Treasurer, who is touted as next in line to the Liberal throne, along with moderate backbencher Tim Wilson face a serious teal attack were not on the schedule.
The "grey" vote, from retirees and pensioners, is an important base for Morrison to snatch. They're in every electorate and are often less open to change - something Morrison's camp is proudly barracking for.
On the surface, the Coalition campaign appears to be running smoothly but there's telltale signs some panic is bubbling under the surface.
Morrison has visited Parramatta, in Labor heartland, five times in 25 days. He's dropped in to Chisholm and Bass five times also. But inner-city moderate seats have almost entirely been snubbed.
His messaging on the teal assault has centred around the chaos independents would supposedly bring to the halls of power - and it's starting to ramp up as the weeks dwindle down.
On why he hasn't visited Dave Sharma's seat of Wentworth, he dismisses the idea, adding his mother lives there and he only just visited her the other day.
But risking those seats, Samaras says, is intentional - a Liberal majority can still be won without them.
"Internally, the Coalition's strategy is the belief that elections are won and lost marginals, not on major campaign issues, and therefore, you can get away from the leader a bit," he says.
"You might lose the popular vote, so to speak, but pick up on the marginals."
WHO ARE THEY AND WHAT DO THEY STAND FOR?
Labor was on the ropes during the first week. Albanese had tripped up on his words a few too many times and Morrison was looking to sweep in.
Not knowing the unemployment rate was a sign the Labor leader couldn't manage a budget, Morrison shouted confidently at his press conferences.
The gaffes played right into Morrison's central messaging - stick with us because you know us, not because we're offering anything new.
But by week four, Morrison was backed into his own corner. His two strongest platforms had unravelled.
Strong borders and a strong economy are core to the Coalition campaign, after it was executed with great success during the Howard years.
A secret security deal with China occurring in Solomon Islands' capital Honiara some 2000 kilometres from Australia's shores fired up while Albanese isolated in Sydney due to a bout of COVID.
Then inflation rose sharply after a relatively good economic run during the pandemic, resulting in a cash rate hike.
Samaras says once his handling of national security was being questioned, he committed a campaign sin - he ventured off the grid.
Seemingly out of nowhere, his campaign message shifted to trans athletes, tapping into a conservative culture war issue imported from the United States.
The former Labor go-to for campaign elections says this was the most telling moment Morrison had hit the panic button.
"We have a saying about campaigning, it's 'stick to the grid' and if it's not the grid, do not go anywhere near it," he says.
"And he deviated a country mile from it."
On Tuesday, in the middle of a campaign election, the bad news broke.
Morrison entered the Commonwealth Parliamentary Offices in Melbourne trailing Frydenberg, taking a deep breath as he arrived at the lectern.
A more sullen Prime Minister appeared than we'd seen in previous days was standing before the cameras, warm-coloured lights and a group of impatient journalists.
But he had been preparing for this moment for weeks, and it showed.
He sympathised with mortgage owners for rising costs, but his shield had stopped it from being worse.
Australians, he said, had been preparing for this inevitably for years.
But invisible to the TV cameras, and viewers back home, are his tells.
The changes in his tone and volume when he answers tricky questions, his forward lean into the microphones appearing as almost a hunch, how he touches the pages' corners when he's on a roll, the velocity of his blinks.
He might be able continue his Teflon facade for the campaign's last fortnight but his biggest challenge is showing voters his soft side.
But he can't shift too dramatically, like the the 27th prime minister Julia Gillard did in 2010, when she declared the "real" her was now here after a stage-managed campaign run.
"It's up to him to convince us he's more human," Dr Hughes says.
"Because if he doesn't do that, I think he's gone."
The wedges he's crafted for Labor might also become his own. In the days after May 21, we'll know whether he'll maintain his status as the master of miracle campaigns.
I'm a federal politics and public sector reporter with an interest in national security, integrity and regulation. Contact me with general tips and thoughts at sarah.basfordcanales@canberratimes.com.au or confidential tips to sbasfordcanales@protonmail.com.
I'm a federal politics and public sector reporter with an interest in national security, integrity and regulation. Contact me with general tips and thoughts at sarah.basfordcanales@canberratimes.com.au or confidential tips to sbasfordcanales@protonmail.com.
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