Beer price cut doesn’t pass the pub test with women thirsty for something better

Beer and politics have long gone hand in hand.

The “pub test” is the barometer of what is acceptable in politics. Photographs of politicians — almost always male — standing at the bar of a country pub are obligatory campaign-trail fodder. Such shots are planned, with a forensic level of detail, to show off the candidate as a man of the people, a bloke happy to sit down and chat with anyone… and a mouthful of hops can make any yarn go down.

Graphic depictions of a pint will flood post-Budget coverage, denoting how much the government takes in taxes and how that influences the price at the tap.

The politics of beer runs deeper than that, though. Private companies can offer reports into which breweries donate to which political parties. Research pegs different beers to different cohorts of voters. And roundtables are even held to ensure the right beer is served at the right function.

Beer is important to any government’s re-election chances. And that’s why this government floated a plan to cut the cost of beer.

But the message it delivered, and the optics around it, show the Morrison government hasn’t learnt a thing about how women believe they are being treated. Or they are just unable to comprehend it.

Indeed, it’s almost as though the architect might have been drunk knocking this scheme together.

Scott Morrison has a few weak spots, but his treatment of women is one of the biggest and most vulnerable. That’s why Jenny Morrison was brought out of relative anonymity to appear on Sunday night TV. That’s why we had the prime minister voice an apology to women who’d been harassed and assaulted while working at Parliament House. That’s why Grace Tame gave the prime minister the evil eye.

Women and Scott Morrison are not looking like a good mix ahead of this election. But neither is beer and women if you look at the official figures, which show half of all Australian men nominate beer as their preferred tipple, compared to just 10% of women.

Context is everything (and I’ll come to Karl Stefanovic sipping a margarita shortly).

But why would anyone — let alone someone whose previous job and expertise revolve around marketing — think it was a good idea to announce that 50% of blokes will get to dip into the electoral treasure chest, while for most women the lock would go back on?

What did they think the optics of that might be? And did they stop to think how it might be read, in the same week as the government admits how it has failed women?

Beer prices should be cut; the amount of tax it nets the government — almost $3.6 billion last year — is appalling. But why not reduce the taxes inflating wine prices? Or petrol prices?

Or even the ingredients in Karl Stefanovic’s margarita, which many women (at least the ones I know) might support. The tax there has jumped by 91 cents since Scott Morrison was elected to Parliament.

It’s not the drop in price that is the telling factor here. It’s the message around it — that it was targeted at men, and the fact that no one saw that it could possibly continue to entrench the view many women share of this government.

On Sunday night’s episode of 60 Minutes on Nine, Jenny Morrison came across as warm and hospitable, smart and sassy. And honest. Yes, she’s been panned for this or that, but ask women who don’t bat for one side or the other in politics, and she came across as one of them: an articulate woman and mother trying to navigate a tricky world.

She said she didn’t formulate politics and wasn’t much interested in it — like many others in the nation — but she was happy to offer an opinion if her husband asked.

But we can be certain this policy idea wasn’t one of those floated at home because, irrespective of what is on tap, it simply doesn’t pass the pub test.