NewsBite

commentary

Kiss cancel culture on campaign trail

Scott Morrison has promised not to pucker up on the campaign trail. Fair enough — kissing babies is hardly COVIDSafe!

Alice Workman
4 min read
7:06PMOctober 14, 2020
Print
Kissing babies.
Kissing babies.

Scott Morrison has promised not to pucker up on the campaign trail. Fair enough — kissing babies is hardly COVIDSafe! The Prime Minister was asked about the US President’s infectious mistletoe moment during an interview on 2GB Radio.

Ben Fordham: “I know that you’re selling the budget around Rockhampton at the moment. Look, you’re always looking for new campaign ideas. I want to play you something from Donald Trump, obviously he’s recovering from coronavirus but he’s come up with a with a new strategy at one of his rallies, and it involves kissing members of the public.”

Trump: “I went through it. Now they say I’m immune. I can feel, I feel so powerful. I’ll walk into that audience, I’ll walk in there I’ll kiss everyone in that audience. I’ll kiss the guys and the beautiful women and everybody, I’ll just give you a big fat kiss.”

Fordham: “He wants to give everyone a big fat kiss.”

PM: “There’s nothing like Donald, that’s for sure. But the Australian public are safe from my lips.”

Fordham: “Thank God for that.”

Crying babies.
Crying babies.

Gladys nearly over

It started out with a kiss, so how did it end up like this?

Journalist: “Do you believe Daryl Maguire’s greed could be why he pursued a close relationship with you?”

Gladys Berejiklian: “I will let others comment on that but what I will say in relation to me, in relation to my colleagues, in relation to the public servants that were involved, he got nowhere, notwithstanding his intentions. He got nowhere. That is what is important here.”

The Bear Pit.
The Bear Pit.

Before the NSW Premier survived a no-confidence vote by one, there was Bear Pit QT.

Opposition Leader Jodi McKay: “Premier, given you’ve been in parliament for 17 years, and worked with hundreds of MPs, are you aware of any other members of parliament who are taking commissions from property developers?”

Berejiklian: “Mr Speaker, I say this — the Leader of the Opposition sat in the cabinet with Eddie Obeid and Ian Macdonald. Did she know –”

McKay: “Unlike you, I reported it to ICAC!”

Use it Liberally

The NSW Liberals have their own branded batch of hand sanitiser. According to the label, it “kills 99.9 per cent of germs”!

Perhaps Berejiklian’s nickname for Maguire should have been “numero (zero punto) uno”?

Given the filth coming out of ICAC, it might be time to stock up.

“If NSW was a business, I’d be buying as many shares as I can and I don’t say that flippantly,” Assistant Treasurer (and known Victorian) Michael Sukkar claimed.

Considering the inflated price the federal government paid for land in Western Sydney, Sukkar really shouldn’t be valuing anything.

A pro tractor

Among the garden of earthly delights that is coming out of Operation Keppel was this left-field claim from Maguire’s former business associate Maggie Wang.

The Hawkiss.
The Hawkiss.

She gave evidence that during a 2018 coffee shop meeting, the former Liberal MP “said something like ‘There’s been an unfortunate accident where my phones and iPad have been run over by a tractor’ ”.

Phones, plural!

We smell le bullshit.

Say what you will about Maguire, but he sure is outstanding in his field.

In the dark

New Zealand’s Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters got a bit hot under the collar when he shut down an yank COVID conspiracy theorists three days before the election.

“Where’s your evidence that there is a virus that causes the disease?” the man shouted, before the NZ First leader interrupted him.

“Sit down, sit down. We’ve got someone who obviously got an education in America,” Peters responded to big laughs.

“ 220,000 people have died in the United States. There are eight million cases to date … and here is someone who gets up and says, ‘the earth is flat’.

“Sorry sunshine, wrong place.”

NZ Opposition leader Judith Collins wasn’t as lucky. She told NewsTalk ZB that “people need to start taking some personal responsibility for their weight” and added that it “wasn’t catching”.

On another program, Collins told parents: “It doesn’t take actually much to get frozen vegetables out of the freezer and pull them out and do something with them. It’s not that hard.”

On this side of the ditch, we call that a B ridget McKenzie! after a snap of the former deputy Nationals leader puffing out her cheeks and rubbing her stomach next to a sign for an obesity summit.

Weighty loophole

Meanwhile in the UK … could a pasty keep pubs open?

Under Boris Johnson’s tighter restrictions, pubs can serve alcohol only if each customer consumes something “substantial”.

Spotted in London.
Spotted in London.

Such as a “table meal”, which the government’s guidelines describe as “a meal eaten by a person seated at a table, or at a counter or other structure which serves the purposes of a table”.

Housing Secretary Robert Jenrick explained to LBC radio it’s “the sort of meal that you would expect to have as a midday meal or an evening meal”.

Journo: “What’s a substantial meal?”

Jenrick: “It’s a main course rather than a packet of crisps or a plate of chips?”

Journo: “A Cornish pasty?”

Jenrick: “Yes, I think it could do. You can go to the restaurant and have a Cornish pasty for lunch … The test in law is that a substantial meal is the sort of meal that you would expect to have as a midday meal or an evening meal.”

Don’t worry, be hoppy

Of course, there’s an arcane British law for that!

The 1965 case of Timmis v Millman centred on two men who had been discovered in a hotel bar at 11.30pm consuming light ale and stout outside of permitted hours (but within the supper hour extension of the time).

Justices found the sandwiches the pair were eating “were so substantial, and assisted by the pickles and beetroot so as to justify that it was a table meal and not a mere snack from the bar”.

In the 1955 case of Solomon v Green, sandwiches and sausages on sticks were found to constitute a hearty meal.

Add your comment to this story

To join the conversation, please Don't have an account? Register

Join the conversation, you are commenting as Logout

More related stories

Original URL: https://www.theaustralian.com.au/commentary/strewth/kiss-cancel-culture-on-campaign-trail/news-story/6033390c49bbbe3d552cb6a51d0971dc