This is what it has come to for “Psycho” Morrison. Liberal Party insider, Nikki Savva:
Kevin Hogan is very angry with Shane Stone. “Grossly insensitive” is how Hogan described last week’s intervention by the National Recovery and Resilience Agency Coordinator-General when he effectively blamed flood victims for their misfortune by telling Nine mastheads: “You’ve got people who want to live among the gum trees – what do you think is going to happen? Their house falls in the river, and they say it’s the government’s fault.”
Stone, appointed to the job by Scott Morrison to help people in the regions cope with floods and fires, apparently didn’t get his own memo, the infamous “mean and tricky” letter he sent to John Howard in 2001 warning the then prime minister to be more responsive to suffering Australians, saying voters thought his government was dysfunctional and out of touch.
Hogan, a National, is the federal member for Page, which includes the devastated city of Lismore. He says the locals are traumatised. The last thing they needed was Stone’s cold-hearted observations. “We are absolutely wiped out,” Hogan told me. “We know floods. Everyone knows what to do. Everyone had prepared.”
But no matter how much they prepared, they could not spare themselves or their community the devastation. He says residents had been advised on the Sunday flood water levels would reach 11.5 metres. They reached 14.5 metres. They woke in the early hours of the next morning to find water invading their homes. Hogan’s electorate office was subsumed and there was some damage to his property, but he dismisses what happened to him as “insignificant” compared to what so many others suffered.
Hogan says he contacted the Defence Minister Peter Dutton at 6 o’clock on the morning the water rose two metres higher than had been predicted – more than 10 days ago – asking for urgent help.
…Unlike Morrison, at least the NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet didn’t play silly buggers with the media when he visited the shattered communities. He resolutely bore the brunt of the anger of those directly affected in public, on the street, in front of cameras, then admitted the response should have been better.
Arguing it was for privacy reasons despite the presence of his official photographer, but obviously fearing a repeat of Cobargo where he tried to force angry bushfire victims to shake his hand, Morrison excluded media from his first two meetings in Lismore on Wednesday.
The “Psycho” snuck around the back to avoid protestors and only visited thoroughly vetted and doubtless rusted on LNP supporters.
Here’s why:
If it doesn’t make your skin crawl then book in with a psychiatrist.