Some weeks back when India wasn’t in the public eye a famous comic made fun of Scott Morrison’s wife on account of a rather ordinary photo. The prime minister had earlier been brought to tears on camera after allegations of rape arose in Canberra that were connected to his political party, the Liberals (the main conservative party in Australia). But Magda Szubanski’s attack – harnessing the power of a favoured woke celebrity (the Canadian author Margaret Atwood) – was below the belt.
Now, the PM has trolled the left by threatening Australians returning from India with jail time. So far, no such matter has got to court so it’s still arguable if the policy would be able to operate, but at least people have stopped talking about women. In fact, that’s not right. For today the Liberals took a leaf out of my playbook and launched a childcare offer for young mothers that will go some way toward relieving women of a burden they carry due to the biological imperative as well as custom.
Trolling the public while, at the same time, giving them something they should want is clever manoeuvring but it’s arguable that the confluence in time was intentional. More likely the childcare thing has been in the pipeline for weeks and had just found a convenient slot – just before ‘Insiders’ on Sunday at 9am – in which to appear.
I expect more such initiatives as the childcare offer in coming months, as Morrison tries to claw back some of the support his ham-fisted approach to the women’s march produced. Not giving women what they wanted when they wanted it was a mistake, so now he’s likely to keep giving them things they aren’t asking for but should be. We’ll see what else comes up.
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