Nighty night
Bill Shorten is rolling on to a town hall meeting in Nowra tonight but I think we are safe to fold the Politics Live tent for today. Let’s assess the sum of the parts.
-
Bill Shorten made his final pitch with a speech at the National Press Club. The Labor leader made his most coherent campaign pitch on why Labor was taking a different policy approach this election cycle. He said the focus couldn’t be exclusively on growth without considering equality and societal cohesion. “The Liberals are asking Australians to reject the cooperative economic model and the social wage that has held our nation together for more than 30 years and delivered a quarter-century of growth, and embark instead upon a radical, expensive experiment in trickle-down economics. The gathering push of extreme right-wing populism round the globe are a warning to all of us, not to leave people behind ... we must give every citizen a sense of being an active participant in transition, in control of what’s happening to them, not a passive observer of change, left behind on the scrap heap.”
-
Malcolm Turnbull pushed on with campaigning in Brisbane, pressing his theme of stability. Back in Canberra, the government’s economic team unveiled their final costings. The Coalition says it will launch another crackdown on benefit recipients, including welfare folks and pensioners, by increasing data matching and debt recovery, improving the budget bottom line by $2bn. When the Coalition’s $1bn election spend was netted out, the impact was a $1bn improvement to the budget bottom line. So the welfare crackdown funds the election spend. Welfare and seniors groups were unimpressed.
Of course the costings milestone means we are fully out of the policy phase of the campaign: it’s pure politics now until Saturday. Strong drink may be required. Thanks very much for your company through the day. We’ll be back from sunrise tomorrow for Wednesday. Until then, take care.
Updated
There is a new Essential poll this evening. It still has Labor ahead on the two-party preferred measure 51% to 49%.
- 40% (up 2% from 2 weeks ago) of respondents approve of the job Malcolm Turnbull is doing as prime minister and 40% (no change) disapprove – a net approval rating of 0 (up 2).
- 37% (up 3% in last 2 weeks) of respondents approve of the job Bill Shorten is doing as opposition leader and 39% (down 1%) disapprove – a change in his net rating from -6 to -2.
- 40% (no change) of respondents think Malcolm Turnbull would make the better prime minister and 29% (no change) think Bill Shorten would make the better prime minister.
- 43% of men prefer Malcolm Turnbull and 30% prefer Bill Shorten.
- 38% of women prefer Malcolm Turnbull and 29% prefer Bill Shorten.
And then there’s Medicare.
- 50% think it is likely that the Liberal party will attempt to privatise Medicare if they win the federal election.
Updated
Acoss chief Cassandra Goldie is on Sky News now about the welfare crackdown. She says debt collections from benefit recipients have to be handled very carefully. Goldie says people on benefits try and pick up bits and pieces of work to supplement their incomes, and it isn’t always easy to forecast in advance what income you might earn.
It has to be very carefully done.
Mike Bowers has taken a bunch of great pictures today, many of which I haven’t had a chance to share.
The Labor leader is already in Nowra.
Oh when the saints... go marching into Nowra. #ausvotes pic.twitter.com/jTjd5Xo8SS
— Alice Workman (@workmanalice) June 28, 2016
The social services minister, Christian Porter, is on Sky News now, explaining the savings measure. He makes it clear that when it comes to debt repayments, if people are paying income tax, the tax office could move in for debt recovery.
He’s asked whether this is a valid costing, given we have heard about these compliance measures before today’s frolic. Porter says the methodology behind today’s announcement has already resulted in the government beating their recovery target by 20%. He says the savings achieved to date are in the hundreds of millions.
The Australian Council of Social Service chief, Cassandra Goldie, is clearly unimpressed and has issued a short statement.
Australia’s lowest-income earners and most vulnerable households have borne the brunt of Coalition savings measures in three successive budgets and enough is enough. Acoss strongly opposes taking any more money out of income support payments. This is the last place the Coalition should be looking for savings to fund new election spending promises. People are struggling to survive on $38 dollars a day Newstart payments which have not been increased in two decades.
Updated
Some quick reaction from National Seniors about the data matching. Sarah Saunders says the group has not yet been given details of the new savings measure, but people would resent being treated “as ripping off the system if that is the mentality”. She says people who are claiming benefits invalidly should not be getting benefits.
Scott Morrison said this afternoon the measures would enhance the “integrity and compliance of social welfare payments” through improved income data matching, better engagement with welfare recipients, more accurate income disclosure of assets and better identification and recovery of debts.
Saunders says seniors will welcome better engagement because they struggle to get through to Centrelink and “when they do, they often get the wrong information”. National Seniors has already warned that age pensioners are angry at the tightening of the assets test which is estimated to push 100,000 people off the pension. From January, singles with savings and assets of more than $547,000 (excluding the family home) will lose the age pension while couples with savings and assets of $823,000 will lose the pension. On the strength of those changes, National Seniors has been running forums in four marginal seats: Brisbane, Chisolm, Hindmarsh and Hasluck. “It is surprising how passionate people have been in the forums, there are people yelling from the back of the room over changes. Single women particularly say they will decimated by the changes.”
