Nighty night
Yes people, that’s enough.
Let’s take stock of Monday with a parting summary that’s wider than today, in the spirit of where are we at the campaign midpoint?
- The Coalition is clearly having trouble landing the core “jobs and growth” message. The budget message has been wound back progressively to focus on the tax cut as a small business measure, not a tax cut for big companies. Economists have also picked apart the benefits of the policy to the point where it must now be clear to anyone paying attention that the budget roadmap is a distance short of a magic bullet. Malcolm Turnbull is also starting to go to work on his negatives. A new advertisement featuring the prime minister talking about his upbringing and his father (the personal being political) is clearly designed to create a connection between the voters and the candidate, which suggests there may be trouble on that front. Given how presidential the Coalition campaign is, given all the Coalition eggs are in the Turnbull basket, it is a problem, potentially, if the voters are feeling disconnected from the candidate. The Coalition can’t exactly revert to a team campaign from here, this play has got to work, or they all sink.
- Labor is just chugging along with its game plan, which has been to contrast its social capital and inclusive growth agenda with the Coalition’s trickle down proposal. It’s been steady-as-she-goes, there’s been no significant repositioning, or recalibration of the messaging, and the polls (as well as some of the factors I’ve outlined above) suggest we have a genuine contest. Bill Shorten looks relaxed, and his communication is mostly effective. But things are going to get tougher from here. Labor remains weak on costings and spending, and I think it’s risky to launch big spending initiatives without a very clear sense of the specific savings that will pay for the policies. Small tells like a childcare policy that isn’t means tested suggests there’s not enough internal discipline, that election spending imperatives are crowding out the budget imperatives. And how about jobs and the economy? This territory does need to be occupied at some point.
But, we are only at the half way point. All things liable to change without notice.
Thanks for your company today, I’ll be back, doing it all again, tomorrow.
GetUp! has referred the LNP backbencher George Christensen to the Australian Electoral Commission for seeking to give Libby Barge of Eco Barge Turtle Sanctuary $12,000 “personal contribution” if he’s re-elected. The activist group says in a press release issued this afternoon that Christensen, in a Facebook post, says he will provide a “$12,000 personal contribution” to Libby Barge of Eco Barge Turtle Sanctuary – but only if he is re-elected. GetUp! national director Paul Oosting contends this sort of proposition is “against the laws and conventions of our democracy. He’s got serious questions to answer”.
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Look out Sturt.
The shadow education minister, Kate Ellis, is being pressed on Sky News about how Labor will fund its childcare policy.
Kate Ellis:
The way we fund it is to make it a priority and find savings elsewhere.
Ellis says Labor will save more than it spends over the cycle. Is this over four years or over 10 years, Sky political editor David Speers, wonders? Ellis says the shadow treasurer, Chris Bowen, will make the announcements at the appropriate time.
Speers asks Ellis whether it is OK for Bill Shorten to characterise childcare as a responsibility that falls on women. Ellis says the Labor leader is just talking about reality. The evidence is clear, she says, that women do the majority of unpaid work in this country.
But what if Tony Abbott had said that, would Labor be sanguine? Ellis says Shorten is not saying that it’s right or the way it should be, just that it’s the current reality. A better childcare system would make it less of a reality, she says.
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Gracious.
Family First candidate Peter Madden hopes his campaign billboard trailer will promote "strong rational discussion" pic.twitter.com/UJWx29zTVL
— Emily Baker (@emilybakertas) June 6, 2016
Sorry. Thread, calls, people coming and going, will pick up the threads now.
I do love the idea of the two campaign planes snarling at each other on the tarmac. Malcolm Turnbull was due to go to Tasmania this afternoon, but the bad weather has apparently scotched that.
It was quite funny though, how Malcolm Turnbull corrected himself when he thought he’d gone in too deep on fathers. Mothers, great. Engineers, great, kiddies, great, everyone – great. If you don’t do that, you wake up lathered in a fresh moral panic about some key demographic disdained – like all the faux outrage today about Bill Shorten being a Jurassic creature who thinks only women are responsible for childcare (despite the fact he’s produced a policy which is clearly intended to help women work more). God, campaigns, excruciating.
The personal is political
Malcolm Turnbull’s self-identification as a feminist this afternoon gives me the organising idea to work through what I need to work through with the prime minister’s statement about his father in the press conference just then: let’s grab the catchcry of second-wave feminists, the personal is political.
Let’s do this step by step.
Overnight (as has been referenced several times today), the Coalition campaign has produced an advertisement which features Malcolm Turnbull talking about his father. The purpose of this conversation with voters is obvious. The campaign needs to counter perceptions about the candidate being removed from the life experience of ordinary Australian voters. What better way to counter that perception than with a testimonial about your lived experience, and by producing a lived experience common to a lot of people who have been through the visceral trauma of parental separation. Anyone who has lived through a similar experience immediately understands what Turnbull is talking about, empathy with that case study is immediate – it cuts across gender, social class and economic circumstances. Even if you haven’t been through that, there’s an element of “there but for the grace of God go I”.
Personal stories are powerful, that’s why modern politicians trade in them.
So let’s come now to where the campaign objective (humanising Malcolm) meets the personal. Malcolm Turnbull can deliver this version of himself because it’s real. The loss he still carries floats to the surface entirely organically. This is a foundational story for this man, who also happens to be a politician and, currently, the prime minister. He dives deep into the story to tell it – you saw it just then. It’s not a campaign conceit, it’s core to his personal mythology. That’s why it has currency, it’s a kernel of real in an ocean of tactics and strategy.
It’s a bit like where I started this morning. I mentioned there’s an overlay of nostalgia in Turnbull’s framing and styling: he needs that sense of continuity to take the edge off his aggressive modernity, lest he get typecast as the tech guy, or the venture capital guy, or the let markets rip guy – he’s creating something more timeless in the way he’s presenting himself. It’s also part of the Coalition’s stability pitch, the “let’s reduce the chaos and turnover in Canberra” pitch, being the person who projects to voters as calm, and prime ministerial. The affect is deliberate. It’s not an accident.
It boils down to a simple proposition. Election campaigns for candidates are a process of reducing your negatives. The higher the negatives get, the harder it is for you to be elected. If you have a negative (and Turnbull’s negatives are pretty obvious), best get about reducing them.
Quite fascinating in it’s way, this. All the turning on the head of a pin, and the pulses of human emotion in the middle of the choreography.
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Well we are having an interesting day, bit strange, but interesting, I’ll be back with some thoughts on that shortly.
As I said, fathers rock, mothers are great, engineers are great, girls can do anything.
