The prime minister, Scott Morrison, has found himself at the centre of a bizarre advertising stunt for an American beer, helping it to promote a viralcampaign on social media while simultaneously pushing a drought relief plan for regional Australia.

Morrison became embroiled in the campaign for US craft beer Goose Island last month when he decided to latch onto a folksy video on Twitter featuring the general manager of the New South Wales shire of Bland.

The video featured general manager Ray Smith and a cast of Bland townsfolk asking people to make his town less “bland” by bringing “flavour” to it.

Continuing his current barrage of social media postings Morrison’s video team filmed him promising to send curries made from his favourite Sri Lankan recipe to help promote the campaign. He also linked it to his forthcoming drought summit.

But the Guardian Australia can reveal that ‘bring flavour to Bland’ was in fact a campaign cooked up by the advertising agency Taboo for Goose Island – the idea being to create a viral plea to bring ‘flavour to Bland’ and then ride to the rescue with their beer.

When Morrison was told the Bland slogan was in fact part of an advertisement for the beer, he agreed to go along with it.

A spokeswoman for the Goose Island Beer Company, which is owned by US brewing giant Anheuser-Busch, told Guardian Australia: “After the PM’s video was put out, his office was advised that the Bland campaign was part of an advertising campaign, which included Goose Island. It was a fun, light-hearted campaign that Bland was very pleased to be part of.”

A spokesman for Morrison said the prime minister continued to support the campaign after being told Goose Island was behind it, because Bland was a real shire and it was a good promotion for the area.

“The prime minister wanted to support Bland Shire because like many regional communities, they have been trying everything to attract people to the area to combat the effects of drought on local farmers and businesses,” a spokesman said.

The saga began when Morrison saw a YouTube video by the general manager of Bland Shire, Ray Smith, calling for people “to send us anything that’s going to add to the flavour of Bland”. Smith tweeted it with a personal video message and the hashtag #BringFlavourToBland.

Read more:

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/nov/24/scott-morrison-th...

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“Each day I send my kids to school and I know other members’ kids should also go to school but we do not support our schools being turned into parliaments,” Morrison told parliament on Monday.

“What we want is more learning in schools and less activism in schools.”

Morrison furiously reacted to Greens MP Adam Bandt during question time about the protest, dubbed the Big School Walkout for Climate Action.

Hundreds of Australian school students are vowing to put the books away and converge on MP offices and parliaments around the country this Friday.

Morrison began his answer to Bandt’s question by saying climate change is a “very real and serious issue” that demands attention.

He said the government was acting on climate change through initiatives such as the emissions reduction fund and the renewable energy target.

“We are committed to all of these things, but I will tell you what we are also committed to - kids should go to school,” Morrison said.

Read more: 

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/nov/26/scott-morrison-tells...

What an idiot. I WAS AN ACTIVIST IN SCHOOL FROM DAY ONE... Still is (not in school, though —except in the school of life).

One Nation politicians including Pauline Hanson have suffered the biggest drop in followers of all Australian politicians as Twitter purged accounts associated with the QAnon conspiracy theory.

Following the insurrection at the US Capitol on 6 January, Twitter announced it had suspended 70,000 accounts promoting the QAnon conspiracy theory, after many of those involved in rioting at the Capitol espoused the fraudulent theory as their motivation.

“These accounts were engaged in sharing harmful QAnon-associated content at scale and were primarily dedicated to the propagation of this conspiracy theory across the service,” Twitter said.

“Our updated enforcement on QAnon content on Twitter, along with routine spam challenges, has resulted in changes in follower count for some people’s Twitter accounts. In some cases, these actions may have resulted in follower count changes in the thousands.”

The action reportedly caused follower counts among Republican politicians to drop, and appears to have had a similar impact on the follower count of a number of rightwing Australian politicians, according to social tracking site Social Blade.

Most notably, One Nation leader Pauline Hanson has lost close to 4% of her Twitter followers in the past 30 days, down 2,567 followers in the past 30 days from 65,563 to 62,970.

The biggest loss of more than 1,000 followers occurred on 9 January, but there have been several days in January where the minority party leader has lost several hundred followers a day.

Fellow One Nation senator Malcolm Roberts has lost 1,410 followers, down to 21,191, while the NSW One Nation leader Mark Latham lost 1,572 followers, down to 48,055.

There is no suggestion the politicians themselves support or promote the QAnon conspiracy theory, however, University of Tasmania academic Kaz Ross noted last year the conspiracy theory had proved popular in Australia in part because of other similar conspiracy theories such as Agenda 21.

“The belief that ‘Agenda 21’ is a blueprint for corrupt global governance has become a core tenet of QAnon in Australia,” Ross said.

Hanson’s “It’s OK to be white” motion in the Senate mimics a slogan that has its origins in the same far-right sites that spawned QAnon, 4chan and 8chan.

The losses among MPs from other conservative parties are much lower. Katter Australia party MP Bob Katter has lost 225 followers. Liberal National party senator Gerard Rennick lost 133 of his followers, taking his count down to 1,106, while Liberal MP Tim Wilson has lost 178, down to 20,099.

One of the more active Liberal MPs on Twitter, Dave Sharma, has increased his follower count by 302 in the past 30 days, losing just 21 followers around the time of the purge, to take his follower count to 8,719.

The prime minister, Scott Morrison, lost 757 followers over the course of two days this month, but has made up for the losses to increase his follower count by 8,383 to 514,868.

Read more: 

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/jan/20/one-nation-mps-lost-more-followers-than-other-australian-politicians-in-twitter-purge-of-qanon-accounts

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