Updated
Sticking with cynicism if you can bear it: Labor has already cut that quote from Malcolm Turnbull into a campaign advertisement.
If you weren’t with me earlier today, let me walk you through this.
- This morning, the prime minister, as a prelude to a specific criticism he intended to make about a Labor backflip, said sometimes political parties say one thing and do another. Malcolm Turnbull went on to say look at what Labor did on the school kids bonus: attacked the Coalition for getting rid of it, then supported the Coalition’s position.
-
Bill Shorten used his final pitch at the National Press Club at lunchtime to take the Turnbull quote out of context, obviously as a prelude to the new campaign advertisement. The declaration from Turnbull, Shorten said, was a defining moment in the 2016 election campaign. The suggestion here was the Coalition will say one thing and do another, and here was Turnbull admitting this in a moment of candour.
Here’s the advertisement, or one of them anyway, I’ve seen another version as well.
My analysis of this remains the same: Labor is trying to make an integrity point by excising one quote from Turnbull that meant something entirely different in its proper context. It might turn a few voter’s heads. But it’s a slick willy practice inherently without integrity, isn’t it?
Here, apparently, are the supplementary details on the data matching saving. Make sure you clear your calendar to ensure you have sufficient time to read this material. You can see it’s an epic.
Here are said details pic.twitter.com/lvp61Uk98G
— Laura Tingle (@latingle) June 28, 2016
Too much cynicism from the respective campaigns today, scrambling inelegantly to Saturday.
How's this for a final pitch?
Back to the Coalition and costings, just so we are clear: the final pitch from the government is welfare recipients (and pensioners, even though we don’t mention that explicitly in our documents) will pay (if they don’t come up well after a data matching exercise) for the election goodies we’ve rolled out over the past seven and a half weeks.
I could say grannies for dunny blocks but that might be rude.
Updated
Several more questions about super, including whether Labor has now joined the government in pushing out an increase to the super guarantee until 2018.
Chris Bowen:
Yes, that’s right, the timetable, yes.
A question about superannuation. Doesn’t Labor have an obligation to be straight about what it intends to do?
Chris Bowen:
What we’ve done is similar to what the government has done on the backpacker tax. What we’ve said is we’ve never had a quarrel with how much money the government raises through these measures but we have a quarrel with two aspects in particular - the retrospective nature of the measure you refer to and whether it could actually be implemented. Whether it could actually be done.
It’s possible that neither side of politics will implement this measure if it’s not implementable. Now, very frankly, we do not have the resources of government to make the determination as to whether it is implementable. So we remain and will remain deeply concerned and opposed to aspects of retrospectivity.
Questions now. The first one is about the zombie savings measures – Labor did the same thing with private health insurance in the past, carrying a saving that was unlikely to pass until it finally did pass. So why criticise the government for their zombie measures?
Chris Bowen says he knows the Senate is not going to pass measurers making unemployed people wait or changes that affect pensioners, they are not going to cop them and there has to come a time when reality is reflected in the budget documents, there just has to.
Tony Burke:
This is a double-dissolution election. It was open to the government to make any one of those zombie measures a trigger, in which case they would be eligible for the joint sitting if they win the election. They didn’t do it with a single one of them. These zombie measures are entirely an accounting trick that the government is engaging in to prop up their budget bottom line.
Updated
The shadow treasurer, Chris Bowen, and the shadow finance minister, Tony Burke, are now holding a press conference in response to the Coalition’s costings and new savings measures.
Chris Bowen:
I note that the treasurer struggled to detail and explain those savings measures. We would like to know, of course, how different these are to the savings measures which were announced in the budget and then Myefo, which looked very, very similar.
When were these savings costed? They don’t appear on the election costings’ website, which means they were probably costed by treasury before PEFO so we question whether they are the most up-to-date costings available.
Of course we will look at them in detail. I noticed the treasurer referred them to the social security minister, he couldn’t answer the questions about them. So of course we look forward to those answers and we will consider them in due course.
Obviously, we would need to know exactly how many people would be affected and how it is different to the $5.7bn in savings announced since the 2015/16 budget from better compliance. This government has a habit of announcing compliance measures with very significant amounts of money attached to them but, of course, we would like to see a report on just how successful those measures have been in considering the government’s [new] measures.
(Bowen is exactly right about this. I expressed scepticism a couple of posts ago about the capacity of the government to extract $2bn from data matching with that context in mind. We’ve seen compliance measures in the budget before.)
Updated
The government is also going to redirect $864m from uncommitted funds (ie: an underspend) in the infrastructure investment program, as well as community development grants and the national stronger regions program.
PS: Pensioners too
Oh, and the government must have forgotten to mention in the press releases that this crackdown also applies to pensioners. An oversight for sure.
