(Image: Scott Morrison/Facebook)

Morrison under lockdown Some weeks the fourth estate really makes you proud. Upon returning from his recent visit to Japan, Prime Minister Scott Morrison was whisked away to a mandatory two-week lockdown. What unbelievable good fortune that he had his official photographer Adam Taylor with him.

This gave The Daily Telegraph some exclusive content and gave us all such priceless images as Morrison on a bike, Morrison waiting to receive a cotton swab up his nose, and Morrison wearing a suit and shorts — the classic Zoom meeting smart casual.

It appears that Morrison’s decision to take a photographer into lockdown has paid off, as senior high-profile journalists have credulously retweeted them (Prime ministers! They really are just like us!).

We asked the PMO if the taxpayer-funded snapper was the only staffer Morrison found space for, but they didn’t get back to us before deadline.

Seizing the memes of production Fairly or unfairly, Anthony Albanese’s leadership of the Labor Party is likely to be under pressure for the foreseeable future. We’ve had plenty of leadership speculation, the resignation of Joel Fitzgibbon from the frontbench, gratuitous public attacks on his staffers and… is it just us or has Tanya Plibersek’s name been showing up in the news quite a bit recently?

Anyway, Albo has it all well in hand. After all, could a doomed party leader create THESE:

If there’s one message we can take away from these awful, just awful aesthetics, it’s that political graphic design should be made by graphic designers.

On your Marks Ah, the cartoonish popularity of WA Premier Mark McGowan. With the resignation of Liberal Party leader Liza Harvey, he has seen off two Liberal Party leaders in a single term and all the polls have the ALP on course for a landslide at March’s state election.

So it shouldn’t be a surprise, as the campaign eases into gear, that ALP candidates like Stuart Aubrey in Scarborough are no longer representing Labor, they’re representing McGowan:

Palmer your hand The problem with attempting to prosecute a shameless billionaire is the fact that… well, they’re a shameless billionaire. They have access to a huge platform and have no compunction about using it.

And so Clive Palmer has dedicated double-page ads in the Nine papers calling for a royal commission into the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC).

According to the ad, ASIC is refusing a freedom of information request relating to chairman James Shipton, who stood aside last month following a treasury investigation into $118,000 paid to accounting firm KPMG for tax advice he had received.

We’re curious as to whether the slightly fraught process of slating the corporate regulator in this way was worth the money. Did other publications have the option but decide against it?