Q: I asked before about the Sky News people’s forum with the ‘Courier-Mail’. Will you go to that on Wednesday and Mr Shorten said that it would be offensive to Queenslanders if you don’t?
Malcolm Turnbull:
I’m sure he did. Look, we are actually - we are having some -we are looking at some alternatives and what I’m hoping to do is to have a debate that is a bit different, that is - that involves Facebook and that involves a larger audience, and that is more engaging. So, I can assure you, I enjoy debating and I want to reach as many people as I possibly can in the debate because we have a great story to tell.
Our national economic plan is vitally important for our nation’s future, and I want to have the opportunity to explain it and take questions on it for as many people as possible. So we’re looking at some so we are looking at how we can achieve wider and greater reach for the debate.
If that’s all, thank you very much for being here. As I said, fathers rock, mothers are great, engineers are great, girls can do anything.
See you.
Fathers rock, and so do the mothers ..
Q: Mr Turnbull, could I just ask you about the video your campaign released last night, your reflections on your relationship with your father and your upbringing. Why was it important to release that? Was that to counter misconceptions?
Malcolm Turnbull:
It’s important to honour your parents Mark. It is important to honour your father. I was - I was brought up by my father. He ... He taught me so many things, some of them I talked about in that video. He taught me how to cook, not with great talent, I hasten to add, but competently. He taught me how to iron competently. I’ve been given high marks by Mrs Turnbull on that score. And he taught me respect and loyalty. Well, as I said, I would not be the man I am today without him. He was a great – you know, the most – there are many remarkable things about my dad, but I tell you one thing that was in some ways the most remarkable. When my mother left us, we had nowhere to live and Dad rented a flat and didn’t have any furniture. I think the only bit of furniture we had left was my bed, so it wasn’t – he had every reason to be a bit unhappy, to say the least.
And yet he never ever said a bad word about her. You think about, you know – you think about how rare that is. He never uttered a critical word of my mother in all of those years. And when he died and then – he was killed young, he was killed in an aeroplane crash when he was 56 ... I had both of their sets of correspondence and I could read the letters that Bruce wrote to my mother, the letters this he were filled with sadness and reproach and, you know, how could you do this, why did you do that, and the back and forth. I literally have the two sides of the correspondence. And I thought: “What does it say about a man? What does it say about his love that he could sit down and write letters like that, pouring out his heart and then turn to his little boy and say, your mother is the greatest woman in the world and she loves you more than anything.”
What a man. What a great man. So, fathers, fathers rock. There you go. Fathers rock. And so do the mothers, too.
Are there any other questions?
Updated
A reporter notes the prime minister flagged changes to the Fair Work Act over the weekend. What exactly would they be?
(I gave you that quote a couple from Turnbull a couple of posts back).
Malcolm Turnbull:
Well, as you know, under the Fair Work Act there are a number of - there is a list of what are called objectionable clauses in EBAs, in industrial agreements, and what we would do - what we propose to do is to include into that list of objectionable clauses ones which would have the impact ... have an adverse impact on volunteer organisations such as the CFA.
Turnbull goes on to reference the floods over the weekend: Bill Shorten has to decide whether he is on the side of the heroes of the emergency services brigades or whether he’s on the side of the trade unions. They aren’t heroes in this calculation.
A question about union governance, which gives the prime minister an opportunity to reference the Country Fire Authority dispute in Victoria. And infernos.
Malcolm Turnbull:
You’ve seen the extraordinary events here in Victoria where you would have the 60,000 volunteers of the CFA – these are the men and women who stand between Victorians and the inferno of the Australian bushfire.
Those heroes, those volunteers, those community organisations are, if the government has its way, if the premier has his way, are going to be subordinated to the firefighters union, at the union’s demand.
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Q: Your family has been a big focus of the campaign the last couple of days. Do you want Australians to get to know you better and why, and would you say this is now the real Malcolm campaigning?
Malcolm Turnbull:
I will leave you to the commentary.
Several questions about childcare. Will the government bring forward its package?
Malcolm Turnbull:
If we can secure the passage of our legislation after parliament gets back, assuming we are returned to government, then, and if we can start it earlier, then we will ...
We have a genuine reform package, it’s a genuine reform package, and it is one that will provide the greatest support, considerably enhanced support to families on lower incomes.
Q: Do you have any alternative savings for childcare, if the Senate does block these measures in the next parliament?
Malcolm Turnbull:
Well, it is a package, as you know, we have savings out of the – we have other savings, as you know, in the social welfare budget. We believe they are prudent savings. Look, the reality is Labor is proposing to spend $3bn extra and they have not indicated at all where it is going to come from.
Updated
A question on why people like independents in the Newspoll (Answer: vote 1 Coalition, written and authorised by Tony Nutt, Liberal party Canberra); then will he apologise to Vietnam veterans like Bill Shorten did for failing to attend the repatriation ceremony? (No, he won’t, he doesn’t want to politicise the issue by any further comment.)
Perhaps there will be a run on avowed feminism now in Coalition ranks? Never been a more exciting time.
At least the prime minister can be a feminist, now for Julie Bishop?
Malcolm Turnbull switches modes to the exciting times before us this morning.
I want to say, as I said this morning with Kelly O’Dwyer and I said again with Kelly and Karen Andrews, girls can do anything. In particular they can do engineering. You have seen so many impressive, talented women who are engineers.
Q: A lot of people spend time talking about female empowerment, would you describe yourself as a feminist?
Malcolm Turnbull:
I would describe myself as a feminist. As I often say, women hold up half the sky.
Malcolm Turnbull speaks to reporters in Melbourne
The prime minister opens his daily press conference by expressing sorrow at the deaths that have been recorded as a consequence of the wild weather over the weekend, on behalf of the government, and on Bill Shorten’s behalf. Turnbull thanks the emergency workers “risking their lives to keep Australians safe”. He also urges people around the country to stay away from rising flood waters.
Updated
We’ve covered this separately today on Guardian Australia but in the event you missed it, the Greens want to regulate the electricity system to ensure a “fair price” is paid for solar-generated electricity and ensure a “legal right” to connect to the grid by forcing energy companies to prove they cannot connect a consumer.
The Greens’ clean energy policy, which has been released today, would put $192m for solar into schools, establish a solar ombudsman who would enforce a “right to solar” for renters and force energy companies to write-down pole and wire assets. The Greens would also put $5m into an information campaign to promote the Clean Energy Finance Corporation’s (CEFC) schemes to support households and businesses installing solar with no upfront costs.
We should have a Turnbull press conference coming up soonish.