Q: This applies to the welfare system. Will it apply to pensions?
Scott Morrison:
To the extent that there are income and asset assessment issues relating to that, then people need to obviously accurately report their income and assets. Income and asset testing is essential to the operation of the welfare system.
Q: Other changes, more stringent ensuring that assets are disclosed, do these changes apply to pensions?
Scott Morrison:
It applies to the entire social welfare system.
It applies to the entire social welfare system. Of course it would.
Why would it not apply to it in its entirety?
Q: Can I follow up on the earlier question about dunny blocks, at the end of the campaign a lot of [the savings] turns out to be funded by a welfare crackdown. What is your message to disadvantaged Australians who might end up losing welfare benefits in order to fund projects in marginal seats?
Scott Morrison:
I think the way you have characterised it is very untrue. What we are doing in the welfare system is strengthening it. No one’s payments are being reduced. No one’s support is being changed. What we are doing is ensuring that those who need that support will get that support.
Updated
Welfare crackdown worth $2bn
From the social services minister, Christian Porter.
The welfare crackdown, worth $2bn.
- enhance the integrity and compliance of social welfare payments through improved employment income and non-employment income data matching;
- improve engagement with welfare recipients to better ensure they meet their obligations before problems arise;
- ensure welfare recipients accurately disclose assets and investments; and
- improve the capability for the identification and recovery of debt owed to taxpayers.
Christian Porter:
The vast majority of Australian welfare recipients do the right thing. Some welfare recipients make genuine mistakes in the information they supply to the government, which can result in reduced or cancelled payments. Better management will make it simpler and less time consuming for welfare recipients to meet their obligations. These reforms will cut red tape and ensure that mistakes are minimised so that recipients who are doing the right thing are not adversely affected or inconvenienced. These measures will also better target fraud in our social welfare system. We will better manage the welfare system to ensure we prevent, detect and deter fraud and non-compliance. No one who genuinely needs social welfare support and who is honestly disclosing their employment income and non-employment income will be worse-off under our commitment.
(Two billion from data matching? Like, really?)
Q: What is it exactly?
Scott Morrison:
I am happy to run through it.
There are four components to this. The first is automating and streamlining existing compliance activities: more frequent and stringent reporting thorough government income matching with testing and record searching and auditing of the detection of overpayments in the system. That is largely dealing with income issues. Improving engagement with welfare recipients upfront.
That means using historical analysis as set out in the policy document to identify those at risk and to be proactive. We recognise, and I know it as a former social services minister, it is complicated and people often find it hard to engage with and find it difficult sometimes to better assess and determine what their income might be. And more case management approaches in helping deal with people in that situation.
Introducing faster, targeted interventions means directly following the case management approach I mentioned and being better able to identify them. And also using real-time monitoring and data analysis of transactions to get a better sense of what the financial situation is ... You have to deal with the asset side as well, not just the income side, and having a timely process of getting people to disclose assets and investments both on a compliance and active compliance footing as well as using technology and other measures I have mentioned. That is to ensure we get proper disclosure of assets or people. And fourthly it deals with debt and the recovery of debt. There are three areas using the income data cross checking between taxation office and Centrelink, and other agencies as appropriate.
(Clear as mud, sorry. I will give you facts when they are to hand.)
Scott Morrison has just said the welfare savings are worth $2.1bn of the $2.3bn worth of savings being unveiled today.
People down at the press conference have documents but I don’t at this point. I will bring your particulars very shortly. Meanwhile on with the questions.
Q: You have spent a bit and it has been about $1.5bn on little community grants, CCTV cameras, tennis courts, and I appreciate it is an election and you need to win votes, but is it the role of federal government? Are these things the purview of state and local governments, this kind of spending?
Scott Morrison:
Dealing with crime, addressing community, social cohesion and ensuring communities are supported in the work they do on the ground, I think it is important.
People need them. People need them.
Coalition costings: $2.3bn savings
Rolling on relentlessly into Tuesday afternoon. We are up to costings now. Treasurer Scott Morrison is unleashing an extended homily about how spend now and pay later approached is no way to run the nation’s finances.
Getting to the crux now. He says the Coalition will improve the budget position by $1.1bn over the budget and forward estimates.
Scott Morrison:
Since the budget and PEFO, we have announced an additional $1.2bn in expenditure, and today I announce there will be some $2.3bn in additional savings.
Now, that means a $1.1bn improvement to the budget, which we announced.
Now, that compares to a $16.5bn worsening of the budget under what Labor will propose.
New welfare savings coming down the pipe from what Morrison is saying. I haven’t seen documents yet so I don’t have details. Stay tuned.
Meanwhile, in Brisbane.
Snap verdict on the press club final pitch
The Coalition’s costings are coming up so just a very quick take on that outing. The Shorten speech absolutely nailed what has been missing throughout the campaign: the rationale for Labor’s economic and social policy decisions. It told the story in clear and simple language. It was well crafted, and on the whole, well delivered.
