Gaffes, Controversies and that Pesky Section 44

And so the campaign has begun, with Scott Morrison visiting the Governor-General at 6:55 am on Thursday morning to ask for the election to be held on May 18. Unlike 2016, where we were stuck with eight weeks of what soon became turgid and frankly boring campaigning, this time it will all be over in a little more than five weeks!

There are 151 seats in the House of Representatives up for grabs, with the party that wins the election needing to win at least 76 seats. This is up from the last couple of elections, as the Australian Electoral Commission has added a new electorate in the Australian Capital Territory. There are also 40 of the seats in the Senate up for grabs, with those who drew the short straw after the double dissolution in 2016 campaigning to remain in the Senate.

The start of the campaign saw Scott Morrison painting the election as a choice between him and his government or Bill Shorten – a tactic taken up because polling suggests that while the Coalition is losing to Labor in polling, Bill Shorten is not the preferred Prime Minister, and not everyone likes him. This tactic, while taking aim at one of the Opposition’s main weaknesses, does paint the Coalition into a corner a little bit, as there’s not a lot you can do when your main campaigning point is “its us or them”.

On the other hand Bill Shorten has said the election is about people and health and education. He doesn’t seem to mind much that he’s not the preferred Prime Minister, as long as people stop using his name as a verb. Shorten has taken a different approach to the election with a great deal of his talking time devoted to policy, and when he is asked about Morrison and the Coalition, he tends to try to divert to policy rather tha personal attack. This approach is refreshing and a nice change from what I refer to as “petty school children” politics.

We’re only a few days into the campaign and already we’ve had our first major misstep in the form of the incumbent Member for Dickson, Peter Dutton. Dutton said in an interview with The Australian newspaper that his Labor opponent Ali France was using her disability as an “excuse” to not live in the marginal northern Brisbane electorate. France is an amputee, who after loosing her leg in a car accident in 2011, and while she has been using a prosthesis while out an about, uses a wheelchair at home. She currently lives two kilometres from the border of Dickson and has committed to moving to the seat if she wins – but in order for her to do that she does need to find a home that either suits or can be renovated to suit her needs.

It took Dutton a day to apologise, during which Scott Morrison tried to stonewall questions to him about Dutton’s comments, and gave the Labor party a bunch of free political advertising. Anyone in the seat of Dickson who didn’t know who Ali France was before the election was called certainly does now. It has also allowed for Labor to pick up on the hypocrisy of the Government who just announced a Royal Commission into abuse within the disability care sector, and Kristina Keneally has called Dutton “the most toxic man in the Liberal Party”.

We’ve also had the first controversy of the election with accusations that the government tried to politicise the work of the Treasury Department. On Friday the government brandished Treasury costings of the Labor party’s tax plans, or at least what looked like them. Labor, justifiably concerned, contacted the Treasury Secretary Philip Gaetjens and asked him to explain. As it turned out, before the election was called the Government asked the Treasury to cost some policies for them, as one in government has a right to do. It just so happens that these policies were similar to, if not the same as, those Labor had announced. Philip Gaetjens made clear to Labor (through a letter to Shadow Treasurer Chris Bowen) that they were not asked to cost Labor’s policies specifically, and had that been the case Treasury would have refused the request. You can read Gaetjens’ letter to Chris Bowen here.

Meanwhile, there have been four early withdrawals from candidates this campaign, with Labor’s Melissa Parke in the West Australian seat of Curtin dropping out after comments on Israel’s treatment of Palestinians, and three Liberal Candidates in Melbourne – Kate Oski in Lalor, Vaishali Ghosh in Wills, and Helen Jackson in Cooper (formerly Batman) – over section 44 issues. Ghosh and Oski have been forced out over citizenship concerns, while Jackson has been revealed to be an Australia Post employee and is in the process of being disendorsed.

Top Tweet

There are a few seats the Coalition are yet to find candidates for….

I just want to let everyone know that if you don’t vote Julian Hill in Bruce you may still get Julian Hill, as the Liberals still haven’t got a candidate. 🙄

— Julian Hill MP (@JulianHillMP) April 13, 2019

Things I’ve Been Looking at Online

Kristina Keneally is on the rise – SMH

There are two major votes on May 18 – ABC Online

Things You Should Check Out

AEC Website – Remember you have until 8pm AEST to enrol to vote or change your details!

ABC VoteCompass – take the survey and see where you sit compared to the major players this election.

