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It’s been a heavy week in both Australian and global news. At least 21 people have died in the east coast floods, after one of the worst natural disasters in Australia’s history.

Many have lost everything, with devastating images of belongings piled up on the street; almost 5000 homes have now been deemed uninhabitable, worsening a pre-existing housing crisis, and prompting demands for an insurance overhaul. It’s obvious this won’t be the last such disaster, with the latest climate studies showing they will only become more frequent – not that we didn’t already know that.

Meanwhile, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine grows darker, with the bombing of a maternity hospital*, as the threat of nuclear war lingers in the air. The cost of living and rising petrol prices are scaring many, no matter how positively the energy minister chirps about his gas-led recovery. Tributes are today also rolling in for Labor senator Kimberley Kitching, whose untimely death is said to have been brought on by the relentless nature of politics; it was hard not to tear up listening to former party leader Bill Shorten as he paid tribute to his friend on RN Breakfast.

So, what, pray tell, has our prime minister done since leaving COVID-isolation, other than note that Kitching was a “practising Catholic”? He has delayed, downplayed, blame-shifted, lied, hid, gaslit, pork-barrelled,backtracked, mansplained, war-mongered, announced, attacked, sought to wedge and politicised whatever he could get his hands on. Oh, and then he tried out using a giant mop on the floor of a flood-zone basketball court that was reportedly already clean.

Scott Morrison this week had a chance at a do-over after his tactless response to the Black Summer bushfires, which remains the low point of his prime ministership. And yet he has bungled it again. It was unfortunate for him that he spent the critical days of the disaster in isolation.

But it was even more unfortunate for everyone else, with his desperate desire to redeem himself meaning people had to wait until he was out of isolation to announce federal government support that he could have announced from home (or, you know, let someone else do it). It was hard to keep track of the many outrageous things he said when he did finally step forward on Wednesday, though Guardian Australia’s Katharine Murphy did an excellent job, summing up all the ways in which he brought his “signature crisis characteristics” (passivity and blame shifting) to the presser.

But perhaps the worst was when he openly gaslit those who had been forced to fund and perform their own rescues by telling them “a sense of abandonment” was a common feeling after a disaster.

There has still been no real explanation offered for the delay in calling a national emergency, something which is only officially happening today, as Morrison visits the governor-general to call one. Deputy PM Barnaby Joyce’s rambling explanation on 7.30 Wednesday night essentially came down to “bureaucratic process” (even though the Coalition-legislated power was supposedly about cutting red tape) and “hindsight”, with vague confirmation that the declaration was held off so the PM could be there.

Defence Minister Peter Dutton, who has attempted to turn any criticism of the government into an unpatriotic attack on the troops, also referenced hindsight when it came to the national emergency this morning, while maintaining that troops couldn’t have been deployed any quicker. Morrison has continued to blamed the states for not asking for a national emergency declaration, even though he didn’t need them to.

Much has been said this week about the Morrison’s use of photo ops, from the manicured images of the ADF that showed up on his social media, to the fact that he couldn’t actually get any photos of himself on the ground at the site of the floods – not without closing off a public street for a walkthrough, it seems. But yesterday’s “photo mop” may just be the thing that tips people “over the EDGE” (as cartoonist First Dog on the Moon put it) in this dark, dark week.

The PM’s constant blame-shifting and shameless self-promotion are infuriating at the best of times. But they are especially depressing at a time like this, when the nation is crying out for leadership. People want accountability and support; instead they have been offered deflections and farcical, far-away defence announcements. Morrison has once again proven himself unfit for the moment – or any moment, it seems. What Australia needed this week – and all weeks, but especially this week – was a competent prime minister.

What they got was a poser with a mop.

Read more:

https://www.themonthly.com.au/the-politics/rachel-withers/2022/11/2022/1646968594/i-mopped-these

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