You know how it is.
It’s the holidays. You have the car packed, a flight booked, but everything at work’s just gone nuts.
“I just have to get there,” you say. “I just have to get all my emails done, get that Out Of Office on, and I’ll be able to relax.”
But maybe your boss is sick. There’s a restructure. A crisis brewing. A project that’s veering off course.
“It’s really not a great moment to take leave,” you say to your partner at home. “The timing could really be better.”
“Don’t even think about it,” they say. “The kids are so looking forward to this. It’s been a big year, we’ve barely seen you. We need some family time.”
You feel guilty. You feel conflicted. It’s all been booked for ever. But… what’s everyone going to think when they get your Out Of Office email response in the midst of all that chaos.
Yeah. This is the scenario I like to imagine was unfolding in the Morrison house this week, as the Australian Prime Minister’s wife, Jenny, had the suitcases open on the bed, and Scott was pacing, a phone in each hand.
“People are saying I should stay,” Sco-Mo, is saying, as the the fairy lights flash off his plaid cotton pyjamas. “Quite a lot of the country is on fire, everyone’s angry, and people seem to think it’s my fault.”
Jenny Morrison has zero tolerance left for this shit. “The girls need a father, Scott. They can’t just see you on the TV. And besides, you need to take them to the pool for a bit so I can have a bloody cocktail. I’ve earned a cocktail, Scott.”
Top Comments
And what exactly would you like him to achieve if he was here? This is a state issue - all the emergency services are state run. Why would you try to make this a feminist issue. Get a grip on reality please.
Most people would like him to achieve LEADERSHIP if he can’t manage that, resign from his position. The funding might be a state issue but the fallout from major fires is a ‘disaster’ and usually after a ‘disaster’ a country’s PM offers comfort and support to the victims. Ask Jacinda how she would have dealt with the same disaster had it occurred in NZ.
Funny how Federal politicians have no issue spending time and resources and drumming up support on “State Issues” when it comes to abortion - but somehow when it comes to our basic protections such as Fire services it’s all just too hard.
So this is more about a hypothetical regarding if our PM was a mother, rather than a woman per se (not all of us are mothers, remember!). It would have been good to refer to the criticism our only female (and child-free) PM copped for holidaying with her mother, in a period without national crisis, after her father died.