How to spin the deaths

Dear Compliant Media Organisations,

As the head of comms for the Prime Minister, I'd like to thank you for helping out during the pandemic. Everyone here in the PMO, including Scomo, is very grateful for all your hard work in helping us not have to work too hard. It really is appreciated. Jenny and the kids love how much time Scott has been able to take off in the last couple of years.

It would be really hard for us if you were like those pompous arseholes over at The Guardian, constantly moaning about the gaping flaws in our plans, or trying to reconcile our past actions with our current narrative. A don't even get me started on Michael West.

I do need to inform you that we're going to have to massively shift the narrative again this week to keep up with events. The last time we did this (last week), it worked really well. I was glad to see so many of you playing ball.

I'm sure you all agree it was pretty hard to keep a straight face when Gladys got up during the week and said 'NSW was leading the way out of the pandemic for Australia'. Big ups to Chris Uhlmann for suggesting that line. Wouldn't have thought of that without you. I owe you.

And a huge thanks to everyone for your help in shifting the goalposts away from "daily case" numbers to "daily hospitalisations and deaths" this week. That's been a huge help in making everyone not panic too much about just how out of control this thing is.

But this is where we need your help. Unfortunately, it looks like "daily hospitalisations and deaths" is not going to be a very rosy metric in the coming weeks, so we need to shift the goalposts yet again (I know, I know -- we probably should have thought about it a week ago when we last shifted the goal posts, but honestly, who looks more than a week ahead when you're managing a pandemic? Not me, that's for sure!)

Thing is, none of us here at PMO can think of a good metric that would reflect well on the Liberal Party. So instead, we're going to have to start blaming the dead for dying.

Now I know it seems a bit harsh, but in fairness, they're not exactly in a position to fight back, so it really is a victimless win for everyone. We're not on the hook for the growing deaths, and the dead don't care anyway because they're dead.

Point is, from now on, whenever you talk about someone dying, please denote that they weren't vaccinated. DO NOT mention that it's probably because they couldn't get any. Imply that they were one of those anti-vaxxer types. I mean, just mentioning it implies it anyway so it should be pretty easy.

Also, Covid deaths should no longer be referred to as "tragic" or "sad". Instead, please blame them for getting sick in the first place, and imply that they broke a health order or two by mentioning that the source of their infection is still "under investigation" (which is highly likely since our contract tracing system has all but collapsed).

Also, just a heads up, we will be removing most of the financial support for the vast swathes of people most financially distressed by this pandemic in the coming months. At that point, it's almost certain that people will start having to break the public health orders to pay the rent, feed their family etc etc. If you can really go to town on these people for their individual choices, and ignore the systemic problems that we've created for them, that would be awesome.

Anyway, have a good weekend and sleep well knowing that when the greatest public health emergency of your lifetime hit, you did your part to make sure that the government was given a really easy run. Very patriotic of you etc etc.

Charles Firth
Head of Comms
Prime Minister's Office 
 

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