As for the Q&A, Shorten declined to answer a number of questions. The questions he declined to answer weren’t gotcha or tricky, they were pertinent questions. No answers. And as for the taking Turnbull out of context – I don’t care if this is a bit of slick willy political strategy to kick an attack line into the news cycle, you don’t try and make an integrity point based on a fudge, particularly if your point is you are somehow different to politics as usual. It looks desperate.
I’m glad Sabra Lane got to this in the final question because I excised the reference from the coverage thinking I would follow up once we were through the rush. A couple of times, Bill Shorten referenced a quote from the prime minister this morning about not keeping promises. He declared the Turnbull admission a defining moment in the campaign. My memory was the full context for the Turnbull quote was a critique about Labor, not a general statement, but I had no time to check. Sabra evidently checked, and she puts the quote out of context to Shorten. It is as I recalled it.
Q: Thank you for your speech. Just on your quote, which you say is the defining moment of the campaign, can you recite the sentence that follows?
Bill Shorten:
I don’t have it with me.
Sabra Lane reads the full quote, which is actually a critique of Labor’s backflip on the school kids bonus. Do you stand by your comment saying this is the defining quote of the campaign?
(Whomever thought this was a good idea, to give Shorten that quote, is a bloody idiot quite frankly. *Here boss, try this*)
Bill Shorten stumbles through the call-out by using the question as an invitation to give the stump speech, persisting in the idea that it was Turnbull being comfortable about breaking promises, which is of course completely incorrect.
Not exactly a good note to finish on: make an important point about integrity with a bodgied up quote. That’s got to win a doofus award somewhere.
Sorry I’ve had tools problems: a bit glitchy, pressing on regardless. One last question.
Q: You said in your speech that the first act of a Shorten government would be to put the bill on same-sex marriage and have a free vote in the parliament. Can I probe that a bit further and ask you about what your attitude would be if you don’t win the election, what’s your attitude to the plebiscite itself? Would Labor support the enabling legislation for the plebiscite given that the Australian people would have endorsed the other side’s proposition? And in the event that the plebiscite were to be voted down, something Malcolm Turnbull says won’t happen, but nonetheless in the event that the plebiscite returned a no vote, would Labor walk away from pursuing changes to the marriage act, perhaps in the same manner in which Malcolm Turnbull puts aside now his, you know, passion for the republic?
Bill Shorten says Turnbull doesn’t define the terms of the republic debate or the marriage debate. Just because he failed at the republic doesn’t mean the rest of us can’t succeed, the Labor man says. And Shorten says Labor won’t be hostage to a deal Turnbull made on the plebiscite with the right of the Liberal party.
Merely because he can’t convince his party, why do the other 24 million Australians have to sign up to his deal? I won’t. And we won’t. We’ll just put the case in the parliament. We’re going to put the case in the election full stop.
Updated
Q: Mr Shorten, you say you’ll keep all your promises, which is obviously an important reassurance to voters, but I do recall that Bob Hawke when he was opposition leader in this room at this stage of the campaign put a caveat on his undertaking to keep promises, saying that if he found things were different, then he felt that that justified not keeping every promise. Are you going to give yourself no abundant caution let-out from what is a fairly sweeping commitment that you have made?
Bill Shorten says it’s a sign of Australian politics you don’t, people don’t even expect the politicians to keep the promises they made
For myself, the reason why I’m confident we can keep our promises is because we haven’t gone in our budget to rely upon zombie measures which will never pass the Senate. We haven’t taken the low road of smashing family budgets.
This election is a question of priorities. I’m confident we can keep our promises because we have done so much work in opposition to base them.
Q: Just to be absolutely clear on this, though, and pick up on what Michelle said – are you saying no matter what the circumstances, no spending, or no savings – no program that isn’t already in your manifesto – you will not be doing anything beyond that?
I am saying that our manifesto will form the work plan for the next three years of a Labor government.
Updated
Q: Could I get an idea, please, of the boundaries you put around Medicare, would a Labor government reject a genuine proposal to outsource some of the mechanics of Medicare even if that could lower the cost of the service and increase efficiency and increase its sustainability? If the answer is yes, wouldn’t that be election posturing triumphing over common sense?
Bill Shorten:
I know there are some in the Australian political community who are a bit over Labor party talking about defending Medicare. But the truth is if we don’t defend Medicare, no one will.
Labor’s always up for improving the system. But I believe that the payment system is a fundamental part of the Medicare architecture. I’m not interested in seeing it outsourced.
Then he launches the defence of universal health care.
A question about the rise of Nick Xenophon.
I guess one of the luxuries of being a free-range independent is you can be all things to all people because you never have to form a government. It must be a wonderful world going around just making up whatever you want to say to appeal to people. It’s a great world but it’s not away to run a government. Not a way to run the political process.
