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Watch this...(thanks to the ABC)
Michael Rowland interview with Greg Hunt
When people think of the shitty side of politics, this is exactly what they are talking about. I hope this clip is used in Secondary School classes on how our politicians manipulate stories and change the focus of an interview to suit themselves and paint the interviewer as the enemy.
Greg Hunt, being the Federal Health Minister, released an announcement (yes, another announcement) regarding the "securing" of some more doses of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine. As of typing this, I'm not sure when they are to be received or administered, but the announcement was made.
The usual practice for Government announcements or Press Releases is for them to be branded with the Government logo, not the Party of the Government, after all, that's political advertising.
I'm now just going to list the things wrong with Greg Hunt's response to Michael Rowland's legitimate questions about the use of the party logo in the Government's announcement.
1. He immediately makes it about him..."I was elected..." cut off by a further clarifying question by Rowland, but the immediate excuse/reason appears to be that because he was elected as a Liberal and under that banner, that somehow that makes the use of the logo acceptable. WTF?
Every member of the fucking Parliament was elected under a party logo (independents aside), or in my own electorate of Deakin where Michael Sukkar left the logo off most of his banners for...."reasons".
Logical Fallacy - 'Special Pleading' - He's changing the goalposts so that simply being elected as a Liberal is reason enough for him to use their logo.
2. "I know you have strong views..." Now he's making it about Mr Rowland, as if he is the only person who has a problem with the logo. The argument is somehow nullified in Mr Hunt's mind because the only person with the issue, or at least the person with the loudest problem, is Mr Rowland.
Logical Fallacy - 'Ad Hominem' - Mr Hunt dismisses the argument because he knows Mr Rowland "has strong views" which are later clarified as being "left views".
3. "I'll finish if you let me". This is just a bit of defensive bully boy tactics, as if he's not being permitted to present his position on the question. As detailed in points 1 and 2 above, he has literally already sprayed a few responses back in less than 25 seconds into the entire interview.
4. "...we predicted that you seem to be the most exercised of any person in the Australian Media about this..." He returns right away to his attack on Mr Rowland (see point 2), not actually defending his actions.
5. Then he gives a waffly answer again about being elected under that banner, as do other parties (none of which are the Govt). He's effectively turning the argument here into a question about how much he has the right to be proud of the Liberal Party. He also slips in a bit about this logo being allowed on a specific platform.
6. Michael Rowland asks a legit question - "Who paid for the vaccines?" and Mr Hunt again bats the question back by saying "I know this is an issue for you..." Irrelevant and entirely about trying to make the problem seem like Mr Rowland's and not actually a legitimate concern.
7. "You identify with the left..." There's a couple of things at play here, best summarised in the logical fallacies.
Logical Fallacy - 'Appeal to Emotion' - Mr Hunt is appealing to his base here by tugging on their "anything left is wrong" attitudes, likewise the term "left" in this reply implies a weakness in Mr Rowland's argument given Mr Hunt is from the Right side of politics.
Logical Fallacy - 'Genetic' - Mr Rowland must be wrong because he is a "lefty". The judgement of whether he is right or wrong is entirely based on his presumed political leanings, not his argument.
Logical Fallacy - 'Ad Hominem' - Mr Hunt again attacking Mr Rowland's personal trait as a way to dismiss his line of questioning.
8. Mr Rowland then protests the comments of Mr Hunt who then claims that there nobody who is watching who doesn't identify him with the left.
Logical Fallacy - 'Bandwagon' - Mr Hunt says that "everyone" thinks it, therefore it nullifies Mr Rowland's questioning of the issue.
9. "You should be open about it, I'm open about it" I'm pretty sure people used this argument in Primary School.
10. Mr Hunt continues his slow, saliva-filled, time-waste of a reply with a drawn out recap of how everyone should be open about their personal biases and how they should embrace their allegiances.
Ridiculous waste of inteview time.
He then says that he predicted Mr Rowland would go this way with his questions, again, not actually justifying the actions taken in the logo use, just talking about how smart he is that he knew he would be challenged.
11. Mr Hunt then muses that he knew 50% of the inteview would be spent on this topic, which given the fact that he has been talking for the majority of the interview in circular patterns about Mr Rowland's bias and his own love of his party, is probably a bit rich.
12. Further to 11, Mr Hunt then implies that because Mr Rowland has asked a question about the Liberal Party logo, he must therefore not be interested in the rollout of the COVID-19 vaccine.
Logical Fallacy - 'Strawman' - Because you only asked about A, you must not care about B. This is just garbage and pisses me off. All politicians do this, but Mr Hunt shows that some politicians will do it for point scoring, even though the issue being "dismissed" is related to a public health emergency. Just shitful.
13. Mr Rowland defends his support for the vaccine, but tries to keep THIS QUESTION about the logo, to which Mr Hunt again defends himself, but says he won a bet with his staff about this logo question taking up 50% of the alloted time, something he has done himself by waffling and deflecting and committing half a dozen logical fallacies!
14. Again, back to the Strawman argument that because Mr Rowland asked a question about the logo, he's therefore not interested in safety and vaccines.
Logical Fallacy - 'Strawman' - Because at this stage of the interview, why not?
15. I suspect Mr Hunt also ends the interview with another logical fallacy by turning the "perceived" criticism of him and his actions with the logo into a criticism of Mr Rowland and his lefty attitude and not caring about the vaccine procurement announcement.
Logical Fallacy - 'Tu Quoque' - Mr Hunt avoids having to address the actual concern by in turn criticising Mr Rowland's lack of concern about public health.
In the end, Michael Rowland slipped in a comment about how he was able to be concerned about not just the vaccine, but also about what is right and wrong. A nice little wedgie for Mr Hunt as he smirked his way out of the interview.
Politicians should be better than this. They should be A LOT better than this.
Mr Hunt is a serial offender when it comes to avoiding hard questions and this wasn't even a hard question! It was more of a Donald Trump type response, just from someone who is more articulate.
llama
@SirWonderLlama
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