Guest Post: Vikki Campion – Let our PM be human


Attacking ScoMo for visiting his kids sets a new low for Labor

Are we talking out of our backside when we talk about mental health or are we fair dinkum? When a father — in this case the Prime Minister of Australia — follows the state-prescribed health orders to return home to see his kids, Labor attacks because they argue other fathers cannot.

It’s a hollow argument designed to score points and division over an issue that is already at flashpoint for ordinary Australians.

Based on Labor’s logic, all politicians must do as those in the most impoverished situation because some others are going through it.

I hope deputy opposition leader Richard Marles, who inflamed the commentariat over the PM’s trip home, doesn’t like Comcars because many in Australia can’t afford a taxi.

And if the ALP was serious about being at one with the common man, let’s lose free phones, flights, laptops, iPads and staff while we are at it.

The Covid exemption rules politicians follow as they go between Canberra and their homes are no walk in the park.

Half of the Queensland cohort got stuck in the ACT for five weeks, others could not go anywhere but inside their hotel rooms or office and NT Senator Sam McMahon had to end that in quarantine camp.

And in a Parliament where 151 were paid, 111 were not present, and only 20 video-linked in.

There is someone always in worse circumstances so where does it end?

The government plane that flew LNP Queenslanders home also flew Labor MPs — because no other flights were available.

The response to Scott Morrison’s trip home is a disturbing sign of the times and stands in stark contrast to the more gracious tactics of PMs past.

There was no outcry when PM Billy Hughes spent three days rowing on the Thames before World War 1 ended. In July 1945, when British PM Winston Churchill went on holiday to France two months before World War II ended, the news reported that “in order that his rest may be as complete as possible, the Prime Minister’s whereabouts will not be made public”.

When PM Alfred Deakin, in 1907, was told to rest for nervous exhaustion, the opposition leader Mr J.C. Watson, said that in the event of Mr Deakin having to take a few weeks holiday, nothing like an “adverse move against the Ministry would be taken”. When PM Joseph Lyons had a trip to Tasmania in 1933, he returned “much stouter, and decidedly more cheerful,” the then Canberra bubble proclaimed. Now he would be body shamed. In the turmoil of depression, in 1930, PM James Scullin had a break, the bubble reported he “swam, sunbaked, and read for hours in a deck chair, and sometimes went for long walks at sunset”. When Nationals leader Doug Anthony was acting PM from Brunswick Heads barefoot at the beach with his family, it was endearing. And as deputy over 12 years, he acted as PM on more than 25 occasions, added up, maybe more than any “real” prime minister at the time, his staff claimed. Then there was “tourist” PM Gough Whitlam, who went on a five-and-a-half week trip as the country grappled with inflation and record unemployment. The 14-nation tour was his 12th trip overseas since he came to power 23 months before.

Then PM Malcolm Fraser was dubbed “first-class Fraser” because of his affinity for leather seats and a fleet of Cadillacs on call. What’s changed during that time? If anything, the mobile phone vibrating on the family dining table ensures that work is still there even if one is at home.

And the issue diagnosed as “nervous exhaustion” in 1907 by Deakin’s doctors has greater relevance now. As our country has grown and developed, empathy, logic and fairness have eroded.

The itchy disconnect here is that many MPs were in Canberra because Labor smashed the government when it delayed sittings earlier in the year due to state-imposed Covid restrictions and that the majority of both sides stayed home.

At one division, Marle’s Labor, which holds 69 seats, had just 13 members in the chamber. For the Fair Rights at Work Sex Discrimination amendments — the biggest issue of the year, of 151 members, 111 did not appear for the division. In the Senate, it was down to 12 to 12, with the majority of the minor parties staying home. Most who did go were paired, which reduces the autonomy of politicians to that of the party line.

I want a PM who has to deal with his wife handing him his kids. I want a ministry that has to deal with toddlers and children and pre-teens and elderly parents. I want politicians’ partners to say “over to you”. Maybe Mr Marles doesn’t remember his partner climbing the wall, saying: “Where are you?”

Just writing this, my kids have smashed six eggs over the carpet, one poured honey over his brother, and I’m not in a frame of mind to hear the ALP tell me I don’t need respite as well. It’s easier for politicians if they do stay in Canberra, like staying too late at the pub. But not for me or any other FIFO mum.


112 responses to “Guest Post: Vikki Campion – Let our PM be human”

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  1. Eyrie Avatar
    Eyrie

    We’ll let Scummo be human when he demonstrates he’s got a spine. Last I heard humans were vertebrates.

    I see some here are still unwilling to get into the gutter to fight the enemy where they are. A common failing. Time to read your Alinsky again:
    “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.” Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions.
    Vicki just proved she is on the side of the enemy which isn’t all that surprising.

  2. JC Avatar

    Eyrie says:
    September 11, 2021 at 7:09 pm

    Just totally burned your credibility on the internet, Vicki.

    Can we not have this stupid bitch’s musing on any of the Cats please?

