Ousting ScoMo wasn’t Fran Bailey’s only good idea

The criticism of Fran Bailey, the former Tourism minister who oversaw Scott Morrison’s time at (and exit from) Tourism Australia back in 2006 (and who spoke out about why over the weekend), seems a bit weird. For one thing, Bailey is far from the first former colleague of Morrison to feel liberated by the passage of time (and lack of professional proximity) to speak their mind on what he’s really like. And I mean… she fired the guy. How much clearer could she have been?

Here in the bunker, we’d rather focus on Bailey’s history of thinking outside the box during her time as Tourism minister.

First, she sent that bloke who played the amusing toilet man in Kenny to Canada for “G’Day Toronto”, a festival advertising Australia in early 2007: “A highlight of G’Day Toronto will be the Canadian premiere of Kenny,” the press release informed us, before adding: “Kenny has also been filmed setting up the toilets for G’Day Toronto.” Very cool!

Then she supported the idea of draping a big shade cloth over the Great Barrier Reef — a suggestion, along with cool water sprays, from a time when our desperation to halt coral bleaching produced a lot of ideas that could be mistaken for plans for a nice beer garden. We also enjoy the detail of then opposition environment minister Anthony Albanese criticising the Coalition’s “absurd” approach to climate change, something that hits a little differently now as the government he leads has recently backed several new fossil fuel projects.

And finally, Bailey wanted to turn showrunner — pitching a soap opera to replenish the flagging number of Japanese tourists to Australia: “What I’d like to do is to make a Japanese soapie, starring Japanese actors but set in Australia and travelling around and having them experience a lot of our iconic tourist attractions,” she said. Though, disappointingly, that was as much input as she was willing to have: “I have come up with the idea … I am not going to write the script.”

Tourism Australia went so far as to seek expressions of interest, over the protestations of experts who said this had the potential to be ham-fisted and offensive to its intended audience. As far as we can see, it never went ahead. With Australia’s soap opera export industry in decline, and shows like Old Enough! making everyone want to visit Japan and its array of winningly responsible toddlers, we’re sorely in need of this kind of vision again.