There are only two parties who are seeking to form a government in this country - the Liberal party and the Labor party. So I understand that Senator Xenophon can say good things to people whenever he feels like it in return for their votes. He’s got that luxury he’ll never have to keep the promises.
Q: My question is: On the 100% certainty that whoever wins government, there will be more budget savings announced in the next parliament, should the fact that savings have not been mentioned in the campaign immediately disqualified them? Or should both the House and the Senate make the quality and equity of budget measures the guiding principle for considering the policy?
Bill Shorten:
We have chosen to be so upfront with the Australian people so we have a platform for social and economic improvement in Australia, the measures which we announced before the election will be the policies we carry in government.
Next question is what is your super policy, and don’t people have a right to know about that before they vote?
Bill Shorten says the retrospective measures in the government’s offering do have a cloud over them.
What we will do is from government, we’ll sit down with independent experts and we’ll satisfy ourselves as to the extent to which these measures are not retrospective or if any of them are retrospective.
But we can only do that from government.
(So we still don’t know what Labor’s super policy is, not the full policy in any case.)
Q: I’d like to turn your attention to trade, you mentioned in our speech about bad free trade agreements. Australia’s currently negotiating seven free trade agreements including the Gulf, India, Indonesia and a couple of others. Just wondering - which of these FTAs currently under negotiation would your government want to land as a priority in the next three years? And, what does make a good FTA?
Bill Shorten again embarks on a huge preamble. And again, he doesn’t really answer the question. He says he’ll support trade deals that benefit the many and not the few. “I don’t buy the argument that if the very few do very well that somehow that justifies the very many doing very badly.”
I’m running slightly behind Shorten so I’ll skip the first question which was on pre-poll voting.
Next question is on health.
Q: My question is about public hospitals. Labor’s running ads right now attacking the Coalition for cutting $80bn from schools and hospitals ... But two weeks ago you revealed that you were only putting $2bn on top of Malcolm Turnbull’s $2.9 billion in extra funding. My question is this: Do you think public hospitals will require extra federal funding after those first three years because the state’s obviously do even if it’s not quite $57bn, they’re saying they will need extra federal funds? If your answer is yes, why did you not put aside even contingency amount. If the answer is no, why are you still using the $80bn figure in your ads?
An enormous number of words from Bill Shorten follow. Eventually he gets to the nub which is an evasion: he’ll talk to the states. We will sit down and work with our states to make sure these agreements are effective and at the end of the four-year period we’ll be in a much better position to forecast which is required for the healthcare for the years there after.
A non-answer. Moderator Chris Uhlmann attempts to follow up and extract and answer, but he doesn’t get one either.
That was it. That was the argument that’s been missing through the campaign. The rationale for the choices Labor has made.
Into questions now.
'Governments must include and must empower people'
Bill Shorten returns to why inclusion matters. The social contract is part of building consensus for open markets, for globalisation, for trade liberalisation.
Because just as a bad free trade agreement harms the democratic case for open markets, a flawed, criminally-run work visa program undermines Australian’s faith in an open economy.
The gathering push of extreme right-wing populism around the globe is a warning to all of us not to leave people behind. Governments must include and must empower people.
We must give every citizen a sense of being an active participant in transition, in control of what is happening to them – not a passive observer of change left behind on the scrap heap.
We must be a nation where everyone can see and know the value of shared effort for shared reward. Not a place where the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.
If we want a strong free-market economy, open to the world that’s lifting living standards, encouraging participation, rather than perpetuating disadvantage, we must make Australians in a partnership.
If we want to transition our economy, we must take people with us, we have to offer a sense of hope, of a place of respect in our society. The best inoculation against division, against regression, is inclusive economic growth.
That’s the real choice between Mr Turnbull and myself. Not whether we believe Australia can succeed or whether we want it to. But how we achieve that success and who shares in it.
Updated
Shorten then goes on to Medicare, why Labor has made much of Medicare this campaign. He says the political class might not comprehend this, but working people need Medicare. They rely on it. And the Coalition is dismantling universal healthcare.
Bill Shorten:
The Liberals are not waiting, even to the election, to begin this push to private costs. The new upfront fees take effect this Friday – July 1. Rest assured, this is only the beginning – piece by piece, brick by brick. If Mr Turnbull wins on Saturday, he will claim the continued dismantling of Medicare as his mandate and his right.
Updated
'Why the stability pitch is so fraudulent'
Bill Shorten, doubling down on the economic policy alternatives.
The truth is that Mr Turnbull has only ever had a plan for his own re-election. He’s never had a plan for the country. Never had a plan for our economy. The biggest economic risk to Australia, to working and middle-class families, is Mr Turnbull’s $50bn big-business tax giveaway. It is a risk to our economy, it’s a risk to our society.
The Liberals are asking Australians to reject the cooperative economic model and the social wage which has held our nation together for more than 30 years and delivered a quarter century of growth. And instead, they want Australians to embark upon a radical, expensive experiment and trickle-down economics.
