The prime minister is still paying the price for his secret trip to Sydney to see his family for Father’s Day. Day two has provided us with more juicy headlines about the trip, even an inside look at the private jet that ferried him back and forth from the capital.
The outrage can be distilled into two categories: anger over the fact he could see family when others could not (unfair), and that he tried to conceal it (misleading the public).
With much of the population stuck in lockdown for a second year thanks to the federal government’s botched vaccine rollout, Scott Morrison should know that people have no time for either. Instead he has exacerbated both.
Most people wouldn’t begrudge him wanting to see his family on Father’s Day, even if it meant using special exemptions. But once again it’s his office’s attempt to cover it up — even using an old family pic cropped from a picture at a remembrance service for the death of four young people — that has enraged people the most.
Morrison’s obsession with keeping the public in the dark may have worked in his favour in the past, but with a nation under huge amounts of stress it’s starting to backfire.
Vaccine favouritism
The same problem is unfolding with his government’s apparent vaccine favouritism. Once again it taps into the two issues proving corrosive in the current environment: unfairness and a lack of transparency.
The story broke on Monday night with 7.30’s chief political correspondent Laura Tingle revealing the extent to which vaccine deliveries were allocated to NSW at the cost of other states.
There is some debate about whether or not the vaccines were, in fact, unfairly prioritised to NSW. But of course truth matters far less than perception in politics.
It’s just another example of an issue that could have been avoided had the government been more transparent and upfront about its strategy for rolling out vaccines in the first place.
JobKeeper
The Morrison government’s desperate attempt to keep secret the names of companies who profited off the handout has played into the public’s anger again.
It’s another story of the government’s own making and refuses to go away. It also touches on issues of inequality and lack of transparency.
The attempted cover-up has made matters worse. There is no reason why the government cannot provide the names of those companies, as it does with any company that benefits from a government contract, for example. And it might even stop endless stories being drip-fed to the media.
The electorate has a long memory when it comes to cover-ups and politicians acting above everyone else. Morrison’s lowest approval rating was after the black summer bushfires when he made his “I don’t hold a hose, mate” comments about his secret trip to Hawaii.
Whether the Father’s Day outrage will leave the same mark is yet to be seen. But it has certainly hit Morrison where it hurts — in his carefully crafted image as a dad who believes in fatherhood (perhaps at the expense of others).
Do you think the prime minister should be more open and transparent? Let us know your thoughts by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name if you would like to be considered for publication in Crikey’s Your Say column. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.
If Morrison wants to justify why he can take a Father’s Day trip and others can’t, or NSW should get more vaccines than other states because of their situation, that’s fine. He will be judged in the court of public opinion if it turns out that his actions were not justified. But it’s the secrecy that galls me – and there’s nothing worse than watching Greg Hunt argue that black is white in reference to Victoria’s vaccine supply. If you make a decision, argue it. But don’t lie to us. We hate being taken for fools, and we’ll punish you at the ballot box regardless how justified the actual action was.
You might punish Morrison at the ballot box but there’s a lot of stupid ignorant and politically disengaged Australians out there who will listen to the loudest (ie best funded) media voices at election time and vote accordingly.
No one ever lost an election by overestimating the stupidity of the Australian public. The only way for the ALP to win the next election is to win Murdoch over to their side, as they did in 2007. Otherwise, unfortunately we will have the LNP for a long long time to come.
BTW, my electorate has never voted LNP in the whole history of parliament so I can’t punish Morrison at the ballot box.
In the Senate vote?
The Senate has no role in determining who forms government.
No but it certainly determines how much legislation gets passed. We can all live without Our Pauline this time.
I wish that more voters would realise that.
The best example is to look at what happened when the Rodent had control of both Chambers after 2004 – WorkChoices which, thankfully proved his undoing, but he did a lot of damage before losing his seat & government.
All that middle class welfare which is still washing through the Budget and will for another generation, creating a sense of entitlement from those that need help least and larger & larger deficits which can only be paid for by cutting services.
(I necessarily dismiss the obvious solution of Labor forcing the Big End of town to pay their fair – or any – tax share or abolishing those measures – look at what happened in 2019 with the proposal to end negative gearing & imputation credits… even from people who didn’t receive that largesse and never would!)
And most importantly, vote strategically, below the Line for individuals (the minimum to be valid is now only 12, unlike the previous beach towel ballots) rather than for the Party above the Line, which benefits all the worst aspects of sclerotic party control.
Makes you wonder about compulsory voting when most people are voting on political adds with no resemblance to the truth and probably think the whole thing is a reality TV show
It is a fraught matter.
On principle I am against compulsory anything without the strongest, clearest justification, subject to frequent re-evaluation.
