Questionable optics Scott Morrison’s most recent farrago — the revelation that he got a travel exemption to travel home to Sydney and spend Father’s Day with his family (an option unavailable to other eastern-staters who happen to live a hard border away from their families) — fits with several themes of his premiership (and it’s not just his long-term commitment to dads).
It follows his comfort with dishonesty, even when he has to know he’ll be found out (why make a point of posting an old photo if not to hide the fact you could have taken one on the day?); his staggeringly poor grasp of optics for a marketing guy; and his ability to turn a questionable but defensible move into a scandal through concealing it.
But we’re not sure what the following illustrates: the family pic that Morrison used to mark Father’s Day — the Morrison clan gathered around a dove — was cropped from a picture taken at the “i4give Day” remembrance service for four young people — Antony, Angelina and Sienna Abdallah, and their cousin Veronique Sakr — killed by a car. Another choice rendered all the more creepy by Morrison’s decision to conceal it.
Don’t call politicians “dad” We contrast this with the fortunes of WA Premier Mark McGowan. Last week the WA Labor social media team typed out and clicked “post” on the following campaign — “It’s Father’s Day tomorrow. Sign the card and say Happy Father’s Day to our Premier and State Dad” — leading to a lot of understandably baffled reactions from Liberals like Jason Falinski (presumably no WA Liberals got involved because there aren’t any?).
Finally on Finlay As we sketched yesterday new human rights commissioner Lorraine Finlay has a varied CV: a former Liberal candidate who wants to repeal section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act, calls the idea of a Indigenous voice to Parliament “segregation”, has chats with Bettina Arndt and opposes affirmative consent law reform. With this history, it would almost be weird if Rebel media didn’t want to chat.
It interviewed her about 18C and the Greens “censorship crusade” back in 2017, when Rebel was the only place dangerous enough to show you Mark Latham’s garage-based political commentary show. It was also the publisher of Lauren Southern and Gavin McInnes (his edifying piece was called “10 things I hate about Jews“), and within a few months they were having to fire a contributor for saluting white supremacists at the Charlottesville “Unite the Right” rally.
On the brighter Burnside He’s really having a moment, Julian Burnside. Fresh from sharing a conspiratorial thread alleging the current outbreak is actually a deliberate and controlled political strategy, the QC and former Green’s candidate tweeted a response to satirical website The Shovel — “‘My family is more important than your family” Morrison says in emotional address to nation” — which *very* much appears to indicate he believes it to be genuine:
A peach of a tweet? NSW Health is forcing us to ask a question we’d rather not consider: do the people behind the tweet making it clear that “meeting up with a stranger you’ve met on a dating app” know what they are indicating with the sexting staple that is the “peach” emoji?
Do they think the reference is genuinely culinary, or that the part of the anatomy it refers to is the heart? Or — and this is the bit we didn’t ever think we’d have to ask NSW Health — is the house emoji-peach emoji-cross emoji triptych genuinely forbidding people from doing butt stuff with strangers on account of COVID?
Morrison’s superpower is poor judgement. It’s the other side of the coin from his other superpower political dishonesty. He’s a shameful hider of the truth, and a man who does not learn. What a shambles. Does he not know that’s hiding something in politics is the worst of decisions? His newest is being found out for bumping up NSW vaccine supplies without consulting all premiers. He’s probably also shoot down Frewen’s credibility as Vaccine-Generalismo in the process. It could only have happened with the generals complicity.
He’s such an odd-bod…he doesn’t seem to care about telling the truth, and he feels most of the time he can just make it all go away with one of his trademark gobbledygook announcements – but he has a real glass-jaw about actually being called a liar. I reckon if he tried to give a speech, and everyone just started chanting “Liar, Liar, Liar etc” – he’d fall apart.
It’s another miracle? ‘Sooty the coal turned into Sooty the dove’?
“This is how coal will be – after the technological advances that I’ve been prophesying.”
I hope that those directly affected by the deaths of the four young people killed by a car, tear Scummo a new arsehole for taking their pain and abusing twice – once it was is now an apparent sham show of empathy and humanity – and twice, by callously recycling their memories as a cheap replacement for a photo op he couldn’t be arsed organising – jesus wept
This woman is a worse choice than Tim Wilson in the lnp stacking of the human rights commission.
Hmm. Was it just Morrison? I wonder how many other pollies got an ‘exemption’ to go home for Father’s Day.