South Australian Senator Alex Antic, who has previously warned about cancel culture banning Magnums.(Image: Facebook)

Along for the ride It’s become increasingly clear, particularly during the past few weeks, that the aim of Scott Morrison’s government is nothing more than getting through the day’s news cycle. How grateful Morrison must be that so much of the press are keen to help with that ambition.

Yesterday’s cabinet reshuffle may not produce any kind of cohesive thinking on issues that affect women, it may have promoted people utterly unsuited to their portfolios, and returned people to cabinet who were out for good reason, but it did provide a lot women with new titles. Guess which part The Australian and The Daily Telegraph found most significant.

Antic’s antics While the Morrison government was quaking itself into shards over the weekend, South Australian Senator Alex Antic was focusing on what really matters: imaginary moves from the woke left to cancel Magnum ice creams.

The above picture shows him looking lovingly at a Magnum which he plans to scarf down before “the radical left try to cancel it for glorifying gun violence. I’m going to keep ignoring them and so should you”. I think we can all agree it’s extremely brave of Antic to continue ignoring the imaginary group of scolds he just made up and decided to post about.

Separately, what the hell is it about conservatives and ice cream? On top of Antic’s antics we’ve had the completely confected outrage about a tiny petition to change the name of Golden Gaytimes, and going a little further back Jason Falinski got absolute flambéed for clumsily (in every way) wading into the Unilever boycott debate after the diary giant attempted to cut the pay of Streets workers.

The CEDA house rules Think tank Committee for Economic Development of Australia has some thoughts on the staggering amount of money being spent on land around the proposed western Sydney airport. And those thoughts are: it’s brilliant.

CEDA is hosting an event in Parramatta today, discussing “the development and success of the western Sydney aerotropolis”. We wonder if the discussion will look into the opaque company that dropped nearly half a billion on Badgerys Creek, or the government spending 10 times over the odds for a parcel of land that happened to be owned by a Liberal donor?

Full disclosure Former Young Liberal president and aspiring candidate for Tony Abbott’s old seat of Warringah Alex Dore has responded to recent talk of gender quotas with (sigh) the “Liberals for Merit” campaign, emailing party members to argue:

If the quota motions are successful, there will be no mainstream political party in Australia left to stand against the dehumanising instruments of collectivism. Who will remain to fight against identity politics when even the party of the individual has abandoned it?

So far, so Young Lib. But we couldn’t help but notice an omission in the copy. Dore is also the nephew of The Australian‘s editor-in-chief Chris Dore, something it seems like any coverage of him in the paper should probably mention?

Morrison must go further Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s decision to invent the position of prime minister for women is a good start, but it doesn’t go far enough. As a previous PM Kevin Rudd would say, it lacks programmatic specificity.

To help repair his damaged relationship with Australian women and demonstrate his newly acquired understanding of gendered politics, Morrison needs to get granular with these roles. Crikey humbly suggests the following positions be created as soon as possible:

  • Prime minister for remembering birthdays and sending cards
  • Prime minister for homework
  • Prime minister for knowing the piano teacher’s name
  • Prime minister for saying “yum” to burnt chops cooked by men
  • Prime minister for showing some interest in child’s school on days other than sport carnivals and parent-teacher nights
  • Prime minister for restacking the dishwasher without comment
  • Prime minister for properly acknowledging housework on the rare occasions it’s done by men
  • Prime minister for locating unsigned swimming carnival permission notes
  • Prime minister for pretending to enjoy Die Hard on Christmas Day.