Three cabinets won’t save PM Scott Morrison’s skin

There is no way the federal government is going to win the next election. The only uncertainty is where in the spectrum between the Queensland debacle and the WA wipe-out the result will sit.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison at a press conference at Parliament House. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Gary Ramage

Boy, are we lucky: uniquely in the entire world, we have no less than three cabinets in and around Canberra, all doing their darndest to work their butts off not running the country.

There’s the ‘normal’ one, presided over by the prime minister Scott Morrison – or Scomo, to give him his official title from Bogan Boofhead Central – his deputy, the hapless what’s his name, and the PM-in-waiting Josh Frydenberg.

There’s the ‘national cabinet’ – rumoured to consist of the PM and the eight state and territory leaders, although this is hard to confirm as there is no evidence of it having done even fourth-fifths of five-eighths of sweet copulating all.

And now we also have the bold innovation of the ‘women’s cabinet’ – presided over at its first meeting Tuesday by an even bolder innovation, well, a man, the said PM from Bogan Boofhead Central.

Now there’s an innovation: a women’s cabinet whose chairman is a man; and not even a ‘woke’ man like a Malcolm Turnbull – currently available for the post - but the very opposite.

I’m also a little puzzled: whatever happened to the ‘women’s PM’? Shouldn’t she, if you’ll excuse the definitive pronoun, preside over the ‘women’s cabinet’?

I personally loved that pic of the ‘PM for women’ Marise Payne sitting in appropriate, silent, appreciation, as Morrison, a man, ’explained’ the workings of said women’s cabinet.

Go Scomo, you’re so woke, you could put Rumpelstiltskin to sleep!

Yesterday, I noted that it is a tad disturbing to be told – by the person herself – that the single most important economic policy advisor in the entire world is utterly clueless.

That was President Biden’s treasury secretary Janet Yellen calling for a global minimum company tax.

Minister for Foreign Affairs Marise Ann Payne and Prime Minister Scott Morrison. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Martin Ollman

The US is setting out to hurt itself by lifting its corporate tax rate from 21 to 28 per cent – reversing the biggest US job-creation scheme ever under President Trump which cut it from 35 per cent - and it wants every other country to be equally as stupid.

Just quietly, Janet, if I can call you that: ain’t going to happen. The guys in Beijing and Shanghai are doubled up with laughter. You are shooting yourself in the foot; and you’d like us to do the same?

There’s no comfort in the tax hike being supported by the world’s richest – or second-richest; it all depends on the divorce settlement – man, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos.

Bezos is just as happy to use loopholes to not pay a 28 per cent tax rate as Amazon, as he’s done to not pay a 21 per cent tax rate.

Amazon paid zero, zip, nada, US federal tax in 2017 and 2018 and is up for just $US162m – it disclosed in an SEC filing - on $US14,000m of ‘pre-tax’ (and supposedly, taxable) profit in 2019.

More basically, you don’t get to be the “world’s richest – or even second richest – person” by paying a lot of tax. Paying tax is for losers.

Now, I have to tell you we have a PM, who seems to set out each day to prove that he is, well, and to put it at its gentlest, just not that smart.

He’s got a “women problem”; so what does he do? He goes to a league match to rub shoulders and drain a few cans in the locker room at the footy and happily pose in a pic with a half-dozen jocks and one very unsmiling woman.

Let me repeat, with emphasis, what I wrote a week or so back. There is no way, no way, the federal government is going to win the next election.

What ‘wun it for Scomo’ in 2019 was not his inherent brilliance or doggedness but Pauline Hanson and Clive Palmer, with a little bit of help from Bill Shorten.

The only uncertainty is where in the spectrum between the Queensland debacle and the WA wipe-out the result will sit.

Prepare for a PM Albo and a treasurer Chalmers – and with a functional far left majority in the Senate, in ‘coalition’ with the Greens.

Originally published as Three cabinets won’t save PM Scott Morrison’s skin