If the PM walked into your pub, what would you say?
As if you needed reminding, the election is on. If the prime minister or aspirant leader walked into your pub, club or café. What would you say? And how might they reply?
Pensioner Ray Drury, aged 73, gave the PM an earful at the Edgeworth Tavern in Newcastle this month on his claim of low financial support for older Australians.
Mr Morrison's response was conciliatory but soon forgotten: "This is what we should do. You raised two very important issues - one on immigration and one on your pension - so let's sit down with one of my team. You can sit down right now," he replied.
It brings to mind a somewhat different reply when Bob Hawke ran into another pensioner called Bob Bell on the campaign trail in a Whyalla supermarket in SA on Sept 26 1989.
Bell told Hawkie, "You get more a week than we get a year." (Fact check Scott Morrison's base salary is $211,250, plus an additional salary of $338,000, making for a gross $549,250, or $1505 a day)
But it was the PM's off the cuff and curt riposte which made history: "…you silly old bugger."
The exchange made many of Hawke's obituaries and Whyalla once but sadly seems not to have erected a monument to a storm in a teacup.
So what would you say if you had your chance with a surprise meeting on the campaign trail with Morrison or Albanese?
And do you think pollies are now just too polite to people who have a go at them for fear of giving 'offence'?
I'd ask you to be a little respectful even if our leader's likely answer to you might not.