    Oh look, the embittered little chihuahua is trying to organize the seating again without being asked. FMD.

  3. Annie Avatar
    Annie

    Sorry Vicki, you got it wrong here. I am disgusted that Scott M thinks he can do what we can’t. I really despise those who say “we are all in this together”. We most definitely are not. I haven’t been able to travel to see my 99 year old mother for 2 years now, my siblings, my overseas and interstate sons, grandsons and great grandson; the latter now 1 year old and we have yet to meet. I have 2 offspring with grandchildren within our state I can’t see. You worry about a few broken eggs and some dripped honey; well, get the violins out!

    10
  4. JC Avatar

    Seriously, Eyrie, you’re a nasty, fraudulent turd. Doing a science degree doesn’t make you an engineer and flogging farming equipment doesn’t make you an engineering consultant. What a fraud you are. Instead of demanding others getting the boot, you ought for being a fraud. No better than Adonis and the Rones. A troika of frauds.

  5. Perfidious Albino Avatar
    Perfidious Albino

    Sorry Vikki, you are way off the reservation on this one. Sure, Labor are all loathsome, opportunistic scum, we know that.

    But the PM being excused from the same restrictions he imposes and/or facilitates on the rest of us is OK, because ‘what about the mental health impact on HIS kids?’ FFS what about the rest of us?!

    The learning here for ScoMo should have been that these restrictions are corrosive to the mental health of everyone’s kids and been the catalyst for ending this farrago. But no, he thought it would be a better idea to seek special privileges for himself and his family.

    Appalling judgement and optics.

  6. Salvatore, Understaffed & Overworked Martyr to Border Closure Avatar
    Salvatore, Understaffed & Overworked Martyr to Border Closure

    This post exhibits a stupefyingly inaccurate reading of the room.

  7. Cardimona Avatar
    Cardimona

    I can always tell when Vikki is writing a column that I would roast; she doesn’t send me a sneak preview.

    After I’d sent the column to Dover, I discussed it with her.

    I said, in part, “ScoMo is a very big part of the problem.
    He’s the keystone of our nation’s troubles because he’s; a) funding them, and, b) enabling them by failing to defend the Constitution.
    He deserves no sympathy and the criticism he got was royally deserved.
    He’s a traitor and globalist xvnt of the first order.
    Covid Nuremberg now.”

    She replied that she’s an opinion columnist and is entitled to express unpopular opinions, and that she was trying to highlight how hollow the attacks on ScoMao were given the historical precedents and that Labor would be doing exactly the same if they were on the government benches.

    I told her, again, that this is a much bigger issue than what ScoMoron did on taxpayers’ money that ordinary people are not allowed to do.
    It’s about the now obvious fact that we are not in a pandemic – so none of the draconianism is even remotely justified.

    At Friday’s protest at the mass vax hub in Cairns it tore my heart out watching the sheeple wander in to take a shot with an incredibly bad safety record on the basis of blind trust in a political class that has sold them out by, at best, failing to do even the bare minimum due diligence.

    We’re not in Kansas any more, Dorothy.
    The political paradigm that we knew has gone.
    The UNiparty facilitated the move away from Westminster standards.
    No rational Australian owes any loyalty to the established parties.
    IMHO, the best thing BJ could do is ignore the old-paradigm constraints on his capacity to speak his mind.
    Even if the present political players were offered the choice of silver or lead by the globalists, the only patriotic action is to say “Fvck you, globalist swine” and send some lead the other way.

    As the comments have unfolded I have recommended to her that she has BJ read them.
    I doubt he will as I’m told he usually has the phone glued to his ear.

  8. Arky Avatar
    Arky

    Cardimonasays:
    September 12, 2021 at 5:32 pm

    ..
    was this posted in the Australian originally?
    How did the comments pan out under the original post Cardi?

  9. Cardimona Avatar
    Cardimona

    At the Daily Telegraph, Arky.
    258 comments when I looked just now – very similar tone to here.
    ScumMo’s popularity is in the toilet.
    Here (probably paywalled) – https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/opinion/vikki-campion-labors-unfair-attack-on-pm-for-seeing-his-kids/news-story/5e2b681ba88aaa007f93be196a6bca3f

  10. Cardimona Avatar
    Cardimona

    ScoMo should’ve done the trip in an electric car.
    Then he would be above criticism because he was saving the environment.

  11. Muddy Avatar
    Muddy

    Cardimona says:
    September 12, 2021 at 5:32 pm

    …I’m told he usually has the phone glued to his ear.

    There’s a Zen poem about this:

    Homo electus,
    cellphone glued to an ear.
    Eyes, nose, mouth, tongue
    evolve to the same side of the head.
    Leaning heavily on one direction,
    Homo electus topples onto
    a passing peasant; All is well.
    The peasant sleeps, electus reaps
    compensation. Life continues
    as a children’s book.

  12. Muddy Avatar
    Muddy

    Leaning heavily IN, not ON…

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