I don't know that I'd call James Boyce a "rather vacuous journalist". There's a potted bio of him here (at least I assume this is the James Boyce who wrote the article).
James Boyce - The Tasmanian Writers' Centre
To be honest, if someone hadn't told me Morrison was a Christian, I wouldn't have known, but then I tend to be somewhat sceptical about our politicians these days. We've had seven prime ministers in ten years for example. To get to be PM in the current political environment, Morrison would have had to engage in some nifty political footwork, and cut a deal or three. So he'd be no political saint, whatever his overt religious beliefs.
Australia has now had seven prime ministers in just 10 years -- here's who they are and how long they were in office
Unlike Americans, Australian politicians can't afford to wear their religion on their sleeve. Australians tend to be cynical about overt displays of religion, whether privately or publicly.
But I don't know why Boyce bothered to write the article. Morrison's and the Conservatives' policies will be based on political issues, not religious, and the same comment could be made about the Labor Party's policies. So what if Morrison is a Pentecostal?
In a nutshell, in matters of faith, I wish him well. In matters of politics - well, I don't see any
STATESMEN on the horizon in Australia. I didn't get on with my father (to be honest, I ended up hating him, due to his cruelty), but he did make some worthwhile comments from time to time.
In his opinion, "... a
statesman is a politician who can get a nation or people to do something they don't want to do and stick at it...". His prime example was Winston Churchill, about whom he said "Without him we'd have lost the war ... (we) didn't want to fight again (after World War I - Australia had one of the highest allied casualty rates in that war, and we were a young nation which could not afford to lose the cream of our then scarce youth), but he kept us going".
As I look around the political scene in Australia, there are no
statesmen on the horizon in my opinion. Not one, Pentecostal, Catholic, or Atheist.