Yahoo Movies Coffee brought to you by coal: a week in the life of Australia’s acting prime minister
It’s always an interesting ride when Michael McCormack serves as acting prime minister.
The last time the Nationals leader stepped into the role was January, when Scott Morrison took a quick holiday.
In those few days, McCormack made headlines for comparing the US Capitol insurrectionists to the Black Lives Matter protesters, and then further inflamed the situation by deploying a favourite line of the hard right: “all lives matter”.
During the same period in the acting PM chair, McCormack defended Craig Kelly’s Covid misinformation as a disagreement on “facts”, which according to McCormack, are open to debate.
So it was with bated breath that the country (and in all honesty, staff in the PMO and most of the government benches) waited to see what would unfold over the week with McCormack at the helm.
Given past performances, it could almost be considered a success. The deputy prime minister only accused one opponent of treason, limited his attacks on those who live in the “inner city” to two, and seemed to mention coffee drinkers just once.
For a man who once raged against those who hold concerns about climate change as “inner-city raving lunatics” as the nation choked on smoke from deadly bushfires, that’s almost a win.
Here a few of the most notable quotes from Michael McCormack this week.
Monday 14 June
[Coal] pays for a lot of hospitals. It pays for a lot of schools.
It pays for a lot of barista machines that produce the coffee inner-city types sit around and drink and talk about the death of coal.”
Except it wasn’t inner-city coffee drinking types discussing coal’s demise this time. It was the leaders of the G7 nations, which includes Joe Biden and Boris Johnson.
Tuesday 15 June
And I tell you what, I would much sooner live in Australia than live anywhere else, in this nation.”
We don’t think he was talking about the external territories. Michael McCormack’s Australia appears to be a very specific place within the nation, where coal is king, no one is ever troubled by coffee and there is no such thing as the “inner city”.
Wednesday 16 June
We don’t do things just to annoy the Greens, although I think the Greens annoy the hell out of everybody.
I’m yet to ever see them condemn the Extinction Rebellion protesters. I’m yet to ever see them exalt what our farmers do.
They want to take all the water away from our irrigation producers.
They want to upturn regional communities in a way that has never been there before. They want to destroy the social fabric of society. That’s why I sit with the Nationals. That’s why I’m in the Coalition.”
It’s usually capitalism which destroys the social fabric of society, but I guess if your social fabric is stitched together by fossil fuels and a stubborn resistance to change, maybe the Greens would want to destroy it?
Then, of course, we have Peta, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, coming out – and I didn’t hear the member for Melbourne [Adam Bandt] disendorsing them – saying that the mice, the poor little curious creatures, should be rehomed.
I actually agree with Peta.
They should be rehomed into their inner-city apartments so that they can nibble away at their food and their feet at night and scratch their children at night.
Wishing mice plagues upon the hapless children of people you don’t agree with seems a strange political move, but then again, he’s talking about children who live in the inner city, which is apparently the biggest enemy of them all.
Thursday 17 June
The member for Melbourne [Adam Bandt] should begin to talk things up in Australia, not run us down, not tell other countries and write to their ambassadors they should deny Australian trade, because that’s what he has done. Treasonous I would call that – absolute traitor!”
McCormack was made to immediately withdraw this comment, given that treason has a fairly particular definition in Australian law, which pretty much translates to declaring war on Australia, or taking up arms with a nation that has declared war against Australia, or participating in any way in causing the death of the queen, her heir, the governor general or the prime minister. Writing a few letters doesn’t appear to have made the list.
So a quiet week, all things considered.
