(Image: Private Media)

Scott Morrison has started 2022 in the same way he finished 2021 — lying routinely.

The Master of Mendacity, the Prime Minister of Prevarication, he has kicked off an election year with plenty of falsehoods and lies over the various crises that have beset him over summer.

The first one carried over from the end of December into the new year. Asked about the availability of rapid antigen tests just before Christmas, Morrison offered a personal example:

I was in this situation last week, I had been at an event where I was informed that I had met someone who had COVID. Now I wasn’t defined as a close contact. I was a casual contact. And until I had further information, I went, I got a COVID test from the local pharmacy. At Terrigal. Picked one up.

But he didn’t pick one up. The cheery image of a PM not afraid to do his own shopping was false: his office later confirmed to news.com.au that Morrison sent a staffer in from his vehicle to buy the test. That was after Morrison admitted that he and his ministers got tests from the government’s own stockpile, or his wife went out to buy them at local chemists.

So he sent a staffer in, rather than go himself. It’s not exactly a Profumo-level lie, is it? Except it fits Morrison’s casual lying MO perfectly: a little deception to make himself look better, in service of a broader lie about how the government hadn’t failed on the availability of RATs.

Morrison doesn’t reserve his lies and falsehoods for big matters only.