The Sketch: Scott Morrison on a roll over toilet paper panic buys

Scott Morrison during question time on Tuesday. Picture: AAP

Scott Morrison wants Quiet Australians to stop panic buying toilet paper!

The Prime Minister has been on the phone to Coles and Woolies and been guaranteed that supplies won’t be wrapped up.

“Now, a very good example is Kimberly-Clark, which produces toilet paper,” Morrison told a press conference on Tuesday. “They have now opened up their line of manufacturing in South Australia.”

Turns out Australia’s largest bog-roll maker has production lines running 24 hours a day to meet the demand.

“I welcome that. And that’s a direct response, having worked with retailers, about what they need. And I am sure that will come as a great relief to everybody.”

A great relief! Pun intended? Surely not.

“That’s the economy in motion!” the PM continued, on a roll.

And The Bubble isn’t exempt. Canberra Costco has completely sold out of TP. The shelves have also been stripped of sanitisers, disinfectants, oils, rice, flour and biscuits. Just like the toilets of Parliament House, the economy has been under a lot of pressure lately.

In the female bathroom outside the House of Representatives chamber, there’s a soap opera under way. One cheeky person has started discarding paper hand towels near the door. We suspect, so they don’t have to touch the handle on their way out.

An unofficial sign has appeared, sticky taped an inch above where the paper towel is daily dropped on the floor: “To whoever is dumping these here. CAN YOU PLEASE NOT! Please have some respect and dispose of them properly like the rest of us.” Talk about a rage against the latrine!

From one sheet to another — what about the nearly 30 colour-coded pork sports rorts spreadsheets? Morrison brushed off the question: “Well, I'm going to focus on coronavirus at the moment. If we've exhausted the interest on coronavirus, I’m happy to deal with other matters. But I’ve got to say, I think the coronavirus is an issue of much greater concern to Australians today than the politics of Canberra.”

“This absolutely stinks,” Anthony Albanese declared.

Also a tad on the nose — Attorney-General Christian Porter directly contradicted the directive from the NSW Liberal government that Quiet Australians should give up shaking hands to stop the spread of the virus.

State Health Minister Brad Hazzard suggested: “It is time Aussies actually gave each other a pat on the back for the time being. There are other things that could be done — I’m not going to say don’t kiss but you could be exercising a degree of care and caution with whom you choose to kiss and I would strongly suggest that is something which just common sense should prevail.”

Porter wasn’t phased by Hazzard’s hygiene tips. He told RN Breakfast: “Well I shook David Crowe’s hand when I was in the ­elevator … forgot first of all that he was a journalist …. but look, I think people will just need to be ­mindful.”

But no comment on the World Health Organisation’s suggested safe alternatives — “elbow bumps” and “footshakes”.