Politics

‘The Feed’ Is Campaigning For Bill Shorten With A Giant Cardboard Cut-Out Of His Wife

Vote #1 Chloe.

by Joseph Earp  15 May 2019
The Feed improve Bill Shorten's campaign with a giant cardboard cut-out of his wife.

Want more Junkee in your life? Sign up to our newsletter, and follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook so you always know where to find us.

Even the most diehard of Labor supporter can sometimes find it a little difficult to get excited about full-time party leader and part-time mound of wet cardboard, Bill Shorten.

Certainly, every once in a while he gives you a good reason to rally around him — he handled The Daily Telegraph‘s sledge on his mother with good grace, and he managed to get at least two genuine zingers off on Scott Morrison during the leader’s debate. But the rest of the time, he’s just kinda there, smiling noncommittally and checking his notes to make sure he’s delivering his own message properly.

Well, ahead of this Saturday’s election, The Feed have swooped in for a last-minute fix of the whole, “How To Make Shorten Electable” problem, doubling down on their assertion that we’ve been focusing on the wrong Shorten this whole time.

“Everywhere I look it’s, ‘Bill, Bill, Bill,'” the sketch starts, as two PR agents mull over the best way to make the Labor leader seem more appealing than a packet of unsalted chips.

“Where is Chloe? And why isn’t she at these appearances?”

“Ah, how about because she’s a strong independent woman with a gorgeous life of her own and she doesn’t need to be some man’s prop?”

And therein lies the central idea: a Chloe Shorten prop. Armed with a cardboard cut out of the Labor leader’s wife — or a Chloe Clone, as it comes to be known — the pair of PR agents hit the streets, desperately trying to drum up support.

In the process, they encounter the pollie himself, Shorten, emerging from the Bill Bus as the very picture of a man who does not expect that he’s going to have a large picture of his own wife shoved directly into his face.

The federal election goes down this Saturday May 18.