CLANCY OVERELL | Editor | CONTACT
It’s a wonderful time of the year for everyone, even the pundits on Sky News and the Herald Sun who are convinced that political correctness is stealing Christmas from us.
The annual ‘War on Christmas’ is once again dominating the headlines – and conveniently nabbing front pages from the national bushfire emergency currently ravaging three states.
However, one proud Christian who won’t let the PC-Police win is Prime Minister Morrison, more commonly known as Scotty From Marketing
As a landmass the size of the United Kingdom is destroyed by out of control bushfires that, according to a conglomerate of emergency and rescue response professionals, has been aided by the very real effects of climate change – Prime Minister Morrison has been accused of turning down countless meetings with fire chiefs in an effort to get through a federal election without mentioning the words ‘climate change’.
While October and November were dominated by Extinction Rallies and Climate School Strikes, Scotty From Marketing was forced to confront the uneasy national sentiment that indicated a lot of people were quite concerned that burning fossil fuels at an accelerating rate for 300 years might not be that good for our planet.
Morrison urged Australians to please stop blocking CBD intersections and taking their kids out of school with their needless anxiety.
But now, as 10% of our continent is faced with uncontainable wildfires, well over 1000 homes have been destroyed, with six confirmed deaths, two capital cities choking with smoke for nearly two months – and tens of thousands of rural kids missing out on a lot more than a day of learning.
Scotty from Marketing, has, however, refused to let the hysterical bushfire alarmism get in the way of the business class flights to Hawaii that he had booked for Jenny and the girls – before he spends Christmas bouncing between Pentecostal churches with a trail of flattering Murdoch journalists.
This begs the question, if a Prime Minister can’t take a holiday in another country with his family during a few measly little unprecedented and record-breaking bushfires. When can he?
We compiled a list of former Prime Ministers who decided against taking holidays during a national emergency, just to see if this is actually a standard we should keep our current leader to – or is it just the Canberra Bubble making noise again:
- Edmund Barton (1901–03)
- Alfred Deakin (1903–04; 1905–08; 1909–10)
- John Christian Watson (1904)
- George Houston Reid (1904–05)
- Andrew Fisher (1908–09; 1910–13; 1914–15)
- Joseph Cook (1913–14)
- William Morris Hughes (1915–16; 1916–23)
- Stanley Melbourne Bruce (1923–29)
- James Henry Scullin (1929–32)
- Joseph Aloysius Lyons (1932–39)
- Earle Page (1939)
- Robert Gordon Menzies (1939–40; 1940–41; 1949–66)
- Arthur William Fadden (1941)
- John Curtin (1941–45)
- Francis Michael Forde (1945)
- Joseph Benedict Chifley (1945–49)
- Harold Holt (1966–67)
- John McEwen (1967–68)
- John Grey Gorton (1968–71)
- William McMahon (1971–72)
- Gough Whitlam (1972–75)
- Malcolm Fraser (1975–83)
- Robert Hawke (1983–91)
- Paul Keating (1991–96)
- John Howard (1996–2007)
- Kevin Rudd (2007–10; 2013)
- Julia Gillard (2010–13)
- Tony Abbott (2013–15)
- Malcolm Turnbull (2015–18)
