What a week for Morrison! After returning from Glasgow an international embarrassment and called out as a liar, the week began in full campaign mode to restore the marketing man’s rapidly devaluing brand. He set off on tour to “reconnect” with NSW and Victoria. Haven’t they suffered enough?

Daggy Dad was back pretending to be one of the people: “Kids are back at school, what a relief!” The costume wardrobe was raided again, with hard helmets, high vis, chef’s aprons and even a barber’s gown while the nation supervised his hair plugs get a trim. If that wasn’t enough to elicit a cheer from the infamous quiet Australians, there was more pantomime in store – Morrison playing at driving trucks and whatever electric vehicles he could get his clown gloves on. While Anthony Albanese was out celebrating the (vegetarian) Diwali festival with Hindu members of his community, Morrison posted a photo of himself pretending to make a meat curry.

And then there was the backflip on electric vehicles, which, according to Morrison, came as a result of significant unforseen changes to technology (in 2 years!). Similar to the as-yet-not-developed technology (not taxes) that will provide a miracle path to Net Zero by 2050?

Paul Keating’s address at the National Press Club on Wednesday reminded us of former PM’s who have led with intellect, passion and wit. Meanwhile … Scotty from Marketing gave us videos of people taking videos of him pretending to make gnocchi. Then yesterday we saw him hijacking a Remembrance Day service at the Doncaster RSL (Vic). Did he tell the pensioners he ‘served’ breakfast about the Indue card coming their way?

Of course the clincher was saved for the end of the week. Asked by 3AW radio host Neil Mitchell if he had ever told a lie in public life, Morrison replied: “I don’t believe I have, no.”

https://www.sbs.com.au/news/scott-morrison-says-he-doesn-t-believe-he-s-ever-lied-in-public-life/973ca5c1-90ec-4b5d-af7c-c7b8d4489af4

And this is just another example of carefully crafted responses that enable the PM to skirt around the truth. He couldn’t just answer yes or no … he adds enough extra words to give him wriggle room. Because we know for a fact that he has lied (Crikey has produced a dossier of 42 falsehoods! https://www.crikey.com.au/dossier-of-lies-and-falsehoods/). But his response means that we rely on fact, only what he states he believes to be true. Who can question that? He can believe whatever he wants (like the Rapture!) but that doesn’t make it true.

Scott Morrison will say anything to help him cling on to power. He will say whatever suits his purpose one day, then conveniently contradict it the next. Like Trump and his fake news, Morrison lives in a parallel universe where he’s always right. Today’s slogan and announcement is all that he cares about. And tomorrow he’ll just ‘move on’ to a new reality that only he believes. But the quiet Australians are starting to pay attention. We’ve seen the fake and the spin and the cosplay too many times. He needs to stop pretending to be popular and start leading the country.

Morrison lied when he said “Bill Shorten wants to end the weekend”. And Morrison has ended this week weakened.

Nicola Wilson, Noosa branch

Part of the Wide Bay campaign