He can talk. As immigration minister from 2013, as social services minister from 2014, as treasurer from 2015 and prime minister from 2018, Mr Morrison has appeared supremely confident, and has almost seemed to relish being the front man for some of his government's most polarising and unpopular policies.

Which is why his response to this summer's bushfire emergencies has been so striking. The man who was in marketing before entering politics is stumbling from one bumbled interview and public statement to another. His missteps are so striking that many Australians are asking whether there was much behind the marketing in the first place.

Mr Morrison looks and sounds like a leader who doesn't know what to do in a situation that he can't control, so he drops back to platitudes and shopping lists of services rendered by his government, when what is needed is probably beyond him.

Telling terrified Australians to be patient and stay calm when they've lost loved ones, their homes, their livelihoods, or when they're faced with the reality that the disaster they were warned about has happened, is not what is required now.

Those words smack of a government that, behind closed doors, quite possibly still believes the bushfire crisis will blow over, people will stop panicking, and it can get back to the serious business of running the economy.

The problem for political leaders, state and federal, of both major parties, is they have all contributed to Australians believing action on climate change can be deferred, delayed or denied outright. That attitude contributed to thousands of Australians minimising or rejecting fire commanders' warnings of catastrophic fires this week.

Scott Morrison - the man who waved a lump of coal in federal parliament in 2017 and said "This is coal. Don't be afraid. Don't be scared" - was all marketing man that day, framing climate scientists' warnings about Australian inaction to address global warming as fear-mongering.

There was a crack in the marketing in the past few weeks when he was forced to acknowledge climate change is contributing to "deeply distressing" fires.

In coming weeks and months his government is going to have to acknowledge a lot more, including that any economic benefits we might have experienced over the past decade from denying the reality of climate change, will be dwarfed by the extraordinary costs of this bushfire season, other accelerated and magnified natural events, and finally taking action. All predicted by scientists.

Mr Morrison and his Emergency Services Minister David Littleproud tried empathy this week with assurances that, "We understand the situation you're in".

It landed like a line from marketing.

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