Last August a salesman, an ex-tourism official to be exact, knocked on Australia’s door. Scott Morrison was here to sell himself as prime minister.
Now, just over a year and one election later, Scott Morrison the salesman hasn’t exactly refined his brand beyond “ScoMo” — a moniker more redolent of a retired footy player’s personalised number plate than something that tells us who he is.
To be fair, Morrison’s opportunities for greatness haven’t been abundant. Lacking the character-forming disaster or epic tragedy that would get him the kind of screen time and brand recognition the seventh Australian prime minister in 10 years needs, we have been left with a Scott-shaped hole that Peter Dutton keeps trying on for size.
The PM’s rush to be a platinum-grade iteration of the ordinary Australian bloke PM hasn’t actually helped him stand out from all the other middle-aged white guys having a go. But this morning, and the weeks to come, present Morrison with a chance to pitch us an upgraded product: ScoMo Version 2 (this time with updated compassion).
This morning Home Affairs lawyers have unexpectedly requested an adjournment in the case of Tharunicaa, the two-year-old Australian-born toddler of Priya and Nades. The Biloela family are currently the only asylum seekers on Christmas Island after a stymied deportation effort last week. The judge has now granted an adjournment until September 18.
Morrison faces epic foes in these two little girls, and the ex-PR man in him must know it. But their story won’t be buried over the next few weeks, as he may hope. Footage of the sisters screaming as they watched their mother hauled down a plane aisle by guards has been on high rotation for a week. Stories on the family have appeared internationally, including as far away as Poland and in The Washington Post.
When Morrison finally spoke out on Monday to say he wouldn’t intervene in this case, he clumsily dangled the idea that the family could somehow still return from Sri Lanka. It’s an idea that was shot down as unconscionable and unaffordable by multiple lawyers who say that the family are liable for the debt of their court actions and forced deportation.
If Morrison was still hoping to daggy dad his way out of this while simultaneously disappearing the family from sight, he must have spewed when he saw the images of Angela Fredreicks this week — a family friend who flew all the way from Biloela to Christmas Island at her own expense.
Fredericks, who is more ocker than a kangaroo in an Akubra, eventually convinced staff to let her into the detention centre. Channel Ten cameras caught her tearfully embracing the entire family. One guard hugged her! Even opposition leader Anthony Albanese, a late-comer to the family’s plight, got himself to Biloela quick bloody smart this week and was tweeting photos of himself holding hands with residents while Christmas Islanders spoke out.
Lorraine knows Nades and Priya. She knows their little girls. They call her grandma. As she said today, “They were our friends.”
I’d challenge Scott Morrison or Peter Dutton to come to Biloela and tell Lorraine why this family doesn’t deserve our compassion. #LetThemStay pic.twitter.com/OBfDOkp5QH
— Anthony Albanese (@AlboMP) September 4, 2019
With today’s adjournment, lawyers now have more time to prepare and the prime minister has more time to convince Australians why they should be terrified of this little family. Or not.
As a salesman, Scott Morrison should know Australia needs a Statesman not a Camry.
Is Morrison missing an opportunity here? Send your thoughts about what he should be doing by writing to boss@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name for publication.
Albo tested the water by sending Keneally out to be mauled by Newscorp and then Shorten to make some sort of rational plea…once safe to make an entry, Albo tiptoed out with his scripted outrage and reminded the populace how not so bad Shorten actually was.
Morrison is far more worried by the 2 little girls than he is of the ALP, at least Albo’s new ALP.
No character-forming disasters? He has a handful staring him in the face. Start with climate. Wander along to economic management. Detour to water management if you must. Then a quick squiz at soaring inequality. There are more, many more. It’s just that Morrison does not, or will not, or cannot, see them through the lens of his peculiar ideology.
Very mordant analysis. Bang to rights.
Morrison the Moronic being a PR man is only concerned about perceptions not about reality.
You can only be aware of what you can perceive. Climate change, water, inequality and the sixth extinction are tangible, measurable physical entities. They are stark. And for people like us who base their actions and beliefs on rational truth they are frightening. For Morrision, who relies on magical thinking, tribal dogma and PR spin, they don’t exist. The tribal dogma and his religion say these things can’t exist or that if they do they are inevitable, something beyond his ability or remit to do anything about.
There a three things important to Morrison; himself, his tribe of right wing fascists and himself.
He doesn’t have the intellectual equipment to go beyond these three things and so he can’t see what the Angel Of History has left for him to clean up. Sadly we can. And it’s a scenario that is the stuff of my of nightmares.
Point is, if gawd spaketh or showeth nout to SloMoScoMo Man’o the People, then he heareth or seeeeth nought.
Thanks Rebekah on your light-hearted way of saying the Morrison is a talentless buffoon, devoid of any compassion or humanity. Surely he has had a part in the tactic of suddenly proposing to attack ‘dole bludgers’ as a way of deflecting attention from this PR debacle.
Very inconvenient that he has to move his focus off monstering two little Australia girls, and on to demonizing the poverty stricken, unemployed poor, because he was in fact drawing attention away from our economy sliding into recession and actually now a per capita head depression.
As they say in New Zealand, Bu–er!!
We elected a Hollow-man, should we be surprised that he’s hollow?
As the proverbial log LF. However that 34-54 year old female demographic who voted for him apparently saw something appealing that totally escapes me.
An advertising PR spiv who swanned around Oz shearing sheep, standing in dry dams and pretending to scull stubbies. He also thinks the laws of the universe were altered in his favour by God. Check out how he was first elected. Not a nice human being- a chancer.
No real surprise that the salesman was selling a Rolls Royce Silver Ghost with all the bells and whistles, but the company delivered a clapped out Leyland P76, rusted through, bald tyres, no rego, cracked windscreen, and torn vinyl seats.
Most of Australia still doesn’t know it, yet. Too busy to notice they’ve been had, these glorious quiet Australians, going about their business, too busy to give a flying hoot about actually thinking about where their vote goes, too busy to worry about climate change, a denuded environment, no water plan, increasing inequality, low wage growth.
Salt of the earth, my countrymen and women.
If everyone could just settle down, and stop being the disappointed moaner, we could get a handle on this.
Yes, the Labour party was robbed, but not by Morrison (whatever he says).
The big canary, Clivey boy Palmer, spent $68,000,000 to not win a seat for himself anywhere, not even the senate.
The spin doctor from the JOH era and a paid up member of the white shoe brigade was the robber in this; Clive Palmer, the man who would wreck people’s holiday homes and their retirement plans because he could, he needs Morrison for something and Morrison had better deliver or else, remember Can Do anyone?
When people are doing it tough, they tend to think along the lines of, at least when mum and dad shuffle off, I’ll have a house deposit or maybe a house.