Scott Morrison’s Bad Day On Social Media Just Got Even Worse
The who fuckin' meme was just the beginning.
On Friday morning, Scott Morrison tweeted his congratulations to David Sharma, the new Liberal candidate for the upcoming Wentworth by-election.
“Big congratulations to David Sharma,” the tweet read. “A quality guy with extensive experience and capability. The best candidate won. That’s how it should be.”
It was a nice gesture from the PM, but there was one slight problem.
This guy’s name isn’t David.
It’s Kerns, stupid!
Yeah, turns out Sharma, who used to be Australia’s ambassador to Israel, goes by Dave, but it’s not short for David. Rather, it’s short for Devanand. Which you’d hope Morrison would have known, since this guy is basically the key to the government maintaining its majority in the House of Reps.
The tweet has since been deleted and reissued with the correct spelling of Sharma’s name, but not before the error was picked up by users.
Scott Morrison has deleted a tweet where he got his new candidate for Wentworth’s name wrong. It’s Dave, short for Devanand pic.twitter.com/Ju7uBjHy87
— Rob Stott (@Rob_Stott) September 13, 2018
The mistake comes shortly after another cock-up by the PM’s social media team, who last night shared (and then deleted, and then apologised for) a cringeworthy meme featuring lyrics from the extremely NSFW Fatman Scoop song ‘Be Faithful’.
How NSFW, you ask?
Our PM is apparently keen to know who fuckin tonight. https://t.co/4sT9t5aYML
— Jeff Sparrow (@Jeff_Sparrow) September 13, 2018
Point is, someone in that office is probably getting fired.
The selection of Sharma as the Liberal candidate in Wentworth is not without controversy. There had been calls from within the party for a woman to contest the seat, with Morrison himself throwing his support behind former Woollahra deputy mayor Katherine O’Regan. But O’Regan was knocked out in the first round of voting after Sharma got the last minute backing of former Prime Ministers John Howard and Malcolm Turnbull.
It was of course Turnbull’s resignation from Parliament that triggered this by-election in the first place.
In his tweet congratulating Sharma, Morrison acknowledged the need for his party to increase the number of women in its ranks.
“Of course I want to see more Liberal women in Parliament,” he said. “But I always want to see the best candidate selected. That’s what members rightly decided last night. Thank you and well done to the selectors.”
That being said, the latest polling has support for the Liberal Party in Wentworth sitting at just 39 percent. So maybe we should be more interested in Labor’s candidate?