We know how this story goes. Reagan tried it, Thatcher tried it. A generation later, we got Trump and we got Brexit. The transition in our economy is not an excuse for cutting money from schools and infrastructure. It’s the reason why we need to invest in them. In a time of global uncertainty and domestic fragility, the last thing our economy and our society needs is a Liberal party assault on the living standards of working and middle-class families. The worst thing we can do to the national budget is smash the family budget. The worst thing we can do for our future is to allow a divided government to divide our society.
That is why Mr Turnbull’s stability pitch is so fraudulent.
Updated
'It comes from a sense of inequality'
If you were with me earlier you’ll know I made some points about Bill Shorten failing to make his economic case, failing to consistently develop the policy rationale for doing things differently. He does it today, at length, referencing Brexit.
Bill Shorten:
The Liberals invoke [Brexit] as a call for stability, but they fundamentally misunderstand the source of the instability. It comes from a sense of inequality. From people feeling marginalised, forgotten, alienated, left behind by global change. It’s a deep-seeded sense that political promises are wasted words.
It comes from exactly the same sort of cynicism in policies that Mr Turnbull’s offering Australians at this election. Tax cuts for the rich, nothing for the working and middle-class Australians, telling a generation of young Australians shut out of the housing market to get rich parents, pricing kids out of university, cutting funding from Medicare.
It comes from a fundamental misunderstanding of both our world economy and our Australian economy. What Australia needs most of all is the political capacity to build and invest in our economy, without giving away the returns. The investments which improve the living standards of all Australians - education, road, rail, bridges, ports, the NBN, Medicare.
That’s what this economic debate is all about.
(That is what Labor’s economic debate is all about. Pity for them this hasn’t been articulated consistently.)
Bill Shorten says Labor has a clear agenda for the first one hundred days.
There is a great deal that my colleagues and I want to achieve. But we do not seek government as a collection of individuals interested in tearing down and undoing the work of our predecessors.
We offer ourselves instead as a team and we will govern in the spirit of cooperation. Ever since I watched in admiration as a 15-year-old in Year 11, having drawn to the Hawke model of consensus, of bringing together business and unions, community organisations, charity, and advocacy groups, I believe in solving problems by assembling the very best people possible and seeking common ground for the common good.
That will be how I will treat the parliament too.
A section more on Mr Consensus.
My immediate focus will be upon finding the maximum that we agree upon and building on that. There’s no point in pretending that any government elected can guarantee control of the Senate. So keeping our promises and offering certainty over the next term depends upon our capacity to negotiate with the parliament, to build on overlapping interests and shared objectives.
As prime minister, I will not seek to manufacture a crisis where one does not exist. I’m not interested in imposing change through force of personality, or using the authority of office to settle political scores. I want to make our country work better by getting us to work together.
And if I lead a government, I will include the opposition. It’s been a source of great frustration to me that opportunities for the major parties to cooperate are so constricted by petty partisanship, so hostage to the whim of the prime minister.
'You cannot dress timid stagnation up as stability and plead for people to stick with your mob for another time or for a while.'
The Labor leader says Australians aren’t waiting for government. They are out there, doing what they do, managing a transition.
Bill Shorten:
People are already organising their lives for the future. Our fellow Australians are smart. They’re clever. They’re adapting and adjusting all the time, to the way they learn and work and travel and live and save. Prime ministers do not have the luxury of pretending that the future is a remote prospect or someone else’s concern. You cannot dress timid stagnation up as stability and plead for people to stick with your mob for another time or for a while.
That’s why the choice Labor offers Australians at this election reaches further and it runs deeper than July 2. Our plan will not expire at 6pm on July 2. It is for the decade that follows.
Bill Shorten says becoming a parent has also been an important source of learning about empathy. I share a connection when parents ask about their kids that realistically I didn’t understand or fully appreciate before.
There’s some nice rhetoric about the meetings, the dynamic in the halls, and what town halls teach you.
Bill Shorten:
When someone puts their hand up, you deal with them straight. You respect the effort required to be there and the decision that they made to ask this question. If you can’t help, you don’t say you can.
'I have been tested and taught'
Bill Shorten pays tribute to his team and the colleagues in the room. Labor has learned the unity lesson and the “hard work” lesson.
I have learnt a lot these last 1020 days or so. I have been tested and taught.
But I wouldn’t swap a single day or a single person that I have served alongside. Now, the eight-week campaign, to be fair, wasn’t my idea. But I am enjoying it. I think a lot of that can be traced back to September of last year, around the time that some in the media had written me off - again! I decided to go back to basics, to what I know best. I started holding community forums, Town Hall meetings, in the regions, in the outer suburbs and inner suburbs of Australia.
It’s the kind of gathering I spent the better path of my life turning up to.
Bill Shorten addresses the National Press Club
The Labor leader has taken the podium for the traditional final pitch. Two welcomes to begin with.
