There is a new Taylor Swift album, and which means one factor: politicians bending over backwards to reference it.
In some ways it shouldn’t be a shock. In spite of everything, it was solely February when Anthony Albanese determined the very best hit he may ship on Peter Dutton was to accuse him of liking Nickelback greater than Taylor Swift — the identical month Scott Morrison ended his chaotic tenure in Parliament by peppering his farewell speech with as many Swift album titles as he may.
This doesn’t even contact the floods of content material wrung from Swift’s latest live performance tour — in these weeks, there was no subject, from Reserve Financial institution governor Michele Bullock to the asbestos content material of mulch in a number of colleges in NSW, that couldn’t not be bent again, yoga-like, to the subject of Taylor.
The purpose is, the discharge of a brand new Swift album, The Tortured Poets Division, was in all probability all the time going to immediate some type of clunky piggybacking from Australia’s political class. What’s extra shocking is how little sense a few of it makes…
On Fb, Western Australian Senator Louise Pratt wished us a “Completely satisfied launch day”, with Albanese’s face photoshopped onto Swift’s beneath the title “A tax lower for each Australian taxpayer”. Solely… the tax lower isn’t “launched” for a number of months but, and there’s not even a obscure try and work a pun or allusion into the textual content.
Member for Cooper Ged Kearney went to slightly extra effort — certain, The Tortured Dutton Division isn’t a ton higher, however Kearney places collectively a monitor itemizing, together with “Down Unhealthy (For the Far Proper)” and an addition to Swift’s “loml”, brief for “love of my life”, which in Dutton’s case apparently refers to Mike Pezzullo:
