Thread by @iMusing

newspoll presser starting. It is a vaccine comms day. Credibility back up choice is a TGA Professor.

big numbers big numbers, a stump speech staple. The big numbers are his plan. We have more of this and more of that. Repetition rhetoric technique.

he has a plan a plan a plan to get Australians to the end if the grnk. We have vacshinashons, as he said in queshtime today.

lmao Hunt refers to the TGA cred Prof as John. Another one. Almost as tho there are more Johns than women in the Morrison government vackshinashon supporting cast.

big numbers big numbers. Hunt has lots of strayans loved ones and millions too. He hands off to the Prof, who tells us the medical name for Moderna. Thanks, John.

Skerritt reports on efficaciousness of Moderna. He confirms his advisory committee will be looking at making covid treatment drugs available - as he was asked to address, he says.

he “has been asked to touch on” rapid antigen tests, so he does. Is Skerritt deliberately signalling that he has been dragooned here? He does not look or sound like a man with a gun to his head, but said twice that he is addressing topics he “has been asked to address”.

Morrison is doing some weird reverential routine. Thank you Professor Skerrit. We will not answer non-Covid related questions - like endemic corruption - in the presence of Professor Skerrit.

pretty sure Professor Skerrit is alert to what Morrison is using him for here.

we are moving, to the next level, working consistely to that, and that’s what General Frewen, and he will say this.

apparently Hunt, did some work, in his workplace, by talking to Lieutenant General Frewen.

unlike Hunt yesterday, Morrison has absolutely no qualms about speaking for Berejiklian, which he refers to as the NSW “suppression phase”.

for the record, CHO Chant refers to zero community transmission, not “suppression phase”.

Morrison pretends that Skerritt dwelt on overseas deaths. He didn’t. The Prof referred to experience of Moderna with children.

just as Morrison is hitting full flight with his trifecta slogan, a journo interrupts and asks about compulsory workplace vaccination, including for the APS. He says vaccination is voluntary and free.

workplace mandating is a matter for the employer, says Morrison.
Murphy, asks if the government will indemnify employers.
“There is a presumption in the question, Kath. The government is not seeking to make the vaccine mandatory.”

Murphy tries valiantly to get an answer on indemnity. Morrison continues to pretend that indemnity equals mandating and, like John Howard on trust, blows his vax rate trumpet. He is shadow boxing Labor, obviously, being incapable of not politicking, and hands off to Hunt.

poor old Hunt is left to accept that the mandatory vax for aged care workers deadline is looming next month in the shadow of the Morrison mug.

we are entering the cadenza finale here.

the glissandos. The crescendos. The anticlimax cabinet meeting he must chair. No final thank you courtesy to the Prof, his usefulness was quickly exhausted. And off they fuck.

Karvelas recaps the stump speech, amplifying Morrison’s words verbatim and claims, incredibly, that this routine Morrison delivery - I personally have seen it about once every 3-5 days for weeks - was “the most direct address to Australians” she has seen.