Scott Morrison is rarely seen without a baseball cap.
“I wear caps,” Morrison said in an interview with Studio 10 back in 2018. “That’s what I wear. If you find me at home, I’ll be wearing a cap. If you find me down at Shark Park or Cronulla Beach or Wanda, I’ll be wearing a cap.”
This bit of headwear is the quintessential part of his daggy dad schtick, an image he started carefully cultivating ahead of the last election (with plenty of help from compliant journalists).
No politician is immune from wanting to be loved. They all want to convince voters that deep down they’re just like them.
Voters begrudgingly put up with political cosplay come election time. When the PM wears a hard hat or a high-vis vest for an announce-able, we know what’s going on.
But since his election win, ScoMo’s stunts have ramped up rather than down. He is rarely seen giving a presser without some form of fancy dress — from hard hats to the now ubiquitous Australian flag COVID-19 mask.
Once a jocular bit of political theatre, dress-ups are now a central part of government. The stunts are all we have left. It’s little wonder that The Betoota Advocate’s satirical moniker “Scotty from Marketing” has caught on so well.
A recent announcement on a tourism package was a case in point. Within hours, the package was being amended following a flurry of criticism from tourism operators and the regions. But who cares, ScoMo got to go in the cockpit and pretend to be a pilot! Woohoo!
It’s all style over substance.
Then there’s the vaccine rollout, which is tracking way behind schedule with doctors left in the dark. But at least the prime minister got some cool pics in a lab holding the vaccine doses.
And then, when the PM triumphantly got his jab, he had a special monogrammed Diamonds jersey just for the occasion.
Last week ScoMo took a break from gaffing his way through the sleaze and misogyny engulfing his government to pay a visit to flooded communities in Western Sydney. Of course, we quickly got photos of him sitting courageously in a helicopter. It’s the greatest flyover since Bush after Katrina.
The other week he was even making pasta! Because apprenticeships. JobMaker is drastically undersubscribed and only 609 people have gotten work, but hey, pasta.
Morrison is a man who loves to work hard. That’s why he regularly chucks on a hard hat.
He also loves a ride in a truck.
In fact, this year he’s given us more photos in trucks than meaningful announcements on how he’s going to clean up the toxic culture in Parliament.
But dealing with rape allegations is such a drag, right?
“I’m just glad the footy’s back on,” Morrison told Ray Hadley last week. “It helps everybody.”
As the mercury drops, Morrison can finally get away from the business of governing and spend more time with his beloved Cronulla-Sutherland Sharks.
He wants us to know he really, really loves the Sharks. Or at least, he started loving them after getting preselected in a Shire safe seat.
The again, he doesn’t seem to mind the Eels, either.
In fact, he’s a sucker for just about any sport (as long as it stays out of politics).
This is the ScoMo that Morrison wants us to see: the blue-collar suburban bloke (who just happens to have worked his whole life in offices); the daggy dad who just wants to build a chicken coop for his girls.
The family man who loves a bit of Jesus on a Sunday.
Above all, he’s just a regular bloke’s bloke.
But in the words of Morrison himself, “blokes don’t get it right all the time”.
And at a time when the Coalition is in crisis over its handling of sexual assault allegations and a rampant culture of misogyny, and as we navigate our way out of a catastrophic global pandemic, Morrison struts around like a bloke who’s got the moment badly wrong.
It is truly doubtful whether the PM knows or appreciates the difference between leadership and marketing, between selling and actually doing. Every policy announcement seems to be nothing but a chance to dress up for the cameras.
Maybe we’re horribly wrong about this. Maybe the voters love the pageantry.
But really, right now, isn’t it time to stop the stunts?
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Peter Fray
Editor-in-chief of Crikey
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Not that I know much about jets, but would a large passenger jet actually have a roll down window in the cockpit? I’m guessing not, due to pressurization issues. So, for the Scomopath to have his photo taken with his arm hanging out of the cockpit, would his staff have to arrange for the window panel to be removed? Ahh, priorities.
Yes, they are there to be opened in pressurised aircraft on the ground for last minute load and fuel updates.Often handed up on the ground by engineers and loadmasters using large sticks. Can open on the right too.
they slide back
as seen in the photo.
This is simply to address your question about passenger jet cockpit windows. No endorsement of Morrison implied or intended
the pilots a smoker
After his recent “leadership” he should be wearing a gimp suit.
I had to google gimp suit. Yes, he should wear one every working day.
A gimp suit, he should wear a cross and I mean that literally. Now who has the three nails?
Excellent work Shaun. Perhaps a pimp outfit, a la Huggy Bear from that 70s show, was it Starsky and Hutch?
The only advice Scotty should be following is to close up shop and disappear in the never never.
Stop the Stunts! Well it rhymes with stunts anyway!
It is staggering to contemplate the extent to which Bargearse Morrison manufactures his facade. It is even more staggering to think that 55% of people polled are so duped by his marketing they still think he is doing an effective job as PM and the latest polls indicate that the LNP primary vote actually increased. How could anyone watching a sustained political train wreck still be so blinded by ideology? Well, the answer is simple and Trumpian – many will still vote for a despicable excuse for a leader rather than vote for the opponent. The reality of who, and more disturbingly, who Bargearse is at his core is there to be seen if only you can look past his transparent marketing stunts – in fact, I imagine it takes far more time to organise the stunts than it would take for Bargearse to actually be a functional PM. Therein lies the rub – he is ONLY his stunts and his facade. There is little point looking for substance – it’s not there. He can’t lead … he isn’t a leader. If the rape allegations were against a Labor politician, that would have been “transactional politics” and he would have gone into full “blustering outrage” mode – demanding answers, calling inquiries, calling in his lackies in the AFP. But he had to response at an emotional level and he doesn’t have that skill – he only has techniques he learned and they have failed him, such is the scale of his ineptitude when he is out of his comfort zone and forced to go “off script”. When he needs to appear emotional, he evokes Jen, his daughters and his mother, but that is his learned acting technique. As he tells us, they are at the centre of his life – but so effing what? How does that excuse or explain his utterly woeful performance, full of lies, diversion, gibberish and fake empathy. When seriously challenged by a journalist, he became belligerent, something he tries to disguise, but he is no better than Latham in that regard. Both are big guys and will throw their weight around menacingly when challenged or when it suits (as Morrison did in the second debate against Shorten in 2019). It confirms what at least some thought after his disgraceful bushfire performance. Most of us have met a genuine leader at some stage – but there are way more people in positions of power and authority than there are leaders in those positions and I defy you to explain to me how Bargearse even comes close to being a genuine leader.
However his total lack of empathy was an enormous help to him when he was maltreating refugees.
And the victims of Robodebt, which was devised when he was Social Services Minister, implemented when he was Treasurer, and defended when he was PM.
Bargearse – you get my upvote just for that.