 

 

The Week That Was – January 16 to January 21

The week began with Bill Shorten returning from holidays with a more populist and protectionist focus for the year ahead. He spoke about Australian jobs and the likelihood of the USA not ratifying the TPP under Trump. Shorten believes that without the USA, the TPP will fail and therefore it is dead. Shorten has also made clear that Labor will not say ahead of time how they will vote on the TPP when it comes to parliament.

The ABC revealed this week that a Yahoo hack that took place three years ago resulted in several sales of private information to crime syndicates and foreign intelligence. These may have involved the private information and email accounts of several diplomats, government officials and Members of Parliament or the Senate – including Christian Porter, Chris Bowen and Victorian Premier Dan Andrews.

Meanwhile, the Department of Immigration has been criticised for the contracts made with companies when setting up detention centres on Nauru and Manus Island in 2012. According to the audit, they made vague contracts and staff approved the spending of millions of  dollars – some of whom were not authorised to do so. The department also did not keep their asset register up to date, meaning that several assets burned down in a riot were not covered by their insurance, costing the taxpayer.

Malcolm Turnbull has reshuffled his cabinet after the Sussan Ley drama, with Greg Hunt the new Minister for Health and Sport, Arthur Sinodinos is now Industry Minister, Ken Wyatt has now been promoted from an Assistant Minister to a fully fledged Minister – becoming Minister for Ageing and Indigenous Health, while rising young conservative Michael Sukkar has become Assistant Minister to the Treasurer. This is the fourth reshuffle in 16 months.

Malcolm Turnbull’s week has been a bit on the sombre side, with him in Sydney’s West to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Granville train accident, before heading to Melbourne to lay flowers in Bourke Street after the tragedy there. He’s also had to respond to the shock resignation of NSW Premier Mike Baird – who is ideologically similar – and prepare for his likely successor, Gladys Berejiklian.

Also this week, it has been announced that the three-year long search for the missing MH370 plane has been ended, having finished searching in the area in the Indian Ocean. It is still unclear how the plane went down, and it may remain a mystery for years to come – although the Australian, Chinese and Malaysian searchers hope that in the future more information will come to light and they will be able to search again.

Finally this week, the Centrelink debt collection saga continues; Australia Day plans are underway; Australian police commissioners will apologise to victims of child sexual abuse for not believing them when they reported it – although it will not take place until the Royal Commission report is released; Australia is behind the rest of the world in keeping university courses relevant to the modern labor market requirements; and protests took place in Australia and around the world after Trump’s inauguration to show solidarity with minorities in America who have uncertainty ahead for the next few years.

Tweet of the Week

History repeats: When Reagan became president in 1981, Britain had a female prime minister, Canada had Trudeau and Australia had Malcolm.

— George Megalogenis (@GMegalogenis) January 20, 2017

Things I’ve Been Looking at Online

Stan Grant on taking until 2017 for an Indigenous minister to be appointed – ABC Online

 

The Week That Was -May 22 to May 28

The third week of the election began with Bill Shorten campaigning for the Labor candidate in Malcolm Turnbull’s seat of Wentworth, while Malcolm Turnbull announced $7 million for young people to get into clinical trials while at a food and wine festival. They’ve mostly talked taxes and parliamentary entitlements while people aren’t really paying attention. That’s probably because at this point in an average campaign, we’d be two to three weeks out and heading toward the home stretch.

There’s also been some drama over health policy, with Health Minister Susan Ley suggesting that she was not allowed by Treasury and other senior ministers to create the health policy she wanted, instead having to remain with a co-payment and a freeze on Medicare rebates. It led Labor to tell the public that Ley essentially believes that their health policy is better, while Turnbull and Scott Morrison are insisting that there needs to be sustainable spending.

The only other real issue has been the dispute over how costings are done. Both parties agree there is a deficit, and that spending needs to be sustainable. However, while Scott Morrison believes that the promises Labor has made will put a $67 billion hole in the budget. Labor’s Chris Bowen disputes this, suggesting the maths is incorrect, and one could argue it is, given that the Liberal Party has included policies the Labor party has blocked since the 2014 budget and other measures that Labor has disputed. Tony Burke slammed the coalition, saying they were consciously misinforming the public. It also didn’t help that Bill Shorten talked about a ‘spendometer’ when making a comment about the media while making some funding promises at a community meeting.

