Being blessed (or cursed) with a long memory, I can’t help but wonder sometimes whether politicians think that the general public can’t remember anything from before the previous election, or whether they think that people weren’t paying attention so they didn’t notice what they said last time so they can just recycle the same policies in the hope that it will sound like they’ve got some ideas and… sorry, I got distracted… was the PM saying something, oh yeah, that sounds good, carry on.
Anyway, apart from potentially reviving memories of Utegate, the death of the weekend and the condemnation of South Australia’s big battery being no more useful than the Big Banana or the Big Prawn, I couldn’t help but wonder about Mr Morrison’s mental capacity when he told us, “I love utes. How good are utes? How good would a big ute be?”
The whole thing about a rhetorical question is that one is not meant to answer it. However, as there were two in what is often referred to by the media, without irony, as Morrison campaigning, I intend to answer them both.
Utes are very useful. The word itself is short for “utility” which suggests a functionality completely missing from our current federal leader. As to the second question about how good a big ute would be, well, obviously that depends on the size. For example, a ute larger than your average road would have – like Morrison – very little practical capacity and would be mainly there – like Morrison – for show.
The Big Ute to which Morrison was referring was, in fact, an idea for a Big Ute On A Stick, which reminds me of a product that I haven’t seen in years called “Soap-On-A-Rope”. I would suggest that no matter what the size, that a Ute on a stick would be mainly there as a tourist attraction so that people could visit Geelong and marvel at it and explain to their children, “This is a monument to those good utes that used to be made in Australia but were sacrificed to the god of Can-do Capitalism when the Liberals said they couldn’t afford to subsidise manufacturing any more because they hadn’t received enough in campaign donations from the auto industry.”
One hopes that after the next election, Canberra will have its own tourist attraction called “Scotty On A Stick” which will be a cautionary tale for all those children who think that they can get away with not doing their homework and then trying to bluster through by making things up or blaming someone else. No, Scotty, the dog did not eat the order form for the vaccines.
Still Morrison has what he sees as a great new slogan. “We’re looking out the front windscreen; we’re not looking in the rear-view mirror.”
Ok, I understand the cynicism from people that are saying that the Coalition are happy to look back for things to criticise Labor about whether it’s pink batts or Whitlam’s trip to China. Yes, I do get the fact that he’s trying to frame it so that when Labor or anyone point out past mistakes, it’s a ready made response of “We’re not looking in the mirror, we’re concerned about the future!” Ok, maybe not until after 2030 when it comes to net zero, but for everything else, the only thing that matters is the next election and we’re prepared to make all the same promises that we didn’t keep last time. How good is that?
However, my main concern is with the analogy itself. When one is driving, it is a GOOD IDEA to check your rear-view mirror fairly often. Do we really want a government who uses such poor driving practices?
Particularly when they find themselves in reverse so often…
Which reminds me, has Gladys come out and said that she never had any intention of standing in Warringah yet?
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