Cook says ‘you’ve got to have one unprofessional moment’ as description wins applause at pre-election event

The Western Australian premier, Roger Cook, has apologised after calling the US vice-president, JD Vance, a “knob” at a pre-election event in Perth.

At the West Australian’s Leadership Matters event on Tuesday morning, at which Cook was the guest speaker, a journalist asked the premier to finish the sentence: “JD Vance is a …” Cook replied: “Knob.”

Cook then said: “You’ve got to have one unprofessional moment, don’t you? That was it.”

His description won him laughs and a round of applause from the audience.

  • null_dot@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    8·
    21 hours ago

    For context, this guy is the current state premier, similar to a US state governor I guess.

    He is from our Labor party which is centre-left. In the last election the Labor party won 53 out of 59 seats. His party had overwhelming support at that time.

    Of course the pendulum will swing back to the right at the upcoming election on Saturday, but I don’t think it will swing far enough for the conservatives to form government.

      • null_dot@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        5·
        9 hours ago

        Yeah ok so there’s a bit of a back story that I couldn’t be bothered explaining before.

        During Covid our premier at that time was from the same centre-left labor party, Mark McGowan. We had an initial 2 week lock down, but thereafter we didn’t have any significant covid infections at all for 18 months or so (I think).

        Our premier, McGowan just kept the borders closed and we all just went about our lives with no restrictions. The federal government gave everyone heaps of money (because people in other states actually needed it) and the economy just went nuts. Everyone could afford all the new fancy things. No one could go on overseas holidays so everyone spent all their money at local bars and restaurants and it was just an epic love fest of fun times and good things. I don’t recall the numbers exactly but I think something like 90% of people had 2x vaccinations by the time the borders eventually opened.

        Our federal government and other state premiers gave our state premier a lot of shit because keeping the border closed made them look like idiots and it wasn’t great for the Australian economy. Our PM at that time (centre right) made a comment about how it was time for Western Australians to come out of our cave, which ultimately cost him the next federal election. Anyhow, by the time of the last state election Western Australian’s were lovingly referring to McGowan as “state daddy” because it was nice to have a rep telling everyone else to fuck off because we’re safe in our space thanks very much.

        That’s why the Labor party won that last election 3 years ago with a bonkers majority. I will always vote Labor but even I can acknowledge that having such a huge majority doesn’t really support a healthy democracy.

        Anyhow, McGowan resigned on good terms and stepped aside for our current Premier. He’s not state daddy but he’s cut from the same cloth IMO.

        • pHr34kY@lemmy.worldEnglish
          1·
          9 hours ago

          TBH by the 6th lockdown in Melbourne, we were jealous of how you guys had effective border control. Scomo ruined the rest of the place. We could have grounded all passenger flights and had that as a single restriction and been fine.