The media merry-go-round has been beset with so many options it has gone into meltdown. Off the front page is drought and swine fever, replaced by a deadly human virus and a wayward former sports minister, along with some handy tennis players.
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Prime Minister Scott Morrison would have to be sighing deeply as the claims that he had caused global warming and bushfires have been given respite. To his credit, he has claimed that any quest to lower emissions has to be coupled with reducing the fuel loads that are fodder for wild fires.
One would also hope the prime minister swings an axe in his very own department to take out those who exposed him to ridicule for taking a family holiday.
And what about Nationals leader Michael McCormack? He was acting prime minister as the flames jumped higher. Look at me, he should have been saying at the top of his media voice - but no, barely a reported beep.
The once-proud National Party now has trouble rounding up a member with a farming background.
This was just the stuff a baying media needed to aim arrows at the prime minister. As farms burned and livestock died, where was Agriculture Minister Bridget McKenzie? Was she in her Melbourne abode? Sure she is entitled to privacy, but as Morrison found out this was a scarce commodity with a media desperate for blood and headlines. Was she laying low due to the growing sports cash saga? Was McCormack doing the same thing? Yes, she had been caught doing what countless ministers had done before her. Veteran Labor identity Graham Richardson admitted he did the same thing when in government but had not been caught.
McKenzie has been too smart by half. She closed her office in Bendigo and moved it to Wodonga. Then she hung out the bait that she had not made a decision whether or not to stand for lower house seat of Indi. Of course this was rubbish, as the Nationals had little hope of returning Indi to the Coalition.
Morrison and the Victorian Liberals would have to see McKenzie as a running sore.
They would argue that she would be poison if she took up the Nationals' second position on the Coalition senate ticket. Then there is the sidebar story of Barnaby salivating on the blocks off scratch. He has made no secret of his ongoing ambitions that included knocking off the soft target of McCormack for party leadership.
The garbage being piled on McKenzie seems to becoming from her side and apart from Barnaby, David Littleproud and Darren Chester are huffing and puffing.
The once-proud National Party now has trouble rounding up a member with a farming background. An ever-present nightmare for Morrison, that is on the cusp of becoming reality.
