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….
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.
Kara L 