In the weeks leading up to an election, leaders and would-be leaders will follow a certain script. They’ll go out in public and rub shoulders with us ordinary folk. They’ll kiss babies. They’ll don hi-vis vests and pretend they’ve worked with their hands before. And inevitably, as is sure to happen when working with animals, kids and regular Australians, someone will go off-script and tell a politician what they really think of them through the subtle art of the political heckle.
That’s what happened to Prime Minister Scott Morrison yesterday when he ventured into Newcastle’s Edgeworth Tavern and was accosted by some not-so-quiet Australians.
With Morrison surrounded by staff, pub-goers and reporters, he had nowhere to turn as the man gave him a piece of his mind about restrictions to his disability support pension payments.
“This is what you said when you got elected last time: ‘We’re going to help all those people that worked all their lives, paid their taxes and those that have a go, get a go,'” he said.
“Well, I’ve had a go, mate, I’ve worked all my life and paid my taxes.
“You better fucking do something. I’m sick of your bullshit.”
The heckling didn’t end there.
Another woman pretended to be a fan of the PM and asked for a selfie, before filming her face right up next to Morrison’s and saying, “Congratulations on being the worst prime minister we’ve ever had.”
Ouch.
Political heckling makes for good headlines — and honestly, if there was justice in this world, prime ministers would be forced to sit down with the most vulnerable in society more frequently — but it’s nothing new. It is, in fact, exactly what politicians who make decisions that greatly impact people’s lives might expect when they are eventually forced to go out in public and talk to those people.
In celebration of the colourful past of heckling, and in anticipation of the (surely) many great heckles ahead of us in this election campaign, here are some of the greatest political heckles of our time.
‘Can everyone get off the grass, please?’
The most Australian heckle of all time didn’t come in a heated moment of debate. It came in 2020 when Morrison was holding a press conference launching his government’s HomeBuilder scheme… all while standing on an irritated man’s freshly re-seeded grass.
The starting words were barely out of the PM’s mouth when the pack was interrupted by a new homeowner belting out, “Can everyone get off the grass, please?”
The pack shuffles back as the homeowner continues in exasperation, “Hey guys, I’ve just reseeded that.”
Don’t talk about the Australian dream if you’re going to trample all over the seeds of it, Scott.
A Liberal PM walks into a union protest
In 2017, former Liberal prime minister John Howard accidentally walked into a CMFEU protest against cuts to penalty rates. Oops! The former PM needed to be “rescued” by police after protesters surrounded him. The former PM never appeared to be in any actual danger, however, and took the whole thing in his stride.
‘You’re a fucking idiot’
Kevin Rudd, AKA the king of kissing babies, was doing the rounds in Perth in 2013 when a man passing him at Perth’s City Link station shouted out, “You’re a fucking idiot.”
When asked later by reporters if he regretted swearing at Rudd, the heckler responded, “He is a fucking idiot, why should I regret swearing?”
Why indeed?
‘Dickhead’
The most heartfelt truths don’t always need a lot of words, as was the case with the 2011 Coles Heckler.
Then-prime minister Tony Abbott was walking through a Coles supermarket and threw out a friendly, “Good morning, sir. How are you?” to an old bloke walking by.
He responded, simply, with “dickhead”.
The heckled becomes the heckler
Many immortal lines have outlived Gough Whitlam, but one particularly memorable one was when he was heckled on the campaign trail by a man upset with his stance on abortion.
Whitlam responded to the heckler by saying, “Let me make quite clear that I am for abortion and, in your case, sir, we should make it retrospective.”