Bill Shorten:
I’d like to acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which we meet. I pay my respects to their elders both past and present. I’m determined to enhance the position of our first Australians in our parliament and in our nation. It’s why I’m so proud that there are more Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander candidates running for the Labor party than ever before.
I also want to thank all of you in the media for your encouragement, and your discouragement, your support and the breadth of your hindsight.
(Fair cop, that last shout out.)
Just tracking back to Bill Shorten and the failure to communicate on the economy story, part of the vacancy it will reflect internal differences about where Labor needs to position itself in a policy sense. There are a spectrum of views within the opposition about the policy repositioning. Spending ministers want to spend (and it’s people like Jenny Macklin who are driving the concept of inclusive growth internally.) Economic ministers want restraint. But it’s more than just that business as usual. This is a genuine conundrum for centre left parties. If you’ve gone the Hawke/Keating *market is good for our people* route for three decades, doing something a bit different carries risks of throwing out the baby with the bath water. This internal dialogue has been one of the more interesting developments with Labor this term. I covered some of it off in the long essay I wrote about Bill Shorten at the start of the election campaign.
Meanwhile, to our north. Unless of course you are reading me in Brisbane or north of Brisbane. Then it will be to your south.
We are set for Malcolm Turnbull's first shopping centre walk since June 3. RANDOM VOTER ALERT. pic.twitter.com/awWhQ32r8U
— Mark Di Stefano (@MarkDiStef) June 28, 2016
Quick stocktake
Let’s so a very quick summary before the press club, today, Tuesday.
-
Malcolm Turnbull is campaigning in Brisbane with lady tradies and others, and is sticking with SMG (stable majority government) as the strategy.
-
Bill Shorten has been talking renewables in Eden Monaro.
- Things may have hit peak nasty in New England, with a new article alleging Tony Windsor bullied peers at school and Windsor bringing in the lawyers.
- After the press club, the Coalition will release its election costings, which will have to include new savings to cover the election spend.
Yo ho, here we go.
Despite being in Brisbane, Malcolm Turnbull is speaking to folks in Adelaide on 5AA. At the moment he’s being asked whether he has room to move in the budget in the event we get a Brexit-induced economic shock. Turnbull says Labor messed up the response to the GFC. They spent too much and unwisely. He misses the bit about Labor stimulating the economy to keep Australia out of recession. Leon Byner persists, he’s asking does the government have room to move? Turnbull says the Coalition has a plan.
Q: Will you win on Saturday?
Malcolm Turnbull:
It’s in the lap of the Gods and the lap of the Australian people.
While I’ve been scratching my head about Labor’s vacancy on the economic story, the industry minister Christopher Pyne is enthusing about tennis in Adelaide, something about the next Lleyton Hewitt. In the process Pyne has dropped $10m for one outdoor show court and two match courts. Expensive, Adelaide tennis courts, obviously.
Failing to lean in
The campaign morning will now build up to Bill Shorten’s speech at the press club. A couple of thoughts ahead of that.
I want to make a broad point about Labor in this campaign that has perplexed me throughout the contest. Labor has a story to tell about the economy. It is a different story from the story Paul Keating and Bob Hawke told about the economy in the 1980s and 1990s, and deliberately so. Labor’s thinking has evolved post-GFC. In a way the opposition is anticipating the next phase of economic policy thinking: the phase that has to consider the losers of globalisation, that has to grapple with the surge in nationalist and protectionist sentiment, the sort of thinking required to ensure that Australia doesn’t end up with a Brexit equivalent, or with Donald Trump faux everyman figure of protest against the establishment.
That’s really what Labor’s economic story is about this election campaign, bound together by the concept of inclusive growth. It’s an anticipatory story because the conditions in Australia are not the same as they are in the US and the UK. The middle class here has not been squeezed to the same extent as we’ve seen elsewhere because Australia didn’t go into recession during the GFC, but the portents are there: fragile economy, weak wages growth, job insecurity, the gap in the wellbeing and prospects story between people in the old economy and people in the new economy.
Given the story Labor has elected to tell, and this is the moment it has decided to tell it, the telling should fall on a certain amount of fertile ground. Except there’s been a consistent hesitancy in the telling. Bill Shorten simply will not lean in on the economic story, he seems to lack the language to communicate the ideas sitting behind Labor’s inclusive growth slogan. He’s always happier talking about something else, which is why Labor has successively communicated the spending side of the ledger – the social capital investments, and the overwrought Mediscare sortie – but it has not prosecuted the economic story compellingly and consistently over the past eight weeks.
I expected Labor would pick up the threads of the story post-Brexit to try and counter Malcolm Turnbull’s stability narrative, but Shorten hasn’t done that. In fact there’s really been no consistent message from Labor this week about what it believes the contest is about. Is it about Medicare? Is it about the visa fraud story that Labor grabbed yesterday? Is it about renewable energy, which Bill Shorten discovered today after ignoring the issue for much of the contest. Turnbull, by contrast, has picked up Brexit and delivered one simple narrative: the world is an uncertain place and you are better off with us than with Shorten. The prime minister is sticking with that point so comprehensively, with so little disruption, that voters will be hearing the message.
