Prime Minister Scott Morrison addresses the media on Monday at Parliament House in Canberra. Photo: NCA NEWSWIRE

It is always darkest before the dawn and I think these lockdowns are demonstration of that.
But the dawn is not far away. We should not delay it, we should prepare for it. We should not fear it, we should embrace it and we should move forward together.

Thus speaketh the Prime Minister Scott Morrison on Monday, August 23, 2021.

How reassuring. Bereft of answers, solutions and leadership, Morrison falls back on cliché, and to add the icing on the top of the cake, he delivers his message with a patronising lack of empathy. His use of the royal we is not of bringing all Australians together, but of spreading the task on to the shoulders of each and every one of us, all those without the power to do anything.

It is in its imagery, and considering the context, a dismal attempt at commanding a presence that will inspire. Who does he imagine would hear or read those words, and respond: “Yes, the Prime Minister is right. It is darkest before the dawn, and we should prepare, we must not fear, we must put our arms around it and boldly step towards it”?

Yea, verily and a bottle of beer.

If it sounds just ever so slightly preachy, well that’s because it is, and it is perhaps no coincidence, given Morrison’s strong faith, that it is widely considered to have originated with English theologian Thomas Fuller in 1650.

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We could give Morrison the benefit of the doubt and perhaps take his sentiments at face value. He really does care for one and all of us, that’s what he’s saying. He wants us all to not lose hope, to not see despair, but to look into the future.

But in the end, it is no more than nonsense. Words are cheap when they are spun like this. Their value is zilch. Morrison may just as easily have sung “Somewhere Over the Rainbow”

Someday I’ll wish upon a star
And wake up where the clouds are far
Behind me
Where troubles melt like lemon drops
Away above the chimney tops
That’s where you’ll find me.

Or at a pinch, “Wind Beneath My Wings”. For are we not, by implication, the wind under Morrison’s wings, setting course to the promised land of, both COVID safety, and re-election? We’d surely be heroes then.

Given Morrison’s marketing background, perhaps there is more to it. Perhaps, fellow Australians, we are being subjected to subliminal messaging. Spin, after all, is an attempt at mind control, and the message is in the metaphor. Not the tripe about darkness and dawn, but transference of responsibility of duty.

Actually, Morrison’s conflation of dawn and coronavirus has an unintended consequence, and it is in the unlikely form of American country singer Tanya Tucker.

Who could forget this?

Delta Dawn, what’s that flower you have on
Could it be a faded rose from days gone by?

One could hazard a guess it will still be remembered in the future more than the exhortations of a prime minister trying to evoke imagery that is frankly childish given the situation facing the nation.

He may as well have said, she’ll be right as long as you lot all pull together and leave me out of it.