Two gaffes this week saw Barnaby Joyce suggesting Indonesia was behind the influx of asylum seekers coming by boat, after the Labor government halted the live cattle trade a few years ago after concerns about humane treatment, leaving Malcolm Turnbull and Julie Bishop to do damage control. Meanwhile Mathias Cormann had a moment where he forgot who his Prime Minister was, saying Bill Shorten was a nice, caring, intelligent person, when he meant to say Malcolm Turnbull – Shorten jumped on the mistake, saying the Liberal scare campaign was ‘terminated’.

With Monday this week having been the cut-off for enrolling to vote, it was suggested that nearly 955,000 eligible people were yet to enrol, of which they believe 300,000 are younger voters. Parties are being reminded not to ignore the youth vote, because young people are not disengaged with politics. Others are suggesting that we need an easier and simpler enrolment system.

Finally this week, Bill Shorten and Malcolm Turnbull agree that more needs to be done for reconciliation and upset Mathias Cormann by suggestion that Australia still has issues with racism; there are concerns that the rural delivery of the NBN is and will be sub-par; and dairy farmers are angry after milk suppliers Fonterra and Murray Goulburn drastically cut milk prices, leading to massive public support with people purchasing name-brand milk over $1/L supermarket brand milks.

Tweet of the Week

#ICMYI: Election 2016 ad tracker: How much are the parties spending? #auspol #ausvotes https://t.co/YwWkJUsqYk pic.twitter.com/q5xULycMnl

— ABC News (@abcnews) May 24, 2016

Things I’ve Been Looking at Online

Labor should focus on policy, not Turnbull – ABC The Drum

Why Journalists should get off the campaign buses – ABC The Drum

Nova Peris shuts down racism – Buzzfeed

Magic Pudding, Peter Beattie and the Wombat Trail

So, as the election campaign continues, there has been some interesting developments….

First off, we’re getting special election-themed episodes of Gruen Nation and The Hamster Decides. Yay.

Gruen Nation is all about the advertising. The Hamster Decides is the Chaser’s show – enough said. I really quite enjoy these shows, and if you are a political junkie, Wednesday nights on the ABC is going to be the place to be.

Onward with the serious, important election campaign.

Wednesday saw Abbott promising to have a company tax of 1.5%. This has been called “magic pudding economics” by Labor. There was a lovely (i.e. entertaining) exchange on ABC 774 Melbourne radio when both Joe Hockey and Chris Bowen had a debate. You can listen to that here.

Tony has also been talking up his Paid Parental Leave Scheme. It involves paying women being paid in proportion to their salary. Simply put, a female executive (e.g. major CEO earning millions) is going to get more money when on maternity leave than a woman working as a teacher. In a rare move, the National Party is making clear that they are considering ‘crossing the floor’ (i.e. voting against) over this policy if the Coalition win government, as the National Party MPs usually represent country communities, where people don’t earn as much.

Kevin Rudd visited a school in Western Sydney, where some of the most marginal seats in the country exist. These are key to winning the election, and are usually held by the party in government. These are crucial seats and very important in elections these days.

We also had

Thursday saw some big news….

Peter Beattie, the former QLD Premier, is stepping into Federal politics to be the candidate for the electorate of Forde, after the original candidate pulled out or was replaced…One of the two anyway.

The unemployment rate is steady, so there was nothing really to comment on there, Joe Hockey did say that Labor has no plans to create jobs.

Thursday was also the end of Ramadan and at Eid celebrations, we saw politicians galore.

Joe Hockey (who has Palestinian heritage), Jason Clare (Home Affairs Minister), Bob Carr (Foreign Minister) and Tony Burke (Immigration Minister) all showed up at various events, most in Western Sydney.

Friday saw the play of the ‘underdog card’ on Kevin Rudd’s side.

With the News Corp Australia CEO quitting, Rudd had a go at their papers again, taking a swipe at Murdoch as well. With a higher GST under Tony, Kevin says, Vegemite will cost more.

Tony brought up the Insulation scandal again, to which he says ‘it makes you cry’. He promised a judicial inquiry to see just how Kevin screwed up. I think he may have just implied (at least to some) that Kev is as corrupt as NSW Labor. Thanks Tony. He’s scared I think, given that several Liberal-held seats are 50/50 in two-party preferred in QLD, especially after Beattie was called in.

Meanwhile, on the “Wombat Trail”, as it’s called, the Nationals’ leader Warren Truss has been going around country towns and regions campaigning. Their results in elections have been declining, but they think their numbers will be better this year. They’re also hoping to get the seat of Page this year, which is held by Labor.

Well, I’ll leave you to enjoy the weekend, and I’ll summarise the week in the next day or two..