(Images: News Corp)

That was then, this is now As we explore elsewhere in today’s Crikey, part of the the problem with Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s approach to politics — not as a joined-up idea of how the country ought to work, more as a series of discrete public relations issues to be managed — is that inevitably the management of one will eventually conflict with the management of others.

March 1, 2021: (asked when he knew about the allegations regarding Attorney-General Christian Porter): “I tend to not pay attention to rumours.”

March 23, 2021: (asked during a 10am press conference whether he’d lost control of his workplace): “Right now, you’d [News Corp Journalist Andrew Clennell] be aware that in your own organisation that there is a person who has had a complaint made against them for harassment of a woman in a women’s toilet. And that matter is being pursued by your own HR department … So let’s not, all of us who sit in glass houses here, start getting into that.”

In question time, 2pm: (asked whether publicly sharing a confidential complaint is the kind of thing that dissuades victims from coming forward): “That is not what I was doing today. I was simply making the broader point about the matters that we are dealing with in this place. The way I referred to these matters today was in an anonymised way. The problems that we are experiencing in this country are not confined simply to the offices of members or senators and ministers in this place.”

On Facebook, 11pm: “In the course of today’s media conference when responding to further questions I deeply regret my insensitive response to a question from a News Ltd journalist by making an anonymous reference to an incident at News Ltd that has been rejected by the company. I accept their account. I was wrong to raise it. The emotion of the moment is no excuse. I especially wish to apologise to the individual at the centre of the incident and others directly impacted. I had no right to raise this issue and especially without their permission.”

World is fukt Some typos are so far from whatever word they were originally intended to be that they transcend mere error and create a category of word — like the following in yesterday’s online Herald Sun:

In the rush to catalogue Morrison’s extraordinary press conference, the headline described him blasting “repoliament sex acts”. It may be a for-the-ages typo, but we here in the bunker would prefer to think of it as a deliberate portmanteau encapsulating “repulsive”, “politics” and “parliament”.

The empire strikes back Incidentally, after Morrison needlessly and gratuitously did the one thing no conservative prime minister should do — pick a fight with News Corp — papers around the country gave a mixed response.

The Hun and The Daily Telegraph went hard on him, taking advantage of his tendency to look comically befuddled in pictures and making puns on his self-appointed nickname, and while the The Advertiser was slightly more understanding it still contended that so far his talk had been cheap.

The Australian, ever faithful, ran on Morrison’s preferred line, and mentioned the apology in a subheading:

Oh right, cool Say want you want about Facebook. Sure, it’s warped our democracy, possibly beyond repair. Sure, it’s monetised our personal information and contributed to a terrifying level of surveillance capitalism. Sure, it’s allowed conspiracy theories and out and out Nazism to flourish. But the one thing you can’t accuse the tech giant of is … taking down death threats against celebrities.

According to internal documents The Guardian in the UK has got its hands on, Facebook’s bullying and harassment policy explicitly allows for “public figures” to be subject to treatment the site usually bans or removes, up to and including, yep, “calls for [their] death”. Any stand-ups wishing to joke about cutting off Scott Morrison’s head, take note.