I’m a distance from fully across this issue, but a dispute rumbling away in Victoria about the Country Fire Authority crossed over into the federal campaign over this past weekend. Victorian premier Daniel Andrews is under pressure about an enterprise agreement covering the Country Fire Authority being pursued by the United Firefighters’ Union.
Today the Country Fire Authority’s board has issued a statement saying is has serious concerns about the agreement.
We have serious concerns many of these proposed clauses are unlawful and we have legal advice that indicates CFA would be in breach of its statutory obligations. We are now seeking senior counsel advice on this issue. While the Fair Work Commission’s recommendation stated the changes to the agreement do not impact on volunteers, the recommendation does not override the many specific clauses within the agreement that give rise to those issues. Many of these clauses have no place in modern day workplaces and are out of step with today’s society.
Over the weekend, Malcolm Turnbull went to a CFA rally and said: “If we’re re-elected, we’ll rectify it ... There would be changes to the Fair Work Act that would relate to what would be objectionable or unacceptable clauses in EBAs.”
The Labor leader, Bill Shorten, was asked about the dispute earlier today.
Q: The CFA say they are not being listened to. Why weren’t you at the rally?
Bill Shorten:
First of all, I have the highest regard for the volunteer firefighters and professional firefighters. The issue about working through the EBA or industrial relations frame work for the CFA professional firefighters is a state issue. Of course we expect, I would hope premier Andrews consults the volunteer firefighters just as they’ve been working with the professional firefighters. But it is a state issue. Much like the industrial arrangements are for police and for other matters, I would expect the state government to bring the parties together.
Mr Turnbull said he is going to fix it by changing the Fair Work Act. He needs to explain how he will do this. It is really the fact he is causing more trouble where there’s already enough trouble existing at the moment.
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All the robos. Bring me all the robos.
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Even in big wet, Tasmanians keeping sense of humour @James_Jeffrey @brettwhiteleymp @MovemberAUS @rharris334 #auspol pic.twitter.com/PG2PyUzo5j
— Darren Chester MP (@DarrenChesterMP) June 6, 2016
The prime minister, meanwhile, is calling for robo gals in Melbourne. Yes, he is. (He’s in an event with startup folks.) He clearly thinks better of robo gal. He’s happy to see robo guys too.
Updated
Now I have a text copy of Bill Shorten’s speech to the RSL. Here’s a excerpt that will give you the flavour.
Bill Shorten:
Beyond the fallen, hundreds of thousands Australians would return home wounded, or bearing the invisible scars of trauma. And all who served, all who returned, were changed in some way by what they had seen, and what they had endured. For that generation – and for every generation who followed in their footsteps - things could not be the same. And so often they could not find the words to explain why. So often they could not answer the question: what did you do in the war?
From this reality, in this silence, the RSL grew. A welcoming place of camaraderie and quiet understanding. A heart and a home in the community for Australians seeking the uncomplicated solidarity of those who knew what it was like. From its very first days, the RSL fulfilled this mission – a mission that no government had turned its mind too. You reached beyond rehabilitation, you looked further than commemoration. You offer at your core instead the comfort of stability, normality, respect and community. And even as the organisation has grown and diversified and broadened its mission and its ambition: to charity, to sport, to social welfare and aged care, that fundamental respect has continued, that unchanging devotion has endured.
A century ago, in the aftermath of a war that cost our young nation so many young lives – Australia made a promise to remember. Country towns planted seeds which grew into avenues of honour. Coastal villages quarried white stone for monuments covered in a roll-call where surnames came in twos and threes, sons and brothers who fell, faces to the foe, sometimes on the same day and on the same ground.
That tradition of remembering has flourished and endured.
In a time when so many of the old certainties and old loyalties have faded in our society, the Anzac legend has only grown in resonance and meaning. And it should be a source of tremendous pride – to all veterans and their families – that today those commemorations are overwhelmingly led and supported by our young people. Young Australians, here and abroad. Gazing up at the steep cliffs of Anzac Cove, shoulder to shoulder in the morning light at Villers-Brettoneux. Retracing the Kokoda track and waiting for dawn at Hellfire Pass. A resurgence of Australian pride: from Korea, Vietnam, Malaya, North Africa and the Mediterranean.
Treading lightly on the ground made hallow by those who died for their country. Gathering - at the going down of the sun and in the morning - to say ‘Lest we forget’. But those words, our oldest national promise, have to mean something for those who came home, as well as those who did not. And the uncomfortable truth is that as a nation we have been better at honouring the memory of our dead, than offering decent support for the living.
From soldier-settlement schemes that sentenced too many families to an incredibly arduous task on unyielding land, to the shameful treatment dealt to those who returned from Vietnam to a country divided. We have not always fulfilled the duty we owe, to those who have done theirs. For all the memorials that enrich our landscape, there are no walls covered in poppies for veterans who would later take their own lives.
Yet their loss is no less, the sadness of their passing no smaller.
LDP Senator David Leyonhjelm, again facing the existential horrors of relevance deprivation, wonders how to be outrageous. Hmm, I know, let’s apologise to the much maligned taxpayers of Australia borrowing liberally (excuse the pun) from Kevin Rudd’s apology to Indigenous people. That will do it, surely. Feeling all the feelings.
What do the kids say in Harry Potter? Mischief managed?
Monday morning
Ok let’s pause for a moment to gather the sum of Monday’s parts. (Look at these two: my people, ah yes, my people. Hello there.)
The campaign morning is fairly straightforward thus far.
- Labor is pressing ahead with childcare as a theme, adding $100m today to $3bn promised yesterday to make the system more favourable for working families. Bill Shorten has attempted to fend off claims that his policy is a fantasy because he doesn’t have the money to pay for it – but the Labor leader is also making it clear we are going to have to wait for the final costings to know whether the various columns add up. The final costings will come when Labor has finished outlining its election policies, he said today.
- The Coalition is attempting to maintaining pressure on the profligacy front with a release of a mid-campaign stocktake and some fighting words from the treasurer, Scott Morrison, about Labor’s war on everything (which is fortunately less ferocious than Labor’s war on everything last week, which had bullets and toxins and, possibly, the joint strike fighter.) My favourite page of the compendium of Labor horrors is the Labor/Greens minority government page, which is splattered with green paint.
-
Malcolm Turnbull has called by Kelly O’Dwyer’s electorate with a small funding announcement for sport before attending (with Shorten) an RSL conference where both leaders pledged to do more for veterans. This afternoon the prime minister will be deeply excited with another bunch of start-up folks.
Never a more exciting time. Onwards, upwards.
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Who you calling prehistoric?
Labor’s campaign spokeswoman, Penny Wong, is out with reporters in Canberra trying to rebut the Coalition’s attack on Labor’s costings on the childcare package. She says after three years, “the best they can do at this point in the campaign is to simply have an angry, shouty treasurer having a go at the Labor party. Well, that’s not really a second-term agenda.”
