Scott Morrison's defiant response to savage question: 'Let me say this'
Prime Minister Scott Morrison remains defiant in the final days of the campaign, refusing to go back on his comments about saving Australia.
On Tuesday, Mr Morrison spoke with A Current Affair's Tracy Grimshaw, who did not hold back when listing all the things the PM didn't do, after he claimed he "saved" Australia at the Liberal's campaign launch on Sunday.
"You don't hold a hose, you weren't in your tinnie plucking people off rooftops, you weren't doing 16 hour days in PPE on Covid-19 wards," Ms Grimshaw said.
"You didn't get enough vaccines soon enough, you didn't get enough RATs so we could finally have a holiday interstate for Christmas and China are setting up a base in the Solomons, do you think maybe you slightly over-egged the part about saving the country?"
A seemingly taken aback Mr Morrison defended the claim.
"That's quite a long list you've been able to pull together, but let me say this, we've come through this pandemic better than almost any other country in the world," Mr Morrison said.
The PM said the comment in relation to "saving the country" was specific to JobKeeper, which the Labor Parry initially pushed for and proved a lifeline for workers and businesses.
"I was the one who shut the borders, remember, going back to the early days of February," he added, saying he brought the country together with the National Cabinet.
Mr Morrison said he backed Australians with the help of Treasurer Josh Frydenberg and his team.
"That's how Australia survived, by backing in Australians, and our policies did that," he said.
"Sure I have my critics, not everything that we did worked perfectly, but I can tell you when you stack it up Tracy, what we were able to do in Australia, compared to the countries around the world, our economic plan has worked."
With millions of vote already in the can, Mr Morrison again tried to paint Opposition leader Anthony Albanese as a "loose unit" with regards to the economy.
The interview addressed several issues or gripes Australians have with Mr Morrison's leadership style.
At one point the PM was asked what he wished he had done differently. The Liberal leader said he wished he had been more sensitive at times and regretted not having the military handle the vaccine rollout from the start.
Ms Grimshaw asked if he would go back and meet with the women who marched in Canberra last year in the wake of sexual assault allegations in parliament.
Mr Morrison refused to meet the group of women in front of parliament and then later suggested on the floor of parliament they were lucky they didn't live in other countries or they would be shot.
"No, I did the right thing on that day. I offered a meeting in my office as I do with so many groups," he told Ms Grimshaw.
"I was meeting with other groups on the day as well and I was very happy to have a discussion and I would have welcomed the opportunity for that type of a discussion in my office."
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