Oops, a bit late with the posting…working in retail during holiday periods tends to lead to that.
I hope you had a restful Easter break.
Last week, we saw policy promises from both major parties around health, jobs and the economy. The parties both rallied their volunteers on Sunday, and so began a week of campaigning with tempered by truces on Good Friday and Easter Sunday.
This week saw another gaffe, with Bill Shorten saying there would be “no new taxes on superannuation” – except, well, he has one planned should he get into government. He apologised and said that upon reflection he should have said that there would be no new taxes on superannuation other than what had already been announced by Labor in the last few months. Scott Morrison has attempted to jump on this gaffe, but it feels overdone, mostly because he’s using the line he’s been using for the last ten days about Labor and Bill Shorten being liars.
When not selling their policies to the electorate, both Shorten and Morrison have been frustrating journalists (and voters) by stonewalling on certain questions. For example, when the Prime Minister was in the electorate of Deakin with MP Michael Sukkar, he was asked he felt confident in Sukkar’s support, given Sukkar had backed Dutton last August – and Morrison responded:
That is such a bubble question, I’m just going to leave that one in the bubble
Shorten on the other hand, got into a terse exchange with Channel 10 reporter Jonathan Lea, who asked about the costs of Labor’s emissions reduction target five time and didn’t get a “proper” answer – Lea was rightfully frustrated.
It is a worry that both leaders feel they can control what is put out by the media by stonewalling and avoiding questions. It doesn’t work, because we have a fairly independent and free press, which means that politicians or governments can’t control the story anyway. If anything it makes both leaders look like they’re hiding something, which one might think would be something they would rather avoid.
There weren’t a huge range of announcements this week due to the agreement to not campaign on Good Friday and Easter Sunday, but Labor has promised to give Indigenous community organisations more say in where money goes, combined with further promises to invest $115 million in indigenous health, and to make Pat Dodson the Indigenous Affairs Minister should Labor win the election. Otherwise, most of the week was spent either talking more about previous policy announcements, or debating whose policy costings were correct. There are so many millions and billions floating around, my head is spinning.
Meanwhile, Fraser Anning had been embroiled in some sort of alt-right conspiracy to infiltrate politics. It seems that at least one of his political staffers and some of his campaign staff have links to an ultra right-wing group that tried to infiltrate the Nationals (they were unsuccessful, after they were discovered and expelled from the party in October last year). However, it gets a bit weirder, as one of these alt-right guys worked for Clive Palmer a few years ago. He only worked for Palmer and his eponymous – but now-defunct – Palmer United Party, but only for three weeks. Palmer doesn’t see it as a big deal, he apparently fires people all the time.
Meanwhile, Clive Palmer is having another stab at politics – he is now running a new political party, the United Australia Party, and will be running for the Senate. Palmer was planning to contest the ultra-marginal Queensland seat of Herbert, but because he’s quite unpopular there, he’s decided to put someone else in the seat and try for the Upper House where he potentially has a better chance.
Many in the government now believe that George Christiansen’s electorate of Dawson in Queensland is going to be lost in the election, as he comes under more fire for being an “absent member” – he’s spending more time in the Philippines than in Australia, mostly because Christiansen has a Filipino girlfriend. The main concern for the electorate Dawson for both major parties is that the One Nation vote is generally quite high and they don’t really want a member of the Lower House from One Nation.
There are also questions surrounding Barnarby Joyce and Angus Taylor over the $80 million government purchase of water rights from two farms owned by a company that is domiciled in the Cayman Islands. If that wasn’t enough, the company did at one point employ Angus Taylor. Taylor denies that he or any family members have benefitted from the sale, and Barnaby Joyce was “out of range”.
Tweet of the Week
Election campaigns that have Easter in the middle of them means politicians take photos with the oddest of characters…
Thing’s I’ve Been Looking at Online
The logistics of the world’s biggest single-day election – The Interpreter
Annabel Crabb says we shouldn’t be distracted by the billions and millions – ABC Online
Kara L 