“It’s About Leadership”: Gretel Killeen Unloads On Scott Morrison’s Early Hawaii Holiday
"It's not necessarily about being in the battlefield," Killeen said. "It's showing your sentiments, your empathy, your vision and your intellect are applied to the problem. And what this showed was that he was not only physically removed, and emotionally removed, but intellectually removed."
The country is in flames. Bushfire smoke is choking the city of Sydney. And our Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, is nowhere to be seen, vacationing in Hawaii with his family.
Huge swathes of the country are sick of Morrison and his inaction — in his laziness, and his refusal to deal with a climate crisis unfolding around the world.
And one Australian who has decided to air that frustration publicly is Gretel Killeen.
The one-time Big Brother host appeared on Sunrise in order to talk about the Prime Minister’s ill-timed Hawaiian holiday. Killeen appeared opposite Chris Smith, a talkbalk radio presenter who tried to claim that the outrage over Morrison’s holiday was the biggest beat-up in “40 years”.
Well, Killeen wasn’t having any of it.
“[I’m] gobsmacked, at both of you,” Killeen told Smith and the rest of the Sunrise panel. “I’m really confounded by your understanding of what leadership is.
“Perhaps a sporting metaphor would be better Chris? Where is the coach of a team when they’re playing on the field … I’m trying to find a metaphor you will understand. These people who bang on, ‘He wouldn’t be there fighting with his own hose.’
“It’s got nothing to do with it. This is leadership.”
In return, Smith tried banging the same old drum, shouting at Killeen that the controversy was a manufactured outcry.
But Killeen wasn’t going to back down.
“It’s not necessarily being in the battlefield,” she said. “It’s showing your sentiments, your empathy, your vision and your intellect are applied to the problem. And what this showed was that he was not only physically removed, and emotionally removed, but intellectually removed.”
At that point, Killeen was asked whether the Prime Minister was entitled to a holiday, one of the questions that has most frequently been used to defend the Prime Minister.
“It’s got nothing to do with it,” she replied. “I personally think leadership is something that people are born with … I don’t know that [Scott Morrison] fundamentally a leader.”
Watch the entire exchange below:
Scott Morrison has received heavy criticism for leaving the country while the rest of Australia faces devastating bushfires. pic.twitter.com/hoIaJpgybT
— Sunrise (@sunriseon7) December 20, 2019