Call me ScoMo, says our new Prime Minister, to nobody in particular, when no-one had been wondering what they should call him, and even fewer had been searching for an endearing nickname such as ScoMo.
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How do we trust someone who tells you the nickname they really really want?
It's trying too hard, you know, like using italics as if the words aren't enough.
And mate, we don’t do that. In Australia, the Prime Minister gets booed at the grand final. PMs should feel lucky if they actually get referred to by a name, rather than something less savoury. How about Smott?
Fair dinkum. Now there’s a term Smott has been wearing out lately. Flying around Queensland in pursuit of a bus with his face on it, sculling beers with cricket fans (for no reason, and only he was sculling), munching into a pie with gusto, for the cameras.
I heard Smott wanted to call it a listening tour and paint a pair of giant ears on the bus. But focus groups thought it was Tony Abbott.
I’m so Aussie, Smott says, 1960s Sutherland Shire style, love the Sharks, Member for Cook, that’s Captain James Cook the Aussie hero, love Jen’s pavlova, fair dinkum, thumbs up, go Sharks, eat pies, please like me more than the stuck-up banker before me, he ate his pie with cutlery.
Got that? My kids recognise him as ScoMo, so that’s a start. And that’s more of an impression than he made on his Port Hacking neighbour, who said it “took us years before we worked out he was Scott Morrison, the politician”.
And this has been issue for the man described by CNN as a “notoriously" ambitious “pentecostal political chameleon” who “has undergone a transformation from a right-wing evangelical immigration minister to a wonky, staid treasury minister attempting to show his more human side”.
But will it fly? While it’s possible Smott could be this simple, Australia no longer is.
The suburban-daggy-dad-white-bread-pies-church-and-sports-team-persona is hardly forward-looking. But how much will that matter to people? After all, Trump got elected, and it’s likely Mark Latham will too.
This week Smott is at his first overseas gig, annoying ASEAN summit organisers who had to get yet another set of measurements for the Australian leader’s shirt.
He bends down to speak sotto voce to a seated Burmese leader Aung San Suu Kyi. We can only guess what he said.
“Fair dinkum Aung, call me ScoMo. Wanna take some refugees?”
So sorry, mate, I won’t call you ScoMo, because fair dinkum, you have to earn a nickname, and bloody oath, no-one round here says fair dinkum anyway.