The Sketch: Scotty Cam, please step up

“Whadda you mean they’re closing the pub? It’s the only place left you can nick toilet paper from!”

It was 19 hours after Scott Morrison had announced a real-life Pub With No Beer (And No Customers) and the news had reached the tradies two doors down.

The rest of their exasperated response about no 3pm knock-off brews is rather unprintable. As was mine when I discovered on day one of working from home that my neighbours were using these unprecedented times to renovate.

Eventually the covidiots (a new term to describe those who refuse to stay at home and continue to panic-buy) declared they would just pick up a few takeaways and “just hang”.

If only there was a Gold Logie-winning host of a popular reality show on the taxpayer-funded payroll that could step in and make some public service ­announcements that cut through.

Oh, wait … yes there is! Release Scott Cam! The celebrity tradie turned government influencer is still being paid his whopping $345,000 salary while the actual apprentices are being laid off.

Perhaps Cam could pivot to DIY hand sanitiser videos? Social distancing with a spirit level or two? How to make a face mask out of your King Gees?

“This is very much a Team Australia moment,” Josh Frydenberg declared in question time. But one second before the Prime Minister advised all Quiet Australians “don’t touch your face”, there was the Treasurer touching his live on national TV.

Luckily, some rare green hand sanitiser had been placed around the chamber and the Speaker ­assured everyone “the handles will also be regularly cleaned”.

Pollies were social distancing at a minimum of 1.5m and the pesky press gallery had been banned from the room.

(“Our dream parliament,” one cheeky pollie claimed.)

“It’s funny how Scott Morrison is blaming young people for gathering in a way that goes against the social distancing guidelines,” one Liberal texted from inside The Canberra Bubble. “Given so many of his government’s staffers were clogging up every Manuka cafe bar this weekend.”

Millennial Labor MP Tim Watts mused: “I haven’t seen any public information campaign on social distancing on Instagram or Tiktok … is the sole communication channel with young Australians lectures from politicians on mediums and platforms they don’t use?” Hey, Morrison knows plenty about da yoof! They congregate at “the trampoline venue” he explained at his late-night Sunday press conference. But for ­social distancing reasons you’d hope they’ve bounced.

Perhaps the Victorian government should just buy Netflix ads with this ominous quote by Premier Daniel Andrews: “We had a case last week where a group of people, a dozen or so, went to a dinner party. As best we can tell, the dinner party started with one person who had the coronavirus. By the end of the dinner party, ­almost everybody at the dinner party had the coronavirus.”