Penny Wong:
On costings, Labor has made very clear we will save more than we spend over the decade and, just as we were prepared to be upfront with the Australian people prior to the election being called about savings, you can anticipate more savings announcements from the Labor party before the election.
Q: Do you think childcare is mainly women’s business?
Penny Wong:
I think childcare is parents’ business and if you’re referencing what Bill said I would say this: we know in Australia the disproportionate burden of caring work does fall on women and that’s why we’ve put forward a policy to support women making different choices, to support women making the choice to return to work, to make it easier for working families to juggle work and family. That’s the whole point of Labor’s package.
Q: Fiona Nash has labelled those comments as prehistoric. Do you think that it’s prehistoric?
Penny Wong:
Has she talked to Barnaby Joyce lately? That’s my only answer to that.
(If this was an episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race, I’d say the Wong Library is open for business. It isn’t an episode of RuPaul, however, it’s an election. So I’ll move on calmly.)
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Back briefly to Scott Steel, and the spinoff conversations from this week’s polling podcast, and Scott’s idea that we should be looking at conservative Catholics as a subset of tactical voters. I asked why. This was his response.
Micro, but quite fascinating. I might see if Mark Textor’s got a view.
@murpharoo As a piece of campaign research, you'd be finding out who/why & targeting a mini campaign to cement one group, and flip the other
— Possum Comitatus (@Pollytics) June 6, 2016
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My technical nonsense also prevented a clean report of the prime minister and the employment initiative with veterans. Malcolm Turnbull said he would work with groups like SoldierOn and with business leaders (“captains of industry” was the Turnbull formulation) to “encourage employers to recognise the leadership and skills veterans hold” and “honour their service to the nation.”
Malcolm Turnbull:
We believe Australian employers should be more aware of the important leadership skills veterans have and the value that they offer to their organisations. Improving, promoting the employment of veterans is a key agenda for us in our next term of government.
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Updated
Bill Shorten opens his contribution by saying that is it fitting that there is no difference between the major parties on defence matters. He also repeats the apology he gave last week for not going to the Vietnam repatriation ceremony. This was the wrong decision.
Just an aside. The speech writers have clearly poured an enormous amount of effort into both of these contributions. They are both very fine indeed. Because of technical difficulties I haven’t got chunks of Shorten, I just didn’t get the quotes down, but I will come back and share some of the more elegantly crafted sections when I get a text copy of the speech. Shorten ends his contribution, like Turnbull, noting that more has to be done to help veterans of current conflicts. We must do better, we must do more, Shorten said, adding veterans are owed more than the respect of history.
Sorry I’m having the odd technical glitch but I will resist the urge to throw the computer out the window and power on. The Labor leader Bill Shorten is speaking now.
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Given this is a centenary event, Malcolm Turnbull speaks about world war one and his family connections to conflict. He then points forward to the present, the current issues facing veterans, such as post-traumatic stress disorder
Malcolm Turnbull:
From afar, this tapestry tells our national story. Up close, each thread tells its own tale of courage, grief and sorrow. Australia in 1916 was a vastly different place. There were few welfare services and the elderly, the sick and the unemployed were largely left to fend for themselves. Veterans struggled to get help for their injuries and to return to civilian life. And the hidden wounds, the psychological damage that remained unseen, and therefore untreated, affected both them and their families, sometimes for generations.
Even today, we are still learning how best to help those who suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder. So these were the conditions our first veterans faced after serving their country. Into that breach came the RSL – the spirit of comradeship, spread out across the nation into thousands of suburbs, streets and homes touched by war.
The league committed itself to provide for the sick, wounded and needed among those who’d served among those who’d served and their dependants, including pensions, medical attention and employment. It was instrumental in the creation of the medical repatriation system and the introduction of service, disability and war widows pensions. In more recent years, the RSL has also helped us to better focus on commemorative activities, including the Anzac centenary.
After pausing at last week’s repatriation ceremony for Vietnam veterans, which became a campaign controversy, (including a hat tip to Tony Abbott, who set in motion the repatriation exercise) he’s now deep into veterans and their challenges.
Turnbull says he will have more to say shortly about early intervention strategies to treat mental illness, including greater support for Australia’s growing female veteran community.
We also acknowledge the very serious issue of homelessness among veterans, which is illustrated in the Queensland RSL’s recent report, a place to call home. The causes of homelessness are complex but recognised risk factors include mental illness such as PTSD. I’ve asked Dan [Tehan] to gather state and territory ministers to ensure that addressing homelessness among veterans is a priority in the next term of government. The commonwealth will also require its agencies to identify whether clients are veterans to help us understand the extent of the problem.
He also references an initiative involving employers.
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Malcolm Turnbull addresses the RSL
The Returned Services League has always sought to unite Australians and their leaders in respecting and supporting our veterans. You remind us that our freedoms have been bought at a great price, that our national interests must be effectively guarded and that, in the words of your wise motto, the price of liberty is eternal vigilance.
This is Malcolm Turnbull at the RSL, who then proceeds to outline the Coalition’s defence spending, before touching down at Thucydides, a favourite preoccupation of the prime minister. He quotes the Athenian general: “You know as well as we do that justice as the world goes is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer as they must.”
Turnbull then goes deep Churchill, resonant, sonorous, a rhetorical chord progression.
Malcolm Turnbull:
Sobering. Chilling. And timeless words. A reminder that a safe Australia, a safe world, needs a strong Australia.
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Thanks for all the feedback on last week’s episode of the campaign podcast, which focused on opinion polling. I asked for thoughts from fellow pollsters about the analysis shared by the Liberal party’s pollster Mark Textor about tactical voting. Scott Steel, who works for the union movement in Queensland, and blogs as Pollytics, has contributed some thoughts about the pod conversation.
@murpharoo I just listened to your @TextorMark podcast. All very true in my experience.It's why campaigns are now so complex
— Possum Comitatus (@Pollytics) June 5, 2016
@murpharoo Tactical voting, for example, is actually a thing - an important thing in a campaign - but needs a good example......
— Possum Comitatus (@Pollytics) June 6, 2016
@murpharoo Let's say you poll a seat about voting intention, then a by-election is called, then poll them again. The two results will differ
— Possum Comitatus (@Pollytics) June 6, 2016
@Pollytics Any way of working out an example in this election?
— Katharine Murphy (@murpharoo) June 6, 2016
@murpharoo Not without a proper research program - but if I were designing one to find an example, I'd look first at conservative catholics
— Possum Comitatus (@Pollytics) June 6, 2016
I don’t know why, I’ll ask him why.
