By 2353NM

On Christmas morning, Prime Minister Scott Morrison had a traditional start to the day. His family gathered around the Christmas Tree to exchange presents before heading off to church. They were all hoping for something extra from Santa because they have all had a rough year living through the resignation of Gladys Berejiklian, COVID and the large number of slurs and insults directed at the ‘head’ of the household.

When they settled and made themselves ready for the photograph that would inevitably appear later in the day on social media, they began to open Santa’s presents. Morrison’s wife, Jenny, was absolutely delighted with her new Pandora necklace with a label showing the gift was purchased at a jeweller’s shop in Engadine. His daughters realised the possibilities of what will be when they can travel to Queensland and use the 3 day passes to Seaworld and Movieworld that were found in their Santa sacks. Our illustrious Prime Minister found a lump of coal in his Santa Sack.

While he has used a lump of coal to belittle the opposition in Parliament, as you can probably understand Morrison was particularly unimpressed by the present. So, being a man of action, he got on to the phone and rang the President of Finland and asked him for Santa’s contact details. Soon afterwards, Morrison rang Santa and demanded to know why he received a present traditionally reserved for those that had been very naughty.

Santa, being rather tired and irritable after a longer than usual trip around the world (those QR codes and travel restrictions did his head in) told Morrison in no uncertain terms that the Elf on the Parliamentary Shelf had reported a litany of bad behaviour over the past 12 months. Morrison, not being used to getting a dressing down by anyone, objected. Santa decided that he had better things to do with his life than argue the point for hours with the unrepentant Prime Minister of Australia so began to list off items in the reports from the Elf on the Shelf.

Santa started with Morrison’s claim that he never called former Senator Sam Dastyari ‘Shanghai Sam’ when it was recorded on video, suggesting if Morrison had to lie over something that is reasonably trivial, what chance is there of truth when it really mattered?

Despite Morrison’s objections, Santa went on to discuss the justification for Morrison demonising electric vehicles at the time of the 2019 election and making them a large part of the unconvincing road to zero emissions by 2050.

Santa went on to ask Morrison how he could justify the wasted job keeper payments which, if redirected to Jobseeker, would have kept the payment above the poverty line for five years. Morrison didn’t answer.

And the pork-barrelling you presided over was even worse, said Santa. Regardless of the claimed capability of the individual member of Parliament, how is it possible that adjoining electorates receive 46 times the funding based, it would seem, on the political party the Representative belongs to? And while the first one was funny, Santa told Morrison he was concerned when a number of children wrote to him claiming to live in a marginal electorate to get better presents as it shows the country is aware of the problem.

Then Santa went on to tell Morrison that letters from the Attorney-General to the Prime Minister can’t ‘be lost’, rather someone seems to be trying to hide the legal information the letter contained about the administration of the community sports program which has also been called ‘sports rorts’.

About now, Morrison finally picked himself off the floor and bleated that it was highly unfair that he was not only fighting the Labor Party but a number of well financed independent candidates in the seats he would usually win. To make matters worse, these independents are well funded but not disclosing where every dollar of funding is coming from. Santa shot back that the most secretive political party in Australia when it came to funding was Morrison’s Liberal Party, so his point is what exactly?

Morrison decided he didn’t need to hear any more and hung up in Santa’s ear. From his home in the not so frozen north (climate change is a thing – apparently), Santa decided to keep an eye on Morrison for the first few weeks of January to see if there had been any improvement. He asked Michael Pascoe, one of his trusted helpers in Australia, to prepare a report. The report wasn’t pleasant reading.

• The COVID testing system has been blown up
• The Prime Minister’s monumental clanger of preferencing “the private market” for RATs over public health advice is hurting badly, with even the Australian Financial Review running multiple negative stories
• The overall RATs debacle is being sheeted home to the federal government for delaying the tests’ approval for use here and then failing to move on supply until there was already a shortage
• Businesses and individuals are increasingly suffering from a spreading voluntary lockdown as Omicron runs riot under the “let it rip” policy championed by Mr Morrison
• Stories are leaking out of hospitals failing their own care standards as cases jump and staff contract the virus
• About 2000 aged-care homes are short staffed, existing somewhere between a permanent state of fear of imminent disaster and the actual disaster of solitary confinement lockdowns
• Governments changing definitions to obtain less embarrassing outcomes are not fooling many
• And there is that ongoing problem of Mr Morrison “being economical with the truth”, to put it mildly.

Santa was unsurprised, but bitterly disappointed.

What do you think?