Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison is not a popular figure in these days of apocalyptic bushfires. You could say he gets no respect from the victims of the fires, even when goes to town to console them and lend them a sympathetic ear. Instead he got an earful himself from angry residents who lost their homes and livelihoods in days of relentless fires; he got peppered with expletives and had to force reluctant residents to shake hands with him in front of the TV cameras.
Take a look at this video (you might want to ask the kids to leave the room, these Aussies are rather colorful with their language, when they get angry) -
This is more footage of the same event -
Earlier, this meeting did not go well either, when a clearly frustrated resident wanted answers rather than a photo-op handshake from Morrison —
Morrison thought he might do better shaking hands with a brave volunteer firefighter — no such luck.
The firefighter had just lost his home and Morrison just lost a vote.
On New Year’s Day, Morrison hosted a traditional meeting with the Australian cricket team, a day before their match with New Zealand. There, he did not talk fondly about the wonders of coal, which he likes to do, but made some tone-deaf remarks about the cricket team and the rest of the nation, many now hurting and grieving while their homes burn and many taking shelter on beaches and lakes to escape the fire and smoke -
Whether they’re started by lightning storms or whatever the cause may be, our firefighters and all of those have come behind them to support them, whether they’re volunteering on the front line or behind the scenes in a great volunteer effort, it is something that will happen against the backdrop of this Test match
But at the same time Australians will be gathered whether it’s at the SCG (Sydney Cricket Ground) or around television sets all around the country and they’ll be inspired by the great feats of our cricketers from both sides of the Tasman and I think they’ll be encouraged by the spirit shown by Australians and the way that people have gone about remembering the terrible things that other Australians are dealing with at the moment.
He could not even put in a good word for the victims themselves. Not one word of condolence for the 500,000,000 animals who have perished in the flames.
Does he know that he is the head of the government, not some average cheerleader? Very trump-like.
Try to caption this strange photo-op with the cricket team -
Morrison also got criticized for showing off photos of children playing cricket in the backyard of his lovely water-front home -
This is an article by a comedy group which hilariously captures the day’s events 😄
This is Morrison getting a tan in Hawaii in December while Australia was burning. Not a good look.
Artist Scott Marsh painted this mural mocking Morrison’s Hawaiian vacation -
These done-deaf statements are no aberrations. This is how Morrison has spoken on previous occasions about cricket and fire-impacted communities — “Our boys will give them something to cheer about”. This statement probably is right up there with the classic statement from the french princess — “Let them eat cake”.
Morrison is also famous for doing his impression of Sen. Inhofe (R-OK) in the Australian parliament, using a lump of coal instead of a snowball -
There is much more to write about Morrison’s politics and his love for the coal industry, his climate science denialism, and his trumpian tactics of hurling juvenile insults against his opponents. But that is for another diary.
Jokes and insults aside, hopefully people are starting to realize that Morrison, like trump, is a slick salesman and conman, simply taking care of business — his own and his donors’ — while doing little for the real problems facing the country and its people. Like trump, he is incapable of genuine empathy or statesmanship. Let’s give a helping hand to Australians to boot him and his party out and elect competent problem-solvers to office.