Kevin Rudd
Kevin Rudd (Image: AAP/Glenn Hunt)

Keep the Rudd flag flying Achieving a brutal victory against a sitting Liberal prime minister like it’s 2007 or something, Kevin Rudd was reported yesterday to have been the major impetus behind the delivery of millions of Pfizer vaccine doses last week — not our absentee prime minister. This follows botched negotiations early in the year, with Australia apparently having displayed a “rude, dismissive and penny-pinching” approach to the process.

Of course, there is something vaguely mafia-donnish about Pfizer’s conduct here, offering fewer vaccines because Australia wasn’t sufficiently obsequious (having to deal with junior bureaucrats apparently sparked a lot of anger). Still, it does seem strange that Scott Morrison apparently did not directly speak to Pfizer chairman Albert Bourla. And this is particularly galling given that we have a few test cases of what does spark Morrison into action.

When former finance minister Mathias Cormann was campaigning (successfully, in the end) for the position of OECD secretary-general, the government not only gave him a private jet and a website but, according to reporting from Bevan Shields, Morrison made 55 phone calls to 30 world leaders to help secure the vote numbers for Cormann. Going back a little further, early on in his leadership Morrison intervened to make sure Craig Kelly wasn’t ousted from preselection in his seat, a debt which Kelly has of course loyally repaid since.

Questionable communications This weekend saw a continuation of the quite remarkably rubbish messaging aimed at young people during the COVID era. Following New South Wales Chief Health Officer Dr Kerry Chant’s observation that young people might get a “wake-up call” from the news that a 30-year-old was in ICU with COVID-19, we get the confronting nature of the new government ad: a young woman, her eyes contorted in fear, taking heaving, desperate breaths in a hospital bed. The tone is justified — as long as you ignore a lot of things, primarily the fact that someone her age ought not be cajoled for not getting a vaccine that she is almost certainly not eligible to receive. In fact, it’s fairly well established that by and large the young — who have had their employment, education and mental health disproportionately affected by the ongoing lockdowns, which may have been ameliorated with a competent vaccine rollout — have been extremely keen to get vaccinated, regardless of the (small) risk AstraZeneca presents to them.

Indeed, as Crikey reported last week, many under-40s are resorting to fairly risky acts to get the vaccine, not to avoid it.

A Vince among men Given the state of the rollout, we’re not going to knock anyone getting the jab as soon as they can, even if they use it as a grounds for a (literal) flex. We guess this as good a way as any to find out Member for Stirling Vince Connelly is, apparently, utterly shredded:

Still in WA, Premier Mark McGowan continues to prove there is basically nothing he can do to dent his superhuman popularity. As an example, see this video, released last night to coincide with the easing of restrictions, which depicts him removing his mask and smiling eerily at the camera while Richard Strauss’s Thus Spake Zarathustra plays.

Surely this can have no other function but to prove to his rivals that the people of WA apparently don’t find anything he does off-putting.

Corporate compassion Another for the pile — fresh from endorsing Pride, energy giant AGL really strained our irony muscles by jumping aboard NAIDOC week, projecting Indigenous art work onto its cooling towers.

You’ll forgive us if we slightly question the commitment to “Heal Country” from a company that has had to pay over a million dollars in fines from the Environmental Protection Agency.