Morrison Tells Us It’s Not The Time For Politics

Interviewer: Good morning, First up we have an interview with Smirko the Jerko. Now just to make it clear that you are not Scomo.

Smirko: That s right. There’s a clear difference.

Interviewer: Yes, while one is an artificial creation and only good for the purpose of satire, the other is doing this interview with me. First up, let me ask you about the weather…

Smirko: Yes, isn’t that rain good? You’re welcome, by the way.

Interviewer: You’re welcome?

Smirko: Yes, a direct result of my prompt thoughts and prayers. But about the weather, I think it’d be hasty to try and link this current crisis to the weather. As I’ve gone around offering comfort to my backbench, one of the things that they’ve been most concerned about is the lack of hazard reduction burning…

Interviewer: Which is a result of cuts to budgets and a smaller window of opportunity for burns because of climate change.

Smirko: Look, it’s not the time to get political. Australia is burning and people are losing their homes.

Interviewer: Then why aren’t you accepting much of the help offered by overseas nations?

Smirko: Because we’ve got everything under control here and we need to keep our borders safe.

Interviewer: How can you say that everything’s under control when half of Australia is burning?

Smirko: I think you’ll find that Australia has always had fires and that we’re a resilient lot and we’ll manage to get through this with the true ANZAC spirit.

Interviewer: You mean that battle where Australian soldiers died needlessly trying to attack at a totally inaccessible part of Turkey?

Smirko: Now, I won’t have you attacking the ANZACs.

Interviewer: I wasn’t. I was more referring to their leadership. Which brings me to your holiday…

Smirko: You know the funny thing about that. I actually planned to holiday in Australia, but then at the last minute, back in March, I thought why not give my family a surprise and take them to Hawaii, because I had to go to India and once you’re in the air one country is much the same as another. If it hadn’t been for my trip to India I’d have been in Australia like I always am.

Interviewer: But you went to Fiji with them after the election.

Smirko: And you’re point is?

Interviewer: Well, Fiji isn’t part of Australia.

Smirko: Nobody would argue that it is.

Interviewer: But you just said that you always holiday in Australia.

Smirko: I think we’ve well and truly covered my holiday, and frankly it’s a bit of a non-issue so I don’t think that we should ever speak of it again.

Interviewer: Ok, then let’s move on to the link between climate change and the fires.

Smirko: There is NO link between climate change and the fires.

Interviewer: Surely, the drought has made the country tinder dry and this increased the likelihood of extreme fires.

Smirko: Yes, but I object to you trying to suggest that there’s a direct link.

Interviewer: So you concede that there’s an indirect link?

Smirko: Let’s be quite clear here. For a fire to start you need three things: Fuel, oxygen and something, or someone, to start it.

Interviewer: Are you trying to dog-whistle all those trying to suggest that the fires were started by arsonists?

Smirko: Not at all. I’m trying to suggest that more CO2 in the air would deprive the fires of vital oxygen.

Interviewer: So you have no plans to increase government action on climate change.

Smirko: I’ll repeat what I’ve always said my government will meet its emissions targets and we may even exceed them.

Interviewer: But any more radical action would be blocked by the climate change deniers in your party?

Smirko: I reject that entirely. We have no climate change deniers in our party.

Interviewer: Just recently Craig Kelly did that terrible interview with the British press where he was actually challenged and looked completely silly, and George Christensen was asserting that the fires were nothing to with climate change.

Smirko: Yes, well we are a broad church and unlike some parties, we value everyone’s opinion.

Interviewer: But you just said that there are no climate change deniers in your party.

Smirko: I think we’ve covered this, so we should move on.

Interviewer: Ok, sir, I’m sorry that I attempted to clarify your answer.

Smirko: Yes, you’re behaving as badly as those British journalists who kept interrupting Craig Kelly and ambushing him with a lot of things that contradicted his views.

Interviewer: So, finally, do you have any regrets about your handling of the fire situation?

Smirko: Let me say that obviously, in hindsight, there are things I would have done differently, but nothing that I’m going to specifically admit. Mostly I’d like to blame the states because they were slow to ask for help and the Federal government is prevented from doing things in the states by the constitution unless there’s a national emergency and we didn’t declare this a national emergency so I had to wait for them to ask. Certainly, nobody could have predicted the scale of the fires, unless they were alarmist lefties and we never listen to them. And, of course, I’d have ensured that I had a stunt double while I was in Hawaii so nobody noticed me gone.

Interviewer: What about further action in the future?

Smirko: Well, I certainly intend to consider the possibility of having an inquiry or possibly a Royal Commission to look at what we should do. In fact, I’ll probably consult the Cabinet and we’ll ask ourselves whether a Royal Commission is the way to go or whether we should simply appoint Maurice Newman or Justice Dysen to go away and come up with a report in a few months time that we can put with the report we didn’t look at because it was commissioned under the previous government.

Interviewer; Rudd or Gillard?

Smirko: No., Turnbull.

Interviewer: Thanks, but your time is up.

Smirko: Did Rupert Tell you that?

Interviewer: This has been another interview that didn’t actually happen but is still less absurd than the ones that do. Back to real life.