The Gravy Train Express

  On Thursday morning, Scott Morrison did the rounds of the media... excluding the ABC. He then revealed he'd agreed to two more televised debates - to be hosted by Nine and Seven, the friendly neighbourhood Costello/Stokes outlets. In the past, the National Press Club has been the debate venue, and Labor has declared their interest in continuing that tradition. (Last election, the Liberals insisted on it.) The moderator at the Press Club is usually the president - and the president right now happens to be the ABC's Laura Tingle. Morrison hasn't directly responded to the invitation, but said today that three debates made "a good number", and "I've already done one". (For anyone who missed it, that was on Rupert's Sky.) The ABC has issued a separate invite for May 9, with their Sky-import, the not-overly-taxing David Speers as host. The Morrison camp has so far ignored that offer. (With Albanese only due out of Covid iso on Friday, and Labor's...

On Thursday, April 14, the Fin Review ran both an opinion piece and an article based around Ipsos focus-group work which the Fin said showed undecided voters were leaning toward Scott Morrison. The paper described that voter-group's feeling as "better the devil you know". The Guardian's economics correspondent, Peter Hannam, noticed that no numbers were mentioned. When he contacted Ipsos to check, it turned out that two groups of voters had participated, with each group consisting of... five people. Yes - the work was indicative of the leanings of fully ten individuals. The journalist responsible for hyping this junk was Phil Coorey, who in recent years has been the AFR's contact-of-choice for leaks and briefings from the Prime Minister's Office, and who memorably penned the fawning "Woman Who Saved Australia" profile of Gladys Berejiklian just 5 months before her exit under a corruption cloud. The AFR was once a Fairfax publication. Then Malcolm T...

 Flashback - article written in March, 2021. In 2018, Scott Morrison described his squabbling band of gaffe-prone grifters as a "Muppet Show". On taking the Prime Ministership, he assured breakfast television that "the curtain's come down on that Muppet Show - and an absolute new curtain has lifted up!" The unintentional implication that the nation was about to witness the launch of Scotty's All-New Muppet Show was reinforced by his next miscalculated response: Presenter: "How do you unite a bunch of Muppets?" Morrison: "Well, I'm doing exactly that in terms of my colleagues." In the two and a half years since, the volume of corruption and ineptitude has become so great as to make the compilation of a complete list near-impossible. But just to refresh, here's some of the show's notable lowlights: Robodebt theft, deaths & $1.2 billion settlement; $100 million Sports Rorts plus Gaetjen's whitewash; slashing funding to t...