But first, the prime minister, who addressing the RSL.
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Scott Morrison is asked whether the Coalition has been gazumped on childcare. Certainly not, the treasurer says. Labor doesn’t have a policy, therefore the Coalition can’t be gazumped.
Scott Morrison:
Labor’s policy is a fantasy, a fiction – there’s no money to pay for it.
You cannot spend money that’s not there.
Scott Morrison is asked about the new Turnbull ad which features the prime minister talking about his father, and growing up in a single parent household. The Liberal party is pushing this ad through Facebook. Calla mentioned this ad to you all earlier today.
Q: Is the party concerned about a certain perception of him?
Scott Morrison:
No.
He’s then asked about the big spend in marginal seats. The treasurer says the spending is a way to support grass roots initiatives.
Scott Morrison:
The government supports community funding.
The treasurer is then asked whether the government can afford its own delayed childcare package given it can’t get the savings measures through the Senate?
Scott Morrison:
We are having an election and we are putting savings measures to the election.
Morrison says its easy to splash about unfunded spending, it’s much harder to make sure you can pay for things.
There is another lengthy preamble in this outing – Labor’s manifest horrors take time to outline in detail – but Scott Morrison has turned down his volume dial from the extreme nonsense outing last week. (Everything is relative.) Voters can choose on July 2, Morrison says.
Certainty and stability versus chaos and uncertainty.
The treasurer, having cleared his throat on the Hadley show, has now found reporters in Sydney to deliver his mid-campaign report. Scott Morrison is sticking with his war on business and growth rhetoric but thus far we’ve avoided toxic taxes and toxins. The treasurer diagnoses his patient: Labor is making promises with money that simply isn’t there. Labor is not committing to savings necessary to funding policies like childcare.
Scott Morrison:
Labor always promises big for families but doesn’t deliver.
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I’m not the only person with a mid-campaign stocktake this morning, it would seem.
Scott Morrison to present this 'mid-campaign report' #ausvotes pic.twitter.com/mdGCX8mqp6
— Primrose Riordan (@primroseriordan) June 5, 2016
Here comes the treasurer, Scott Morrison.
While the Labor leader was speaking to reporters, the treasurer, Scott Morrison, has been chatting with Ray Hadley on 2GB and the subject is a new poll showing the Greens and independents set to win one in four votes.
Morrison said: “There are two real alternatives at this election: one is the re-election of a Coalition government, with the continued stability, or a Labor-Greens-independent minority outcome.”
“Now obviously that is something we all remember from less than three years ago. What that’s a recipe for is continued chaos ... Chris Bowen, the shadow treasurer, has already said he would have to wait 100 days, after the election, before you find out what his economic plan is. And the reason is he’d have to work out what was in the head of his deputy treasurer, Adam Bandt, Nick Xenophon and others.
“It’s the return of that fellow up in Armidale, who together with Rob Oakeshott, caused merry hell, Tony Windsor, with the previous minority government. That’s just a recipe for chaos.”
Hadley said Coalition strategists are telling him the government’s company tax plan is not cutting through. Morrison does not agree, small business owners are telling him “thank you for backing us”, he said. “They are the hope of the side for the economy.”
Hadley backed Bill Shorten’s comments that women by and large organise childcare. Shorten has copped some flack on feminist grounds that it’s a sexist stereotype that women are responsible for care. Hadley said: “I don’t think Shorten is doing anything other than describing how it is.”
Morrison said organising care of children “is a family responsibility” and a responsibility for both parents, however they decide to share the load. Morrison didn’t criticise Shorten, who he said can “explain his own words”, and instead pivoted to how Labor would pay for the $3bn cost of its childcare policy.
“We put savings into the parliament, more than $3bn ... and they opposed [them], which means their cupboard is bare when it comes to paying for this.”
Hadley suggested the Senate could block the savings again after the election, which brings us back to the start of the interview – will the Coalition win and win big enough to do what it’s promising?
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Q: You have agreed to do the Sky News people’s forum on Wednesday, not yet agreement from Mr Turnbull, are you hoping he comes round to the idea?
Bill Shorten:
I think Mr Turnbull should give an answer to our challenge to attend the Sky News forum. Mr Turnbull is clearly doing whatever he can to avoid facing the real issues. These people forums are a great opportunity for Mr Turnbull to leave the bubble in which he is occupying and hear what people are really talking about and give them the answers to the questions they are asking. It is discourteous to Sky and the people of Queensland that Mr Turnbull won’t give an answer. It confirms Mr Turnbull can’t talk about his own policy agenda because he doesn’t want to. All he can do is talk about Labor. I’ll be there Wednesday night.
Q: To anyone thinking about a protest vote, that would be a return to the chaos of the Rudd-Gillard years. At that last debate you were asked how people should trust you.
Bill Shorten:
First of all, Mr Turnbull engineered his own chaos on Mr Abbott. The evidence is why Labor is ready to be government of this country is the last thousand days. We are far more united than the Liberal party and rolling out far more positive policies, able to explain how we would fund them. We would be a government of priorities of middle-class and working-class Australians. You can trust Labor to fight for Medicare, to properly fund schools, trust Labor to take real action on climate change, trust Labor to have a fair taxation system and ensure first home buyers aren’t locked out of the housing market. You can trust Labor to ensure women get equal treatment and trust Labor to deliver childcare that is fair and faster. I will finish on that note.
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Bill Shorten gets three questions on wages in the childcare sector.
I want to put on the record Labor supports the work of our childcare workers. They are the early years educators. The childcare workers are the first people that families entrust their kids to when they leave home [and] go to childcare so we think they are an important part of our work force and haven’t been sufficiently valued.
Q: Yesterday you said when you announced the original childcare policy that men in Australia rely on the women in Australia to do the childcare and organise the childcare. Is that comment not sexist? Do you regret making those comments?
Bill Shorten:
Thanks for asking the question. Men are stepping up in terms of childcare. In this centre you will have noticed dads here absolutely pulling their weight but the fact of the matter is that the burden of childcare falls disproportionately on working mums. Labor wants to make sure a government is backing up working parents in Australia and backing up working mums, full stop.
Q: The latest polls – you’ve lost – Labor has lost its lead over the Coalition. You still continue to trail Malcolm Turnbull as preferred prime minister. You say you’ve got positive policies but are you worried these aren’t getting reflected to the Australian people?
Bill Shorten:
I think the record reflects in the last number of months Australians are listening to Labor’s positive policies. I’m enjoying this campaign. I didn’t ask Mr Turnbull to call an eight-week campaign but Labor has been ready for this election, we have been working on our policies.
