If today’s front pages are anything to go by, it looks like News Corp has turned on Prime Minister Scott Morrison, with its two biggest Aussie papers calling him ‘Sco-D’oh’ and ‘Sco-woe’. Not sure how Jenny and The Girls are going to help you dig yourself out of this one, mate.
Wednesday’s front pages of The Daily Telegraph and the Herald Sun share similar sentiments on the Prime Minister, pointing out that he’d ‘weaponised’ the current issue around women’s safety in Australia to deflect questions on the safety of women working at Parliament House specifically.
You hate to see it. pic.twitter.com/pfQOljAgTa
— Neil McMahon (@NeilMcMahon) March 23, 2021
This sudden flip on the PM comes after his press conference on Tuesday where Sky News reporter Andrew Clennell asked if he’d lost control of his ministerial staff and whether that would put his own job in jeopardy. In response, Morrison claimed that Sky (and the wider News Corp HR department) was dealing with its own harassment complaint.
In the hours after Morrison claimed this as a rebuttal to the very fair question put forward by the press gallery journalist, News Corp Executive Chair Michael Miller issued a statement saying this claim was “simply untrue and undermines the principle that people must be able to raise issues safely and in confidence”.
In a late-night Facebook post – literally posted at 11pm last night, which is never a good sign coming from someone in charge – Scott Morrison apologised for weaponising a story of workplace sexual harassment which, as it turned out, never happened in the first place.
God, what a mess coming from the head of the table, here.
Now that Morrison has bitten the hand that has fed him for years, media commentators like Mike Carlton are suspicious that this might be the beginning of a move to challenge the federal leadership, and whether News Corp will shift its supportive focus to one of Morrison’s right-hand men like Josh Frydenberg or Peter Dutton.
He’d hate to see it. I’d put money on NewsCorpse slowly turning on Smirko and backing a leadership challenge from Fraudenberg.
— Mike Carlton (@MikeCarlton01) March 23, 2021
Please God, no.
