All the suspiciously timed disappearances of Scott Morrison
By Andrew Wicks
Well, he’d done it again. Scott Morrison had vanished, leaving the nation to steer itself through the dangerous waters he’d created.
Where do you go, my Scotty? Once again, we’re in a familiar pickle. We’re not doing well, and the Prime Minister was nowhere to be found. Why? Well, that’s the real question. Yesterday, New South Wales, the state he wasn’t “worried about” quietly decided that it’ll have to exist alongside the Delta variant, with Gladys Berejiklian telling the media that, “you can’t live with the Delta variant unless you have a certain proportion your population vaccinated.”
Again, per Berejiklian, that proportion of the population is 80 per cent. A figure that the state will not be able to reach. So, what does this have to do with Scott Morrison? Well, he made the vaccine rollout a federal responsibility. Right now, we’re either throwing the AstraZeneca vaccine we manufactured in the bin, or giving it to those under 40, or most Australians can receive the Pfizer vaccine, or not. We don’t know. In fact, the only thing we all know, is nothing.
But, putting COVID aside for a minute, Morrison decided to travel to the UK recently (which he could do, as he was the first in line to be vaccinated) to sign a deal with Boris Johnson, and potentially squeeze in a holiday, as he decided to fertilise the Morrison family tree and get on the tins. Upon his return, he entered into a mandatory two week period of quarantine. But, if we can also put that to the side for a moment, what we have is a pattern. It seems that every time there’s bad news afoot, or a dip in the opinion polls, he makes himself scarce. Famously, Scott Morrison travelled to Japan (which required another quarantine period) a week after making international headlines when he answered for Anne Ruston who was asked about whether she experienced misogyny as a woman in parliament. This trip also coincided with the release of the brutal photos (and reports) into the behaviour of our troops in Afghanistan.
While we can exclude the trip to Hawaii during the apocalyptic bushfires of 2019 as the most egregious (and played out) example (which was also his third holiday of 2019), critics have estimated that he took four weeks off in the last six months of 2020. Indeed, in December 2020, when travel restrictions were announced due to the Avalon cluster, he was silent, re-igniting suspicion and causing the #WheresScotty hashtag to trend.
In early January, he announced another week of leave. This was, of course, after he took a separate break over the Christmas period. Now, I’m not saying that our elected officials should work long hours without the possibility of a break, or holidays, but the rest of us are doing exactly that.
Per the January press release, “during my short absence, the Deputy Prime Minister will undertake my duties for this period, including regular health and economic briefings, the planned roll-out of our vaccine program… while away I remain in contact with the Chief Medical Officer Paul Kelly.”
In March 2021, faced with the countrywide March 4 Justice (primarily enabled by his serious mishandling of the Brittany Higgins allegations, and clearing Christian Porter without an investigation), he decided to take another break. As Antoinette Latouf wrote for News.com.au, “While Canberra faces allegations of a dangerous culture towards young female staffers, it seems the Prime Minister has again opted to take a break. But with overseas holidays no longer an option, Mr Morrison seems to be chilling out behind his myrtle oak timber desk in Parliament House. When the scenery there gets a little dull, the PM heads to The Lodge. By refusing to go out and meet with the thousands of protesters in Canberra at the March 4 Justice this week, Mr Morrison is refusing to listen to more than 50 per cent of the country. Women.”
Interestingly, this small break coincided with his worst Newspoll results since his famous Hawaiian holiday. In the interest of fairness, he did eventually ask to meet with the women of the nation… but behind closed doors. In an interesting sidebar, he reappeared after the march, calling it a success… because it didn’t end in gunfire.
What we see, obviously, is a tactic… or a constant taking of the piss. As it stands, we’re in the midst of a once-in-a-generation pandemic (and the looming financial crisis to come), one that a heavily flawed vaccine rollout is supposed to solve. There’s also the fact that our relationship with China, our biggest trade partner, is unravelling. Yet, the man we’re paying an estimated $550,000 is acting like a small-town civil servant with a swell to surf.
Whether the estimates are accurate, speaks to the vibe he’s cultivated, considering his level of responsibility, it seems far too many. But, crucially, we don’t know, and thus, it becomes a problem marginalised as an unhelpful gripe. As Labor’s Richard Marles put it (which was carried by Sky News) “What Scott Morrison needs to do is stand up and take responsibility. In the midst of a crisis, in the midst of difficulty or the moment it’s going really tough you can guarantee he will go missing.”
If we consider a transatlantic comparison, I feel we need something close to Trumpgolfcount.com, a website that measures the frequency and taxpayer cost of Donald Trump’s infamously frequent tee-times. For the curious, Donald had 298 golf days in 2020, costing the taxpayer $144,000,000. How good is independent oversight?