A question about the CFA dispute in Victoria, then ...
Q: You say you can afford these childcare changes. The government insists you can’t. Australians can’t make a meaningful judgement on that until we see Labor’s costings. On what date in this campaign will Labor make public its costings and if you can’t tell us that, why shouldn’t we believe you’re just delaying it to prevent scrutiny of these costings until late in the campaign?
Bill Shorten:
Tim, I don’t accept the assumption of your question. The opposition I lead, the united opposition I lead, has changed the rules of political debate in this country over the last 12 months by putting forward our positive policies and explaining where we would make saves. There is another four weeks to go in this election. So we haven’t unveiled all our policies. When we have unveiled all of our policies, at that point we will outline our final costings and measures.
Let’s not airbrush what happened before the calling of this election. History didn’t start on the day that Mr Turnbull called the election. It’s been unfolding ever since he became the prime minister. In the same time that he’s wandered across the paddock with GST increases, with proposals now for a corporate tax splash, Labor’s been outlining how we will improve the bottom line. I’m happy to remind you yet again: $32bn saved by winding back unsustainable tax concessions to negative gearing and capital gains tax discount. $50bn saved by not passing over a truck load of budget money to large corporations. $17bn saved by not proceeding with a tax cut for people who earn a million dollars a year. The Emissions Reduction Fund, Mr Abbott’s climate sceptic dream, we are going to save billions of dollars by not proceeding with that.
We have said we will stop the rorts in vocational education. Billions of dollars there. Labor has led the debate on making multi-nationals pay their fair share. Labor has led the debate about improving the sustainability of our superannuation tax concession system. That saves billions of dollars.
Labor has done what the government’s shown it can’t do. We have put forward an alternative economic approach and at the core of our measures, we are investing in education because that invests in the economy. We are investing in infrastructure because that invests in the economy. We are investing in childcare because that invests in the economy. We are investing in the environment by taking real action on climate change. Labor has got its policies well and truly lined up.
Hold on to your hats because the next four weeks you will see more positive policies which make a practical difference in the lives of all Australians.
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Q: What’s your advice to anyone thinking about voting for the Greens and independents? Will you negotiate with whoever holds the balance of power?
Bill Shorten answers the first question but not the second one.
Don’t do it. Vote Labor. Labor’s got the best policies. If you care about the environment, Labor has proper policies for climate change. If you care about the education of your young, Labor has funded policies for schools, TAFEs, universities – now we are outlining childcare. If you care about real action in terms of the NBN, Labor will outline its policy in coming weeks to make sure we have better internet speeds and access for more Australian households. If you care about defending Medicare, you should vote Labor.
Q: If the waiting lists areas long as you say they are, how will an average of $300,000 per centre fix that crisis?
Kate Ellis:
Labor has said we will direct these fund only towards those areas where there is very high need that is not currently being met. We know today’s announcement will ensure we have thousands of additional places, and those places are located where the waiting lists are currently the longest and where supply is not meeting demand.
Questions now.
Q: You say today’s announcement is a reallocation of existing money. What is the government currently spending this money on?
Bill Shorten doesn’t answer the specific question he is asked.
We are backing in childcare because we think an investment in childcare is an investment in the future of this country.
The opposition’s education spokeswoman, Kate Ellis:
I want to turn to another forgotten part of the childcare sector. That is outside school hours care. If you actually have a look at what is acting as one of the biggest barriers against workforce participation, it’s a lack of places when it comes to outside school hours care. There are many parents who are seeking to return to the workforce but as a result of the fact that there are no places for their children after the school bell goes, they are having to turn down job offers and opportunities. That is because we know that the Australian workforce today doesn’t finish when the school bell rings at 3 o’clock.
That is why we need to invest in outside school hours care. We are announcing a plan to expand up to 1,200 outside school hour care places across Australia to establish thousands of additional places so we know thousands of additional parents can return to the workforce.
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Bill Shorten addresses reporters about childcare
The Labor leader Bill Shorten is in Melbourne and has uttered the word game changer at least five times in the past sixty seconds. Having childcare is a game changer for families, a game changer for the economy.
Bill Shorten:
Today we are addressing the other big issue in childcare, which is finding a place – waiting lists. Today I’m pleased to announce that in the next three years Labor will put in $100m, which will provide literally thousands of extra places in areas where there are high demands. Everybody knows that if you can’t find a place for your child, that becomes the big issue as opposed to even just cost and the quality of childcare.
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Labor is persisting on childcare today, we’ll get part two of the policy which is worth about $160m. The government is persisting with questions about how yesterday’s $3bn childcare commitment will be paid for – where’s the money coming from Bill – before pushing into the agenda item of today, which is innovation.
Overnight the Coalition has also attempted to neutralise one of the health issues on which is has been vulnerable. The health minister, Sussan Ley, says the government will commission an independent evaluation, in consultation with the sector, of the commercial pressures facing diagnostic imaging providers.
A press release issued late yesterday by the health minister says “after many months of constructive consultations with the Australian Diagnostic Imaging Association and its members, it [is] clear there were broader concerns about the unique commercial and regulatory environment within which they operated and how government investment was being targeted. Ms Ley said this included an understanding there was a need to align the MBS schedule fees on some items, which may not adequately reflect the actual cost of delivering the service. ‘Based on the independent evaluation, the government will also consider how best to ensure that the diagnostic imaging schedule fees keep pace with costs into the future.’”
In simple terms, this pushes ultimate resolution of the rebates for diagnostic imaging off until after the election. Health’s a real hot spot in this campaign and Labor is leaving its firepower on this theme to the final, decisive weeks.
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Just past the halfway point, a quick stocktake
Thanks Calla, good morning everyone and welcome to Monday. We’ve just passed the halfway point of the campaign, so I’d like to start this morning with a short stocktake.
It’s now a truism in Australian politics that campaigns are all about the marginals. Over the weekend my colleague Lenore Taylor referenced the spend on CCTV cameras in marginal seats by the Coalition. Phil Coorey in the Financial Review has broken out his calculator and added up the government’s spend in the marginals over the last few weeks. He says the total outlay is $1.7bn.
A couple of things can be observed about all of this. The Coalition in the national election conversation is appealing to voters not to do anything rash – don’t vote Labor, don’t vote independent, end the terrible unproductive churn in Canberra, just elect the Turnbull government and allow it to govern.
Malcolm Turnbull is presenting himself as the personification of stability, a figure calmly circumnavigating the country in a splendid Mackintosh coat, hands in pockets, steady pace almost like a wartime leader. In Canberra there’s a wonderful bronze statue of John Curtin and Ben Chifley walking to the old parliament house – if you glance up and catch Turnbull he looks exactly like that. There’s something nostalgic in the presentation.
