Minister for Employment Stuart Robert said if Scott Morrison’s wife had been with him when he was asked the price of bread, petrol and a rapid antigen test, she’d have been able to answer the question which stumped the Prime Minister on Tuesday.
The question, posed during the National Press Club lunch, asked Mr Morrison if he had lost touch with ordinary Australians.
"And on that, theme off the top of your head, can you tell me the price of a loaf of bread, a litre of petrol and a rapid antigen test?” a reporter asked.
Mr Morrison replied: “I'm not going to pretend to you that I go out each day and I buy a loaf of bread and I buy a litre of milk. I'm not going to pretend to you that I do that. I’ll leave those sorts of things to you, mate.
“I do my job every day to ensure that those things are affordable as they possibly can be for Australians every single day.”
On Wednesday, Mr Robert was similarly asked if he knew the cost of household staples.
He replied “of course,” listing the prices and labelling it as “a bit of a gotcha question” before coming to Mr Morrison's defence on ABC radio.
“From the Prime Minister’s point of view, if he’d sat there and Jen was with him, she’d be able to rattle off all the prices of all the things they buy.”
“The Prime Minister is well and truly in touch because he travels regularly and that’s the beauty of getting out and about,” said Mr Robert.
Australians online have since slammed the comments made about Mr Morrison’s wife, Jenny.
“Because that’s what wives are for?” one user wrote online.
“'It's the little woman's business’ is where Minister Robert really wants to go?” said another.
Last year, Mr Morrison copped criticism in the wake of former Liberal staffer Brittany Higgins' rape allegation when he said a discussion with his wife Jenny made him consider how he, as a father, would want his daughters to be treated.
"Jenny and I spoke last night and she said to me, you have to think about this as a father. What would you want to happen if it were our girls?" he told reporters.
“Jenny has a way of clarifying things. Always has. And so, as I’ve reflected on that overnight and listened to Brittany and what she had to say.”
Veteran Labor strategist and political commentator Bruce Hawker said the "age-old trick" to invoke the wife and family and appear "folksy" is a tough card to play in a contemporary setting.
“I don’t think Scott Morrison should be expected to know the price of every item on the shelves … but the suggestion [from Mr Robert] that a wife should know, would just have a lot of women bristling and a lot of men cringing,” said Mr Hawker.
“It's just this automatic, default position that I think people find very disconcerting.”
Responding to Mr Robert's comments, Labor frontbencher Stephen Jones said: "The prize goose thinks buying this stuff is ladies work."
