Over the weekend, if you’re as unfortunate to follow a load of politicians’ accounts on social media as Oddie is, you may have noticed something strange.
Victorian Opposition leader Matthew Guy, known for ever and always as Matthew, changed his name to Matt on social media.
Ditto his media releases — all now refer to Guy as ‘Matt’, not the tried and tested ‘Matthew’.
Surely it can’t be related to an election being three months away and the recent slew of resignations and dismissals from his parliamentary office?
It follows in the footsteps of our current Victorian head honcho, Dan, who for years was known as Daniel to pretty much everyone except his mum, only to pull an about-face and pull out Dan Andrews for the masses.
Oddie supposes if it can work for Dan Andrews, maybe it can work for Matt Guy? Hmm. We’re not sold yet.
What’s in a job?
While we’re on politics, Oddie saw over the weekend former Prime Minister Scott Morrison had given himself a bunch of portfolios — in secret — during the pandemic.
What for, no-one knows. No-one even knows how many, either — at the time of writing it was five portfolios.
It certainly doesn’t appear to be illegal — just really, really weird.
Australians were mostly fine with norms being thrown out the window to face a once-in-100-years pandemic, and early doors having someone else with those ministerial powers might have seemed sensible in case illness spread among the government.
But to do it without telling anyone seems bizarre.
It could yet be far worse, mind you. Our former PM is being looked at for giving himself a few more jobs and titles during the pandemic.