The government is repeating the same broad messaging day in day out (with some repositioning and tuning along the way) and making a virtue of not spending much. It’s Labor apparently doing all the spending.
Except if you add up all the spending that’s being done below the radar. Various ministers have been deployed to sandbag various marginals armed with numerous small pots of money that will generate a local story. If you tally it all up, it’s not small money. In seats where it is beneficial for the prime minister to highlight the handout himself, he’ll do it. Turnbull did it in Mayo last week, and he’s done it in Higgins this morning, where the assistant treasurer, Kelly O’Dwyer, is facing pressure from the Greens in her seat.
PM @TurnbullMalcolm announced $4m for sporting grounds and equipment #ausvotes pic.twitter.com/Aw9tBQ0yF8 (@Dan_Bourchier)
— Sky News Australia (@SkyNewsAust) June 5, 2016
So what is the sum of these parts? At one level, the national contest, the one we all follow slavishly, doesn’t matter all that much apart from its capacity to create impressions about leadership: competence, in touch or out of touch, steady or radical, trustworthy or dissembling. If you segment the campaign in your head: national reassurance, local pork, the strategy becomes clear and makes sense.
With those thoughts at the midpoint, let’s press on. A reminder today’s comments thread is open for your business. If the thread’s too bracing for you, Mike Bowers and I are up and about on the twits – he’s @mpbowers and I’m @murpharoo. If you only speak Facebook you can join my daily forum here. And if you want a behind-the-scenes look at the day and the campaign as a whole, give Mike a follow on Instagram. There’s some beauties there from yesterday. You can find him here.
Channel your inner Churchill. Here comes Monday.
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I’ll hand over now to my esteemed colleague Katharine Murphy to guide you through the rest of this blustery day on the campaign trail.
A warning to women and girls on the campaign trail: Malcolm Turnbull, enthusiastic grandfather and keen supporter of girls Doing All The Things, may steal your name to suggest to his daughter, Daisy, who would probably rather be left to gestate in peace.
Speaking at that women in sport morning tea in Malvern, Turnbull urged all girls in attendance to look to their local member, Kelly O’Dwyer, as a role model.
Girls can do everything. You can do anything and I want you to look at these women and recognise that there should be no limit to your ambitions. No limit at all. Whatever you dream of you can achieve. Whatever you think you might be able to do, whatever you imagine, you can do it.
He also said hello to the boys in the room (“young man muching a bun there looking very good, you’re a good fellow and I welcome you too”) but the focus, which may become a trend at an STEM event later today, was on empowering girls. As we all know, there is no more empowering image for girls than a man standing between two women doing all the talking.
While Shorten & co talk childcare, Malcolm Turnbull will be eating scones for women in sport. Or something.
The venue is the Malvern Town Hall, a gorgeous old building in Kelly O’Dwyer’s seat of Higgins and just up the road from where this correspondent sits gloomily sipping instant coffee.
(Mike Bowers, who is currently following the PM, sounded a bit less fond of the building than I.)
The morning’s event is inside a town hall at Malvern, promoting women and girls in sport @abcnews pic.twitter.com/QsWMZaG4AX
— Frank Keany (@FJKeany) June 5, 2016
The morning’s event is inside a town hall at Malvern, promoting women and girls in sport @abcnews pic.twitter.com/QsWMZaG4AX
— Frank Keany (@FJKeany) June 5, 2016
Rumours of my influence are much exaggerated
Nick Xenophon has told AM it was “highly unlikely” he would be negotiating with a minority government after 2 July, despite the palpable fear of some in the major parties.
To paraphrase Mark Twain, rumours of my influence are much exaggerated....
I think it’s highly unlikely… I can’t see that the Coaltion will lose 15 seats and then be put into a hung parliament situation.
The Nick Xenophon Team, is polling 3% nationally, according to today’s Newspoll. In South Australia support is 22%.
He told AM he was hopeful of getting three senate spots, including his own, in SA, and maybe one more in NSW or Victoria.
There’s all this fear and loathing toward myself and the team from the major parties, but the fact is we haven’t run one TV ad, one radio ad, because we simply don’t have the dough.
So why are people turning away from the minor parties? Xenophon reckons it’s because they are quite dull. There are issues of substance to talk about, but we are not seeing that on the campaign trail.
This is almost a Seinfeld election, it’s an election about not much at all.
Before we get to a promised interview with Nick Xenophon on AM we should look to another independent, Andrew Wilkie in Tasmania, who is getting excited about the possibility of another minority government. (You may recall the last minority government, under Julia Gillard, went quite well for Wilkie.)
He told ABC radio on Monday that he saw “a wonderful opportunity in the next parliament” for a strong crossbench, particularly a strong crossbench that supported his proposed poker machine reform.
Xenophon supports gambling reform, but said a minority government was “a one-in-a-million chance.”
Turnbull warned this weekend against “the chaos of a hung parliament,” which Xenophon said made him sound like Liberal leaders past:
I’m surprised that Malcolm Turnbull is such a panic merchant and what he is saying doesn’t sound like Malcolm Turnbull. It sounds more like the sort of thing you’d expect Tony Abbott to be saying in an election campaign.
To childcare next, which Labor hopes will be the focus of the campaign today.
Bill Shorten will be at a childcare centre in Melbourne’s inner-west with Kate Ellis, Labor spokeswoman for early education, and the local Jagajaga MP and spokeswoman for family and payments, Jenny Macklin. He’s announcing an add-on to the $3bn package announced yesterday: $100m over three years targeted at 300 childcare services in areas of high demand, to reduce the waiting list.
On AM this morning, the education minister, Simon Birmingham, said Labor’s policy was an unfunded band-aid solution that would see extra money going to child care providers, not back into the pockets of working families.
In contrast, he said, the Coalition’s policy was “a wholesale reform to our childcare subsidy system”. Birmingham also defended the changes to the activity test, saying that most people would think it reasonable that people who are working or studying full-time were “standing at the front of the queue.”
The Labor policy would begin in January 2017, the Coalition policy in July 2018.
Let’s look a bit more at that firefighting fight in Victoria. The United Firefighters Union has been trying to negotiate a new industrial agreement over the Country Fire Authority (CFA) to improve conditions for professional firefighters and get greater control over the organisation to the detriment of volunteers, who say they are being pushed out of the organisation.
The Fair Work Commission last week recommended the CFA accept the deal and cabinet is expected to try to push it through.
The Victorian Premier, Daniel Andrews, supports the UFU, but the emergency services minister, Jane Garrett, has been at odds with them for months and has refused to instruct the CFA to sign the new EBA. She is reportedly considering quitting over the deal.
