On Monday, the New York Times‘ Australian bureau ran a particularly arms-length profile of newly installed Prime Minister Scott Morrison, a man who they assert is one of the only world leaders truly moronic enough to give President Donald Trump a kiss on the ring, thereby relegating Australia’s latest round of Leadership Roulette to the equivalent of getting The Dud.
The World @ Us, more or less.
But one of the more curiously skimmed-over details revealed that Morrison, the former Immigration Minister, has a customised trinket in his office: A small model of a refugee boat, emblazoned with the auto-fellating phrase “I Stopped These.”
His office features a model migrant boat bearing the proud declaration “I Stopped These,” and a cabinet adorned with a Jesus shrine and a biblical proverb to “Trust in the Lord.” Morrison, who did not condemn Trump’s infamous travel ban, is never able to convincingly explain how he reconciles his Christian values and the role he plays in dooming children to offshore detention centres.
Impossible, you might think. Cannot be. No man is that hubristically miserable.
Turns out: It’s real. It exists. And thanks to AAP photographer Lukas Coch, we have proof.
The bonechilling callousness of it all aside – reducing the lives of thousands upon thousands of desperate asylum seekers to a mere desktop trinket is some cartoon-level super-villainy – that we now have a Prime Minister willing to celebrate a career win in Arial Bold says it all.
Couldn’t even be bothered with Helvetica, or a nice rounded Futura.
Arial.
Bold.
That’s it.
Christ.
