Remember getting busted copying your friend's English essay in Year 8, and the teacher reading out both essays to the class and asking people to spot the difference? That kind of humiliation would be pretty hard to come by unless of course, you are the Assistant Treasurer and Housing Minister, Michael Sukkar.
Sukkar and his team would be feeling the heat of the red hot shame of plagiarism a little too closely today as their latest campaign video comes under scrutiny. The popular South Australian Premier, Peter Malinauskas, released a campaign video with a heart-felt and personalised message detailing his wholesome family history. In an absurd twist of events, Sukkar's team released an ad on his Facebook page on Wednesday night which is almost identical.
The 50-second campaigns are bafflingly similar. Both videos contain a grey background with photos of each of their families - both current and historical, dating back to their immigrant grandparents. If that in itself seems a little awkward, it only gets worse with the scripts, which are almost like the same person writes them, or, you know, copied.
Mr Malinauskas's ad starts: "I'm a husband, a father of three, a weekend gardener, a pretty average footy player, and leader of the South Australian Labour Party."
Mr Sukkar's ad opens with: "I'm a husband, a father of two boys, an amateur cook, sporting enthusiast and Federal Member for Deakin."
BREAKING NEWS: Liberal @MichaelSukkarMP caught plagiarising almost word for word SA Labor election ad. #auspol #vicpol #springst pic.twitter.com/1DtKBHCWwS
— SA Labor (@alpsa) April 14, 2022
Oh, so similar. Could it get worse? Yes. It continues with…
"I'm Peter Malinauskas. Here in South Australia, every generation has benefited from the one before," the SA Labor leader states in his ad.
"I'm Michael Sukkar and I believe that every generation should benefit from the one before," the federal Assistant Treasurer and Minister for Housing states.
Please stop, surely there are no more overlapping ideas? There are:
"My grandparents left war-torn Europe in the forties in search of a better life for our family and my parents worked tirelessly to teach me the value of hard work," Mr Malinauskas says.
"My father came to Australia from Lebanon for a better life and he and my mum worked tirelessly to teach me and my siblings the value of hard work," Mr Sukkar says.
This impossibly coincidental comparison has left the Liberal MP's team red-faced, and the Labor Premier's team extremely flattered. It's almost as painful as being back in Year 8 English again.