Having seen, and lived with, the result of voluntary voting (plus the iniquitous FPtP in UK, US & Canada) I reluctantly, and with reservations (not too keen on universal franchise or lowered voting age), support our requirement to at least show up at the polling station – there is no need to actually vote as one may drop in a blank ballot or scrawl invective instead of numbers, as up to 5% consistently do.
i just wish that more voters would realise the great power conferred by our unique, exhaustive STV and a semblance of PR in the Senate now that the Line has, effectively, been abolished (though the option of the sclerotic Party vote continues – for the present).
My personal preference would be rigorous D’Hondt or even Hare-Clark, as in the Merkin Isle where it is combined with MMEs (unique in OZ but common in northern Euroland – and Aotearoa since the 90s).
A quick check of google shows that even mature democracies like Germany & Skandiwegia struggle to exceed 80% turnout, France & Italy 60/70% though this is not clearly indicative because of their two stage process, the 2nd ballot usually being better attended than than the first.
No but it can limit the damage!
Well there was a time when the Senate blocked supply leading to a drunken bum dismissing the government. Yes the Senate does not determine who forms government, but it certainly has an impact on the legislation passed by that government.
https://theconversation.com/explainer-can-the-senate-block-the-budget-26815
But given a chance, he will punish your electorate for not voting for the coalition. He will continue to favour those who vote for him, but still claim to be governing for everyone. It is the coalition way, as we are seeing in Sydney and wider NSW now.
Very true, so don’t give him the chance – vote them out and encourage everyone you know to do the same.
Tribalism is not determined by skin colour…
Well I live in a blue ribbon seat and the incumbent liberal minister (who was as lazy as he was useless) was turfed out in favour of a younger Labor woman. Yay!!! This is in WA, don’t think it will happen in the federal seat of Curtin
Yeah, I live in Curtin, it’s the bluest of blue ribbon Liberal seats. I’m also in the state seat of Cottesloe, one of the two Liberal lower house seats left in WA. It doesn’t matter who I vote for in the lower houses, a Liberal gets elected.
I don’t know. Prior to Julie Bishop, the seat was held by a Liberal-cum-independent. These blue ribbon Liberal seats are much more Malcolm Turnbull than Peter Dutton, and are susceptible to challenges from small-L liberals (such as Zani Steggell) or even Greens (such as Adam Bandt). We shall see – Celia Hammond is not Julie Bishop.
My electorate in rural Qld would vote for a pig if it had LNP tattooed on it’s arse.
My electorate would vote for Donald Duck if he was LNP.
I live in QLD where George Christensen – Peter Dutton – Bob Catter – Pauline Hanson – Barnaby Joyce and other embarrassments hail from.
Unfortunately they are QLD’s gift to the rest of Australia.
Based on our record of electing complete idiots we should be denied the right to vote in federal elections.
That is often said of US Presidential elections – given that the US affects the rest of the world so severely, everyone should be able to vote, except amerikans given how bad a job they’ve previously done, so consistently.
If the issues aren’t running on Costello’s Nine or Stokes’ Seven then they’re not going to be an issue for Our Great Helmsman and his hapless crew.
And the gaslighting of states like Qld and WA for their lower-than-NSW vaccination rates, while secretly diverting vaccine supply from those states to NSW. There is no evil Scummo won’t stoop to for self-interest.
Evil personified.
Hunt has always been a waste of space, but as he comes from Liberal royalty, that’s ok
Its bad enough that Pinocchio Morrison thinks that he is the only one that should get an exemption to see his family for fathers day but the use of a RAAF Falcon X7 jet at a cost to the taxpayers of $2000 each way ( Canberra Sydney return ) only highlights again the utter contempt that Morrison and his Government have for the people of Australia. Can this Government get any worse? Unfortunately yes!
At a time of great financial stress, one wonders why this private trip could not have been made on a commercial flight at far less cost.
Only a short trip by Comcar
Always remember, in his sick enfeebled mind he is doing the work of god, as he tells a breathless clap happy lot of fellow cultists.
I. AM. THE. PRIME. MINISTER
Not for much longer 🙂
Sadly this is just more of the same. It infuriates some of us, and is disregarded by others. The use/misuse of an old photo when he could (and no doubt did) take photos of family fun is the classic illustration of his ways. Conceal, conceal, conceal and when caught up bluster – confident that his cronies will parrot his lines.
The trip smacks of privilege. The fact that our ‘leader’ can’t even show some basic solidarity by doing a zoom call with Jenny and the girls shows how little he truly cares. However, it is nice watching him get angry as it’s always good to see his marketing veneer come off and show off his true, ugly self.
Remember him morphing from the cracked voiced son of a widow to angrily making false accusations regarding a sexual harassment case?
Oh yes.
If only more of the electorate did and saw it as the real chancer behind the smirk.
Just add this to the long list of discretions and deceit that will hopefully see us rid of this excuse of a PM.Surely even the electors that have no interest in politics must be getting a whiff that this bloke is on the nose.