While speaking to Jon Faine on 774 ABC Melbourne this morning Prime Minister Tony Abbott took a call from Gloria of Warburton, a 67-year-old grandmother with “three chronic, incurable medical conditions, two life-threatening”.
Prefacing her question for the Prime Minister with the information that she has to work as a phone sex operator in order to cover the increasing cost of living turned out to be too much for Abbott to gracefully handle; true to form, he couldn’t help but wink at Faine during Gloria’s exposition before barely proceeding to suppress the Seven Stages of Hilarious Information Processing in the moments after.
They’re all there: first, the involuntary flicker of the eye signalling that new information has been received; the wink, because teehee, isn’t phone sex a hoot?; then the irrepressible tautening of the lips; the guilty, fully-fledged smile; the sucking-in of the cheeks that occurs when one knows one shouldn’t be smiling so smarmily while a terminally-ill senior citizen describes how she has to work an adult phone sex line in order to make ends meet; crescendoing with the deer-in-headlights glance toward the camera when one realises that one is, in fact, never not in the spotlight, shit; and finally, the concerned downward glance of a man who really, truly cares.
According to the ABC, a spokesman for the Prime Minister has pre-emptively attributed his wink to Faine as an act to “reassure” the broadcaster that he was happy to continue with the call. How then do you explain all of the smug? Is that too a signal?
Australia’s Minister for Women and a father of three, ladies and gentlemen.
