Beer cans and bushfire recovery have featured on the first morning of Scott Morrison’s election campaign.
The Prime Minister was met with a mixed reception at a cannery in the NSW south coast town of Culburra on Monday as the 2022 federal election race began in earnest.
The company, East Coast Canning, made a blue can for Mr Morrison’s campaign emblazoned with the Liberal slogan and the words “ScoMo’s Strong Economy” and “Liberal 2022”.
But he xjmtzywwas greeted upon leaving the factory by a few protesters wearing Hawaiian shirts and holding posters, who were reported to have started chanting “I don’t hold a hose mate”.
The line refers to Mr Morrison’s infamous defence of his decision to take a family holiday to Hawaii in December 2019 during the Black Summer bushfires.
Mr Morrison and other Coalition MPs have spent recent weeks driving the message they are the better choice for voters when it comes to economic management.
He was joined in Culburra on Monday by Liberal candidate Andrew Constance, who is hoping to wrest the marginal seat of Gilmore from Labor.
Mr Morrison was questioned by journalists about his handling of the 2019-2020 bushfire disaster amid criticism from some people living in Gilmore who were badly affected by the fires.
Mr Morrison was asked if he was willing to apologise for his January 2020 visit to Cobargo, in the neighbouring electorate of Eden-Monaro, after three people had died there during the fires.
Mr Morrison was confronted by angry local residents in the bushfire-ravaged town including by a woman who refused to shake his hand and asked for more funding for the Rural Fire Service.
Mr Morrison said on Monday he had already apologised and that it had been a “difficult day” for a community that was “in trauma”.
“There were those exchanges that day, but there are many other exchanges that day which were very different, as you know,” he claimed.
Mr Constance — the former NSW Liberal MP for Bega who resigned from the state government for a tilt at federal politics — promised to be a fierce representative for his local community if elected.
“Our community will never ever get over Black Summer. We should always remember that. There’s a lot of trauma,” he said.
“One of the reasons I’m running is so that we never ever see the wild fire storms that we saw ever again. It wouldn’t matter how we tackle it.”
The Coalition will be hoping Mr Constance can regain Gilmore for them on May 21 after Fiona Phillips won the seat for the Labor Party at the 2019 election.
