(Image: AAP)

That was then, this is now Prime Minister Scott Morrison on June 11, 2020, after there were marches in support of the Black Lives Matter movement across the country:

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has demanded an end to further Black Lives Matter protests, saying some protests have been hijacked by left-wing movements and demonstrators at future events should be charged.

… ‘Certainly any further action on this front would be absolutely unacceptable.’

Morrison on August 10 after Extinction Rebellion protesters spray-painted the first two words of the phrase “DUTY OF CARE” on the front columns of the parliamentary building and set a pram on fire before the cops intercepted them:

We have an Australian way to deal with this challenge and it has been put into place. I tell you what the Australian way isn’t. Australian way is not what we have seen with the vandalism in our capital today. 

Morrison on November 14-16, the days after protesters in Mebourne were heard shouting death threats against Premier Dan Andrews and erected a makeshift gallows with three nooses: no public comment.

Kelly mob Still on the “rally for health and freedom”, United Australia Party MP Craig Kelly was one of the stars of the show, treating the event like a supermarket full of recruits. But who paid for the member for Hughes’ trip down south? Surely the UAP’s cashed-up founder Clive Palmer picked up the bill. But it’s not unlike MPs to lean on taxpayers for campaigning. 

Crikey readers will remember taxpayers had to foot the bill in 2019 for former senator Fraser Anning to attend far-right rallies in Melbourne the day after the Christchurch shooting, where he defended his incendiary comments about the massacre and was then famously struck with an egg. Anning was later cleared of misusing taxpayer-funded expenses by justifying constituent concerns about “ethnic-based violence”, but he was forced to repay other claims.

We asked Craig who paid for the trip, but he didn’t get back to us before deadline. Which leaves us keeping a watchful eye on the members’ register of interests.

Incidentally, It’s worth having a look at the many, many tweets concerning the weekend’s events that Kelly, ever the irony expert, “liked” on Twitter:

Who’s on Fox? The following clip belongs in a museum. It achieves a rare and beautiful alchemy, when a real life misunderstanding coheres into something so sublime, so beautifully timed, that no fiction writer, no group of actors, could conceivably craft so well.

The set-up: a guest on Fox presenter and ambiguous Nazi saluter Laura Ingraham’s show wants to have a little rant about “woke” TV storylines, such as the show You and its depiction of measles comes up, and … well, what follows is unscriptably good:

Where to start? There’s the constant back and forth:

It was on You …

What are you talking about? I’ve never had measles …

The growing exasperation, the “who’s on first?” circularity:

It’s a show, Laura!

What’s the show called?

You! The show is called You!

I’ve never done a show on measles!

And just when you think it’s exhausted itself, there’s the final punchline:

There is a show, called You, on Netflix.

There’s a show called Laura Ingraham on Netflix … ?

Hopefully this puts the notion that conservatives can’t be funny to bed forever.

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