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14 comments
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Harry Lime
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Henry Rodrigues
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Potoroo
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New England Cocky
Return to home pageThanks for that Andrew,however I’m not sure we needed another reminder of what a self absorbed, entitled ,shallow,glass jawed zoob he is, who demonstrates daily just how unsuited he is to the job he sleazed his way into.Much, much harder than his feeble imagination allowed.A danger to the country, a deluded fool, and a craven coward to boot…NEXT.
The liar from the shire, the prick from the south, the arsehole who never takes responsibility for anything and never answers questions, the charlatan who pockets $550,000 each year for doing bugger all.
And the ever stupid Australian voter still love the guy !!!!!!!
So what’s new !!!
In many ways it is great that the smirker has gone underground, as we don’t have to listen to his fatuous flights of fantasy, his undelivered announceables, his egregious excuses, constant denials and “apologies”
i just wish it was permanent
and Henry, the majority of Aussies did not vote for him at all, our gerrymandered electoral system allowed that to occur
When the going gets tough, Shouty asks himself, “What would Jesus do?”
Then he hides in a cave for three days.
Hallelujah another miracle by our god bothering leader by suddenly disappearing,maybe he has ascended into heaven to herald the start of the rapture leaving the rest of us to face the Armageddon of disease,fire ,war (china)and drought .Beware of the four riders of the apocalypse!
40 Spin Doctors probably got it right. Go into retreat for a couple of weeks. Just be seen by the masses on the goggle box. Big Brother with flags.
I feel sorry for the military chaps. A WAR Footing and no AMO !
Dear scotty, fuck off, and when you get there, fuck off some more, keep fucking off until you get to the gate that says you’re here, dream the impossible dream, jump the gate and just keep fucking off.
When last seen, the riders of the apocalypse were in a park in Belgium, I took their photo, I assume the caravanserai has moved on since then, looking to spread their blessings on the world, how does it go again? war? famine? pestilence? and . . .
In our ignorance, in our blindness we called the tune, now comes the time to pay the piper, now comes the time to reap what we have sown. What do you think? Have we fucked it totally? Is there a way out? Is it possible for more of us to know the difference, to know shit from custard?
At the moment, I’m riding with the apocalypse, they’re so committed.
Part time Prime Minister.
They scraped the bottom of the barrel politicising the military, but there were just too many questions the part-time PM couldn’t
or wouldn’t answer, so they brought in a dupe to deflect questioning away from many real questions unanswered and the exposure of an utter fraud.
Our PM 21st century Nero who infamously played the fiddle while Rome burned. The expression has a double meaning: Not only did Nero play music while his people suffered, but he was an ineffectual leader in a time of crisis and that pretty well describes Mr Morrison’s performance to date.
He portrays himself as a Christian yet is apparently a firm believer in prosperity theology. The rest of us just don’t matter. What does Our PM think of Jesus’ commandment “Love one another as I have loved you”
The masturbatory magnificence of Morrison’s ego produces huge false erections to be admired, worshipped, promoted by the deficient P M, a Preposterous Misfit. Never have we had so unbalanced, deficient, empty a leader who has no positive qualities, a liar and backstabber, a lazy failure with no known record of a job, work done successfully, even assumed honesty of existence. Instead, we suffer from having a superstition driven vacuum, a black hole within nothng, an overinflated extruded dropping without quality. It is a daily irritation to observe this, and Australia has suffered evil and backward leadership, policy, performance and reputation since the Manly Masturbator, the Pott’s Point peanut, and now this cruddy crap from Cronulla area. It STINKS and he must be eliminated, soon.
Oh come on people. He’s not gone forever.
He re-appeared lateish yesterday to give a quick “It’s not my fault and all of this same shit would have hit the same fan if everyone had been fully vaccinated as per my original “End of March” plan 1/deadline/guidline/suggestion/wild guess/shit I have to say something but I have no idea. Now here’s gladbags again.” (And then he went back into hiding)
From Shakespear, for today.
“I know him a notorious liar, Think hima great way foll, solely a coward.”
Bulls-eye !
There has been 495 infections since the Bondi outbreak. The media including the ABC has been reluctant to give us a daily tally like they did when Victoria was going through its own agony. where is the daily interrogation by Murdoch’s maggots, and Ch 7 & and 9, and the very loud constant hectoring by jug ear’s favourite squeeze something called the Crud-lin. Is it because Gladrags is an LNP pollie ? She got away with lying on her back with Dazza to pleasure her and now she’s getting away with something far more disastrous. And all the while Scummo hides away because he’s such a f**cken dickhead.
Pierre Wilkinson…. I know its the gerrymander, but its seems like the rest go along with it.
A narcissistic little man filled with delusions of grandeur who bluffs and bluffs and then runs away when it all piles up on him because he is all about image with absolutely no substance to back up his bullshit.
These above comments have expressed all my sentiments so I can only add:
SCUMMO IS UNIFT FOR SERVICE …. AS PRIM MONSTER … or indeed any political office!!