Emmanuel Macron at the opening ceremony of COP26 (Image: Yves Herman/PA Wire)

Scott Morrison’s lies and falsehoods part 400 It’s an inevitable offshoot of Morrison’s modus operandi — the creation of a new lie while attempting to deflect from another. You’ll have seen plastered across the front pages of every major paper this morning that the prime minister, in his typical suburban-inflected tough talk, says he won’t “cop sledging” of the Australian people, after French President Emmanuel Macron called him a liar:

I think the statements that were made questioning Australia’s integrity, and the slurs that had been placed on Australia — not me, I’ve got broad shoulders, I can deal with that — but those slurs, I’m not going to cop sledging of Australia. I’m not going to cop that on behalf of other Australians.

As grateful as we all are for the sturdiness of Morrison’s shoulders, unless he really didn’t read what Macron said, or perhaps he’s going all “l’état, c’est moi” about things, this is a blatant falsehood. When he was bailed up by Australian media, Macron went out of his way to praise the people of Australia:

I have a lot of respect for your country. I have a lot of respect and a lot of friendship for your people. I just say when we have respect, you have to be true and you have to behave in line, and consistently, with this value.

I won’t COP26 that But of course, all this couldn’t have worked out better for Morrison and co. The papers have been clogged for several days with every personal slight and petty recrimination spilling out from the AUKUS drama. The leaked texts, Biden throwing Morrison “under the bus” and getting public speculation about his mental state in return, the apocryphal swipe from Morrison that the journalists who had the temerity to question him had taken selfies with Macron — it’s all absolute catnip for the press gallery.

And if we’re reading about that, we’re not reading about the utter joke of a plan Australia is taking to COP26, or even what the event is for. The pleas from our neighbours, the mockery from the major powers, the fast-approaching doom — all of that is shunted back in the paper. Result.

Nightmare fuel The past two years have given us plenty of post-apocalyptic imagery of empty echoing streets and animals taking over towns, and we’re getting a second round as Australia starts to leave its house. Cormac Farrell from the federal Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment returned to his office to find it had all gone a bit Little Shop of Horrors, with a Devil’s Vine that, absent human intervention for months, had curled its way into the department’s computers.

This joins the battles Qantas faced earlier this year as an example of real life imitating dismal sci-fi film plots. The airline sent workers to retrieve the planes in deep storage in Mojave desert, only to find them packed with goddamn snakes.

Culture war exports Hulking credulity machine Joe Rogan was paid a reported US$100 million by Spotify for his podcast last year. What is it getting for its money? Well, last week, Rogan was among the many US figures to return the favour of all the culture war pilfering Australia has done from their home country over the years by leaping on the “Save Australia” bandwagon.

His latest act of brilliance is to share an Australian ad that he described as “the absolute dumbest propaganda”. In an illustration of why certain people should be careful with the phrase “absolute dumbest”, Rogan had in fact shared a segment from The Gruen Transfer, a fake ad mocking vaccine hesitancy by looking at the absurdity of someone in anaphylactic shock needing to know what Rogan thinks of Epipens before using one.