Malcolm Turnbull wrote to Andrews on Friday asking him to withdraw support for the deal, then on Sunday he arrived at a protest of 2,000 CFA volunteers in Melbourne in opposition of the deal.
Turnbull told the rally he may introduce changes to the Fair Work Act:
I give you this pledge: if we are returned to government on the 2nd of July, we will ensure the law is changed to protect you from this takeover... We will stand with every one of you.
The employment minister, Michaelia Cash, told the Herald Sun the federal government would do what it could to prevent what she described as a “hostile takeover,” by the union.
“A union takeover of the CFA would pose a grave risk to the safety of thousands of Victorians who rely on CFA volunteers to protect them.’’
Bill Shorten has maintained his distance, saying it was a state issue, but he’s likely to be pressed on it while in Melbourne today.
Meanwhile, The Age reports that the Victorian Equal Opportunities and Human Rights Commission has ruled that up to 12 clauses of the deal could be discriminatory towards women, parents, carers, and people with disabilities.
Malcolm Turnbull and Bill Shorten took a break from being adversarial yesterday to attend a ceremony marking the 100th anniversary of the RSL. Mike Bowers was there in Melbourne last night.
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Good morning
Four weeks down, four to go.
Good morning, and welcome to what would usually be the pointy end of the election campaign but is instead the bump in the middle. Time to lip-sync your favourite pop-song for the halftime entertainment and make a cup of tea before we sink into week five, day 29, of the election campaign.
Thanks to Melissa Davey for taking the early shift for the past two weeks. I’ll be with you until m’learned colleague, Katherine Murphy, and the rest of the Canberra team take charge at 8.30am.
Right, got that cup of tea? Then let’s begin.
The big picture
Newspoll in The Australian this morning has the Coalition up one point in two-party-preferred terms, which puts the major parties at 50-50. Which is interesting, but less interesting than its other finding, which is that support for independents and minor parties has grown three points to 15%. That’s the highest it’s been in the pollster’s 31-year history.
If you include the Greens vote in the mix, it shows that one in four people plans to vote for someone other than the major parties.
The Australian reports:
While the two-party-preferred vote sees the first improvement for the Coalition since April — from 49 per cent to 50 per cent — the government’s primary vote has dropped one point to 40 per cent, which is the lowest level since the Prime Minister replaced Tony Abbott as leader almost 10 months ago.
Labor’s primary vote has also fallen for the second consecutive Newspoll survey, dropping one point to 35 per cent, while the Greens lost one point to fall to a six-month low of 10 per cent.
That 5% support for independents and micro-parties breaks down as 3% for the Nick Xenophon Team (that’s the national vote – in South Australia it’s polling at 22%), 3% for Family First, 1% for Palmer United Party, 1% for One Nation and 7% for all the rest.
It appears to indicate that the Senate voting changes may not result in a friendlier upper hourse.
The poll also suggests that if the Coalition was returned it would face a repeat of the difficulties from the last parliament in passing legislation through the Senate and would rely on a crossbench principally controlled by Senator Xenophon, in cases where it could not secure the support of Labor or the Greens.
While voters think about new parties, Malcolm Turnbull was in Melbourne yesterday for a bit of classic wedging. He joined a protest of CFA volunteers against a pending industrial relations deal between the firefighting body and the United Firefighters Union, which volunteers say is designed to push them out of the organisation.
The Age reports that the Andrews government, which backs the union, could push the deal through as early as today. Turnbull promised volunteers that he would protect their rights.
And the Greens want to regulate to ensure a “fair price” is paid for solar energy. Gabrielle Chan reports:
The policy, to be launched on Monday by the Greens leader, Richard Di Natale, and MP Adam Bandt would force a “fair price” to be paid by energy companies.
Solar homes and businesses would be protected from fees and charges “likely to be imposed by electricity networks clawing back their diminishing revenues as our electricity system decentralises and consumers become empowered”, the policy says.
On the campaign trail
Both Malcolm Turnbull and Bill Shorten have started the day in Melbourne.
Shorten is continuing to campaign on Labor’s $3bn childcare policy, released yesterday.
Gabrielle Chan reports:
The centrepiece is a 15% increase in the Child Care Benefit (CCB) as well as a rise in the childcare benefit cap from $7,500 to $10,000. Labor has said every family earning under $150,000 will benefit from the change.
Labor’s finance spokesman, Tony Burke, said the policy was a stark contrast to the Coalition, which has delayed rebate rises until 2018.
“Any child who was born when the government first announced they were going to do something about childcare will be in school by the time their policy comes in,” Burke said.
“We’re not willing to wait. So we’d bring it all forward to 1 January. For the people who are reliant on the childcare benefit, that increases by 15%. That means for low to middle income earners up to $30-a-week improvement for them.”
The campaign you should be watching
Rural Australia is frequently ignored in election campaigns, because its seats are usually safely held. That’s not the case any more: Indi, in Victoria, is the most marginal seat in Australia, held by independent MP Cathy McGowan on just a handful of votes, and even the deputy prime minister, Nationals leader Barnaby Joyce, is facing a challenge in his electorate of New England from former independent MP Tony Windsor.
My colleague Gabrielle Chan digs through the issues here.
And another thing(s)
The Liberal party has released a new set of campaign ads focusing on Malcolm Turnbull’s relationship with his father, Bruce Turbull. Turnbull has spoken before about being raised by a single-father in a two-bedroom flat, to show his “battler” roots.
He elaborated in the video:
“We didn’t have much money, he was a hotel broker and for most of that time he was battling like a lot of people are, a lot of single parents are, certainly. But he taught me a lot of amazing things ... And he did well after a while; in the latter part of his life he kicked a few goals after a lot of effort.
He was incredibly loyal, very, very strong, very disciplined.
I was the main object of everything he wanted to achieve. He was very focused on doing what was right for me.
And finally, Mayo is apparently the happiest electorate in Australia, according to the Personal Wellbeing Index, conducted by the Deakin University Australian centre on quality of life. The result is reportedly based on polling of 154 Mayo residents, of which the sitting member, Liberal MP Jamie Briggs, who is facing a significant challenge from his former staffer and Nick Xenophon party candidate, Rebekha Sharkie, was apparently not one.
AAP reports:
Residents of Australian’s federal electorates - more than 100 from each and a total of more than 24,000 - were polled on how satisfied they were with their standard of living, health, relationships, achievements in life, safety, community connections and future security.
At the other end of the scale was the seat of Blaxland, held by Labor MP Jason Clare, in Sydney’s south-west.
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