Prime Minister Scott Morrison washing a client’s hair at a salon in Mt Eliza, Victoria. Photo: AAP

There comes a time in politics when satire is no match for reality. Fellow Australians we have reached that point.

If we have nothing to thank the Prime Minister Scott Morrison for, and many say we don’t, we can thank him for arriving at that destination. It is not so much that words fail but that elongating a situation to push home a truth is no longer necessary.

Morrison has vanquished satire to the dustbin of history. Now it is just necessary to report.

The stage for this dropping of scales from the eyes is the exquisitely named (for the purposes of this column) Coco’s Salon, a hairdressing establishment in Mt Eliza, which sits in the Labor-held electorate of Dunkley. Peta Murphy took it from Liberal Chris Crewther at the last election. It’s a marginal seat.

On Friday, Morrison visited the area (warning citizens there will be a lot of this in coming months). And what did the daggy dad do? He went to the salon and washed a client’s hair. The most natural thing in the world.

Just place yourself as the leader of the nation, there’s an election coming, you know the date but you’re not telling, you need to boost your sagging popularity, what do you do? You go to a salon and wash a stranger’s hair. Nothing creepy about it, at all. The laying on of hands, hairdressers do it all the time, so too for that matter do religious types. Even Pentecostal prime ministers have been known to say a prayer while they do so.

Yes, there’s been unkind people having a go that now he can hold a hose. In fact, he’s been hosing down his government’s failures for months.

He has had to hose down the scurrilous talk that he was a “complete psycho” and a “horrible, horrible person” that was leaked from an email exchange between former NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian and an unnamed federal colleague. Such was the level of political debate that Tasmania’s Jacquie Lambie had this to say: “I don’t know who it is. I’m actually really busy and I would have thought that the prime minister and his people would be that busy going into an election they wouldn’t have time for this stuff, this is really, really embarrassing.

“I think what it goes to show is this is a unit that is absolutely falling apart before we are going into an election. Quite frankly, I don’t really give a stuff who it is. I just wish they would start doing what needs to be done for the country.

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“This is what we are at, we are at this playground level, at prep level and this is what we are worried about, who released that text message out. Quite frankly, there are so much other big issues on the table.”

One of those issues, of course, is aged care. This is the sector where since last November more than 560 people have died from COVID and 30,000 staff and residents have been infected.

This is the sector where the Minister for Aged Care and Sport, Richard Colbeck, went to the cricket instead of fronting a Senate select committee on COVID.

This is the sector that almost universally is regarded as in crisis. Except the minister: “I don’t accept that the system is in complete crisis. My view, and the data supports that, is that the sector is performing and has performed exceptionally well in the work that it’s doing.”

Some might say as Minister for Sport he had an obligation to watch the Test match in Hobart. Others might say a game of cricket is not a matter of life and death.

Given that Colbeck is still there. It is reasonable to surmise that Morrison thinks Colbeck is doing all right, too. It would be far too cynical to suggest he’s there purely for political reasons.

Two years ago, Morrison gave a speech about facing up to the challenges of COVID-19. Not nearly as much was known then as now of course, but one wonders in the light of events these past two years, if he wasn’t having a go at satire back then. The awful thing is one suspects, he wouldn’t have known it. He said in part: “We know who we are as people and the legacy and inspiration that has been given to us from those who have come before us and shown us the way through challenge and tests just like this.

“So we summon the spirit of the Anzacs, of our Great Depression generation, of those who built the Snowy. Of those who won the great peace of the Second World War and defended Australia. That is our legacy that we draw on at this time.

“We also know the actions that we can take. The care, compassion and respect we must show from one, to one another.”

Given the non-action of this federal government, that surely is up there with the best of Jonathan Swift and Ambrose Bierce.

As the election looms, it’s worth noting Bierce’s definition of politics in his Devil’s Dictionary: “A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage.”