Former Tourism Director, Now PM Scott Morrison: "Where The Bloody Hell Are You?"
In 2006, Tourism Australia boss Scott Morrison oversaw the advertising campaign featuring a bikini-clad Lara Bingle emerging from the water at Fingal Spit in northern NSW, and exclaiming: “So where the bloody hell are you?” Updated, Scott Morrison is Prime Minister and an image du jour would be an exhausted firefighter covered in embers, emerging from a giant fireball exploding in the bush behind him, and asking: "So where the bloody hell is Australia?"
Like a Greek chorus, however, climate change incantations are becoming more insistent as the bushfire season flames on. They’re being shouted by demonstrators, by family members who have lost their homes and livelihoods, by volunteers risking their lives fighting the fires, and – ominously for Scott Morrison – by some prominent members of Liberal-National Party Coalition Governments.
Longer term, the bushfires are changing Australia’s perceived place in the international firmament, as the world rapidly escalates climate change into the number one long-term issue. Straws in the wind include Time magazine naming 16-year-old Swedish school girl Greta Thunberg as Person of the Year, because of her role in galvanising world opinion against climate change. The issue was the subject of a recent Economist magazine cover and is being thrashed around at a climate change summit in Madrid. Meanwhile, countless governments, councils and cities around the world have declared a climate change emergency.
Back in Australia, dramatic pictures of exploding fireballs rapidly incinerating valleys and plains, and Sydney, one of the most beautiful cities in the world, disappearing under a bushfire smoke haze, project a deeply negative image. The apocalyptic vision is just about as far removed as possible from the traditional foreign perception of relaxed Australian optimism. Ironically, enjoyment of Australia’s priceless natural beauty was the theme in the Scott Morrison-overseen “So where the bloody hell are you?” advertising campaign.
EDIT
https://www.afr.com/policy/energy-and-climate/fires-spread-a-pall-of-depression-20191212-p53jg7
