Voice of Real Australia is a regular newsletter from ACM, which has journalists in every state and territory. Sign up here to get it by email, or here to forward it to a friend.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
He told us he doesn't hold a hose. He told us he's not the police force. He told us he doesn't read dossiers containing blistering allegations, strenuously denied, about his attorney general (but forwards the same to the police).
So what exactly does Scott Morrison do?
Last week, he posed for a stack of photos. We saw him in a lab coat appearing to do something related to COVID vaccines. We saw him in an apron pretending to make pasta, we saw him in a pilot's cap doing his wuzzy best to look like John Travolta but actually coming across more like Benny Hill.
So, while not holding the hose nor being the police, he was spruiking - in fancy dress - the vaccine rollout (it's way behind schedule), money to encourage businesses to take on new apprentices (after a long history of cuts to TAFE funding), and cut-price airfares paid for by all us taxpayers (as JobKeeper, which has kept much of the tourism industry afloat, prepares to step off a cliff).
The rights and wrongs of the respective policies aside for a moment, let's talk about the way they're marketed.
You wouldn't be alone in thinking most of us have had a gutful of photos and videos of politicians in costume pretending to do stuff. We see the awkwardness on the faces of those in the background assembled as party props. The real pilot in the cockpit next to the PM whose grimace says, "Please, don't press that button." The real vaccine expert thinking to herself, "He's going to spill that stuff everywhere." The actual apprentice baker thinking, "Oh boy, he can't be serious about that dough."
If the spin's enough to make you dizzy, the about-faces are headache-inducing.
For months the PM told us the plan was to have four million Australians vaccinated by the end of March. Now, we see it's likely to be fewer than 200,000. Sure, there's been a supply problem. The EU has thrown a spanner in the works by blocking shipments of the Astra Zeneca vaccine. But when the PM backflips and repeatedly says "it's not a race", you can feel the blood pressure rise. It IS a race because all of us want a return to normal as soon as possible.
Among other things, we want to travel, but not necessarily to the destinations chosen by the federal government to qualify for cheap, taxpayer-funded airfares. While this announcement got an initial positive response, further scrutiny revealed NSW had by and large been left out of the equation. It also revealed one of the key destinations, Cairns, is struggling to cope with an influx of COVID patients from nearby PNG. At least one tourism operator up there is warning that because so many staff had left his white-water rafting business during the COVID shutdown, he's unlikely to be able to meet the extra demand the airfares will fuel.
Peel back the layers of all these thumbs-up photo ops and you get the sense they're largely distractions - from the crisis in federal parliament, the vaccine go-slow and the JobKeeper cliff.
Trouble is, a hard hat, lab coat, pilot's cap or apron don't fool anyone. What is actually in high-vis for all to see is the hollowness of the hard sell.
In case you are interested in filtering all the latest down to just one late afternoon read, why not sign up for The Informer newsletter?
More stuff happening around Australia ...
- 'We need to do more': elite school rocked by sexual assault claims
- Housing trend that could 'obliterate rental market'
- A sea of voices, and Scott Morrison still didn't want to listen
- Time for governments to be honest and support coal workers
- Farmers are making millions from land sales which may entice others to follow
- Attorney-General fights to clear his name over rape claim
- Guy Leech will never forget moment his best mate 'died in my hands'
- Surgery not the only way for osteoarthritis