Politics

Election Recap: Scott Morrison Tackled A Kid And Katherine Deves Is Still Being A TERF

It has been A Week.

by Lavender Baj  20 May 2022
election recap

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.

Well there you have it folks, we’ve made it through the election season. It’s been a wild ride full of Prime Minister Scott Morrison crash tackling kids and Anthony Albanese not knowing weirdly specific statistics, but we did it!

As is to be expected, the final week of the election campaign was perhaps the most chaotic of all, so let’s take a look at the highlight reel, shall we?

Scott Morrison Tackled A Kid

Perhaps the most noteworthy event of the week was when Scott Morrison accidentally tackled an under 8’s soccer player while campaigning in Devonport, Tasmania.

Thankfully, the child escaped unharmed but the same cant be said for Morrison’s reputation after the incident was memed into oblivion.

Albanese Reminded Us He’s Italian

Anthony Albanese spoke at an Italian cultural event in Sydney this week, where he called out his opponent for making name puns at his expense. He stopped short of accusing them of racism but criticised their name-calling.

“People of my age and older in this room will know that school people made fun of your name,” he said. “My opponents think it’s still okay to make fun of someone’s name in their advertising, and that is a matter for them to consider.”

Albanese has made a point to emphasise that if elected, he will be Australia’s first non-Anglo-Celtic Prime Minister, which honestly speaks volumes about our political diversity — or severe lack thereof.

John Howard Is Campaigning

The Liberals enlisted the help of former Prime Minister John Howard for their campaign efforts this week.

He made phone calls, wrote letters and campaigned in person with candidates including Josh Frydenberg and Katherine Deves.

During his campaigning in Kooyong with Frydenberg, he spawned an iconic meme that was almost instantly overshadowed by Scott Morrison crash tackling a child.

Josh Frydenberg Says Young People Won’t Stop Calling Him

In case you missed it, the government wants you to dip into your superannuation to buy a house — an objectively awful idea if you ask any financial expert.

But instead of actually addressing any of the — totally valid — criticism of the plan, Josh Frydenberg ignored it and asserted that young people have been flooding his office with grateful phone calls.

It goes without saying that young people, famously, hate making phone calls, especially to the Treasurer.

Peter Dutton Lost His Defamation Case

While campaigning to be re-elected for his seat of Dickson this week, Peter Dutton lost his defamation battle against refugee advocate Shane Bazzi. Bazzi won on appeal.

Bazzi is no longer required to pay $35,000 in damages to the Defence Minister.

Katherine Deves Played The Victim

Katherine Deves, the TERF candidate for Warringah who has dominated the news cycle throughout the entire election campaign, continued to plague us.

Deves hasn’t been doing interviews or media appearances in recent weeks, but randomly landed a sympathetic front-page cover in the Sydney Morning Herald this week, in which she was framed as a victim in the horrendous ‘debate’ that kicked off after her past transphobic comments surfaced online.

Monique Ryan Saved The Day For COVID Voters

Just a day out from polling day, independent candidate for Kooyong Monique Ryan fought to close a loophole that would’ve left more than 100,000 Australians with COVID unable to vote if they missed the cut off for postal voting but didn’t qualify for telephone voting.

Thankfully, the AEC confirmed on Friday that anyone who has tested positive since last Friday at 6pm is now eligible for a telephone vote if they haven’t already done a postal vote.