The week began with the Labor Party’s campaign launch in Western Sydney, with former Prime Ministers Paul Keating, Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard putting aside their dramas to attend, along with a large majority of the Labor team. The party opted to have Penny Wong speak about the problems Labor sees with the current government and Tanya Plibersek spoke on Labor’s virtues and values.
The Opposition reiterated their policies on climate change, wage growth and health, along with several new promises – $200 million for youth mental health, $500 million for hospital emergency department upgrades, and tax credits for companies that hire under-25s and over-55s.
The only spanner in the works on launch day was Paul Keating. He started by surprising the ABC’s Andrew Probyn and Jane Nicholson who were hosting coverage from the launch:
Keating, who is famous for his use of words over the years (see here), then proceeded to call Scott Morrison “a fossil with a baseball cap”, and suggest that government security agencies were going “berko” over China. The latter statement gave the government something to grab onto to use against Labor regarding embracing China too openly – which sort of distracted from Labor policies during the week because people kept asking if the Labor front bench agreed with him.
The Labor Party also had Bill Shorten’s wife Chloe introduce him at the launch, where she talked about how wonderful Bill is as a human being – but a pretty terrible dancer (a reference to his “dad dancing” in Kiribati). The aim of Chloe’s speech was to improve Shorten’s personal popularity, and that combined with some luck and the ability to capitalise upon in late in the week has shown Shorten to be far more relatable and human than he has been in the past.
Bill Shorten then appeared on Q&A on the ABC on Monday night by himself – Scott Morrison declined to attend, and opted to be interviewed on ABC 7:30 instead – allowing Shorten a further chance to speak about his values and policies. It also allowed him to make a few jokes and show his sense of humour. If you have a spare 70-80 minutes before the election, I recommend you watch the episode either on iView or below:
Whatever media or public speaking training Bill Shorten has had over the last 3-6 years has worked pretty well and it shows. He sounds like a reasonable, sensible human being and he’s explaining a lot of his policies in a very measured manner, treating the voters like intelligent humans. The humour at the Q&A appearance helped Shorten seem more personable and it makes a refreshing change from some of what we have seen with the government recently.
During the program he spoke about his mother and how she hadn’t been able to study law when she finished high school as she’d wanted. Instead she earned a scholarship to study education, and had stuck with it and she was able to provide for Bill and his siblings as children – the gist essentially was that Ann Shorten didn’t get all the opportunities because she was working class and Bill Shorten wants to make all opportunities available to all.
On Wednesday, the Daily Telegraph in Sydney published a story that implied that Bill Shorten had made up things or lied about his mother on the Monday Q&A appearance. As you would imagine, Shorten was very upset and in a press conference defending his mother, he cried in public.
This has served to make Bill Shorten appear even more ‘normal’, for want of a better word, as this show of emotion is something not really ever seen with Shorten in the past.
Scott Morrison also said that the Telegraph’s story was unfair, and there have again been calls to leave the parents, children and other family members of candidates out of the spotlight in campaigns – unless they are there willingly as part of the campaign, like Bill’s wife Chloe.
Scott Morrison and the government kept Sunday pretty low-key because of Labor’s launch but did announce money for e-Safety and anti-cyberbullying programs, as well as promising to increase prison time for those who abuse people online.
The week became a bit interesting for Morrison when he was the victim of an attempted egging while at a Country Women’s Association (CWA) event. A 24-year-old woman tried to egg Morrison’s head, but missed. Morrison’s security arrested the woman, and in the kerfuffle, knocked over an elderly CWA member at the event. Morrison assisted the member to her feet and checked she was alright, while the CWA ladies watched the young woman get taken away by security and police, with some telling her she was a “silly girl”. Morrison was unfazed by the incident, brushing it off by saying that the CWA knows what to do with eggs, and Bill Shorten has condemned the egging and any type of violence during an election campaign.
There was a third debate this week at the National Press Club, and it was an experimental model that the Press Club had never tried before. There was only one moderator – the Press Club’s President Sabra Lane – and the audience was made up of equal numbers of Coalition and Labor supporters, who asked the questions.
After weeks and weeks of nagging Labor has, in their own time, revealed the costings for their policies. Chris Bowen and Jim Chalmers presented the policy costings, which showed how much Labor intends to raise through tax changes and how they intend to spend taxpayer money while still maintaining a surplus over the next few years. Matthias Cormann and Josh Frydenberg were dispatched to rebut the costings, but all they could seem to come up with was “it’s a con job” and “Labor deception”, which does suggest to me that the Coalition is panicking a bit on how to deal with the reasoned and measured approach Labor is taking.
Other than the Keating issue Labor is having a little bit of trouble this week with tax policy as some on the right-wing of politics are suggesting that Labor will bring in a “Death Tax” at the behest of the Greens if they win the election. This is despite the consistent denials of Bill Shorten, Chris Bowen, Anthony Albanese and many other Labor figures. This non-existent policy that the right is trying to scare people with just won’t die (if there is a pun in that, it is totally intended) and it’s another distraction that is beginning to frustrate the Labor party a bit – there are a limited number of ways to say “there will be no death tax” before you start to get annoyed.
Also this week, Kerryn Phelps called in the Australian Federal Police after an email was circulated suggesting Phelps was pulling out of the race because she had been found ineligible to run in the seat under section 44. The email suggests that because she is Jewish, she has the right to Israeli citizenship. There are two key facts that prove this email wrong. First, while being Jewish makes you eligible to be an Israeli citizen, you do have to express a desire to do so and get a special visa (which she hasn’t done), or have parents who were Israeli citizens, the latter of which Phelps doesn’t have as she is a convert. Second, there are several other Jewish candidates and MPs, including Josh Frydenberg, Mark Dreyfus and Phelps’ opponent Dave Sharma, and they haven’t had problems with section 44 in regards to Israeli citizenship.
Finally this week, the Aged Care Royal Commission has been hearing evidence about the treatment of nursing home residents with dementia, and the evidence so far hasnt been pleasant. There are allegations that one patient’s dentures were left in her mouth for weeks, and that a patient was given such a high dose of anti-depressants that they were unresponsive to family when they came to visit on the patient’s birthday.
Before I go, interest rates stayed the same, although the word on the street is that they might be cut in the next few months, making people think the only reason they didn’t cut them this month is because of the election campaign.
Don’t forget to vote on May 18!
Tweets of the Week
https://twitter.com/MrsDzTB/status/1126681842319364096
What do you do when you’re an independent with limited resources – an interpretive dance:
Things I’ve Been Looking at Online
Vote Compass results on penalty rates and the minimum wage – ABC Online
Could America get a gay president in 2020? – ABC Online
Laura Tingle on the differences between the Labor and Coalition campaigns – ABC Online
Kara L 