“Good afternoon, we have a spokesperson for the PM, Ms, Hope Leeder to explain the government’s new position on lockdowns. Good afternoon, Ms Leeder.”
“Miss. It’s Miss Leeder. I’m not a feminist.”
“Sorry, I was just…”
“And let me make it clear the government does not have a new position. The government’s position has always been that we need to open up immediately.”
“So you’re saying that there’s no change and the government is committed to opening up as soon as it’s safe.”
“No, I’m saying that Mr Morrison has been very clear that he wants these silly lockdowns to stop. Last year he told us to stop hiding under the doona even before we had a vaccine and now he’s saying that we can’t stay in the cave, so you can’t accuse him of being inconsistent.”
“But didn’t he say that sometimes a short, sharp lockdown was the only way to handle things?”
“I think you’re taking that out of context.”
“What was the context then?”
“He was talking about Parliament not the economy.”
“So he doesn’t support lockdowns until the vaccination rates get to 80%?”
“Of course he does. He just re-affirmed his commitment to Doherty modelling.”
“But didn’t he say in Parliament that the Doherty modelling had been updated?
“Yes, but that was confidential Cabinet information and you’ll have to trust his reassurance.”
“Let me try to understand clearly, we’re using modelling that can’t be made public to tell the public that they should trust the modelling?”
“The PM was very clear. There is an agreement with the Australian people that we’d follow the Doherty model so any going back on that would be breaking a promise and, while Premiers may break promises all the time, Mr Morrison is very careful never to make them.”
“I’m not sure that’s true.”
“Which bit?”
“Any of it, but just to be completely clear: the PM wants the states to guarantee there’ll be no lockdowns once the vaccination rate reaches 80%?”
“Or 70%. He was very clear that he doesn’t mind if it’s lower.”
“Is that 70% in total, including children or 70% of the eligible population?”
“I think it was 70% of the Federal LNP, but I’ll have to take that on notice.”
“What sort of death rates are the government prepared to accept?”
“None. Our policy is that we need to learn to live with Covid and people who are dying are clearly not adhering to our policy.”
“Nobody chooses to die.”
“Are you sure? We’ve been pushing the lockdown causes suicides angle pretty hard…”
“I meant that people dying from Covid don’t choose it.”
“We could debate this all day but the government policy is that we live with Covid and if they’re not doing that, we can’t be held responsible if they don’t follow our policy any more than we can be held responsible for those who chose to be contractors in Afghanistan rather than working directly for the Australian government.”
“On that, would you agree that the evacuation of Afghanistan could have been done better in hindsight?”
“Well, nobody can be expected to have hindsight about the past, but I think it’s worked exactly as we wanted it to. I mean, we can drag Peter Dutton out to tell everyone that those left behind were really possible terrorists and we can remind everyone about our strong border policies and people will stop talking about Covid.”
“Getting back to lockdown situation…”
“In Afghanistan?”
“No, in Australia.”
“I’d much rather talk about overseas…”
“The PM today made a speech about embracing the virus. Isn’t that the opposite of the health advice?”
“Sorry?”
“And he also said that it’s darkest before dawn. Is that actually true? I mean don’t you get slivers of light before dawn?””
“I don’t understand.”
“The Prime Minister was telling us that dawn wasn’t far away and that we were working toward the dawn. What did he mean?”
“Well he was trying to inspire the people…”
“And then he said that we were ‘hastening’ toward it. I mean who using a word like that? Hastening? We’re working towards it and we’re hastening towards it. Next we’ll be about to fight it on the beaches or we’ll be asked to understand that there’s nothing to fear but fear itself.”
“What’s your question?”
“I don’t have one. I just realised that this whole thing is some sort of demented word game and I should stop trying to ask sensible questions.”
“Well, there’s no point in continuing the interview!”
“Yes, Miss Leeder, on that we can agree.”
* * *
In breaking news, Matt Canavan has clarified that he doesn’t mind if The Wiggles choose to have a racially diverse line-up with female members. Just as they have no right to pick the Nationals front bench, he has no right to dictate their line-up and if they want to have people who’d have no chance of being preselected for the Nationals, then that’s up to them but he stopped watching them years ago once he realised that mother was never going to take him to a concert because he was over thirty.
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