What is Shorten’s final pitch? What is this election about? Because if you are ambivalent about your own economic story, if you can’t translate your thinking successfully to the political centre, you are making a compelling case that you are not ready to take back the government benches.
So, let’s see what Bill Shorten delivers at the National Press Club.
Updated
Just a passing observation, the prime minister is looking very comfortable and relaxed this morning.
Q: Migration is a powerful driver of economic growth. You’re promising us a plan for a strong new economy. The business lobby wants to increase the Australian population to 40m by 2055. Do you support that? Do you want a big Australia?
Malcolm Turnbull says he’s not a targets man.
I know people talk about targets and so forth. I think experience demonstrates that we are better off focusing on ensuring that our immigration system is well managed and it responds to the needs of the economy which is exactly what ours does.
Q: Has the campaign against Tony Windsor become overly personal? And do you personally stand by the attack ad that he’s asked to be removed claiming it implies he cheated on his wife?
Malcolm Turnbull:
I’m not going to engage in personality politics. I would simply make the observation, and this is a historical fact, that in 2010, the voters of New England re-elected Tony Windsor, whom they regarded with every good reason as an independent conservative member and they ended up with him supporting a Labor-Greens left-wing government led by Julia Gillard. So that’s the history and the voters of New England have every reason to understand what happened last time and understand very keenly, perhaps more keenly than many others, how important it is to vote for a Liberal or a National candidate to secure a stable majority Coalition government.
Q: You say Labor’s budget position is a fairytale. Isn’t yours a fairytale as long as it rests on 16 measures that have already been blocked by the Senate from the 2014 budget? And shouldn’t you at least tell the Australian people how you intend to keep your budget in order if, as is likely, the new Senate rejects them as the old one did?
Malcolm Turnbull:
Tim, I’ve got two points to make in response to that. The first is we don’t even know who’s going to be in the new Senate so you’re speculating about a Senate, the membership of which has yet to be determined. No, no, we have - the government has a policy - the government has to set out in its budget what it proposes to do. What you’re asking me to do is speculate on the likely reaction of a Senate which the Australian people have not yet elected. That’s my first point so you’re getting ahead of yourself, with great respect. But you are a forward thinker of course so I’d expect nothing else.
The other point I would make is what political parties say they will support and oppose at one time is not necessarily, ultimately, what they will do. You have seen the Labor party has opposed many measures of ours at which they have subsequently supported or subsequently changed their position on.
Q: You mentioned the ABCC. If you win the election but don’t get enough numbers for a majority and a joint sitting, will you still put the ABCC legislation to a joint sitting? If not, would that be the end of it as government policy?
Malcolm Turnbull says “unless they are passed by the House and the Senate before” – they will go to a joint sitting.
Q: The number of apprentices has declined drastically under the Coalition government, especially in marginal seats. Are you worried about your position in these marginal seats? And how does declining apprentice numbers fit with your plan for jobs and growth?
Malcolm Turnbull says this is a historical problem inherited from the Labor party. He says the biggest driver of youth employment is a strong economy.
A question about public health and public education, aren’t Labor spending just a bit more and why is that a problem?
Malcolm Turnbull:
We’re pointing out their hypocrisy. What Labor has done again and again is peddle one falsehood after another. You’ve seen them mostly focused on health but they have been designed to mislead and deceive Australians, particularly older Australians and the very cynical telephoning campaign they’ve had with their lies about Medicare. The fact is that what Labor has no positive policies they’re prepared to talk about. What they have is falsehoods that they’re putting to frighten people.
Q: Volatility associated with Brexit has the potential to decimate people’s retirement savings yet your government is going to limit to once-in-a-lifetime $1.5m roll-over into super even if that is wiped out by a global event.
Malcolm Turnbull works through the concessional nature of super bit by bit.
It is still a very generous system.
Q: Economists have said at the end of the budget estimates period, the four years, the difference between your budget position and Labor’s is negligible; some have described it as a rounding error even. Haven’t you squibbed the opportunity for budget repair even if you’re slightly up on Labor’s estimate by the end of it?
Malcolm Turnbull:
The Labor party is saying they will run higher debt and higher deficits over each of the four years than us and then in the fifth year, miraculously, like Houdini, they will spring out of that hole they have dug for themselves, that budget black hole, they’ll spring back into balance. Well, you really would have to believe in fairytales to believe that.
Updated
Malcolm Turnbull addresses reporters
The prime minister has emerged from the sharing circle to address reporters.
Malcolm Turnbull:
Can you imagine in this environment, in this uncertain environment globally, where Britain has just been downgraded from AAA to AA status, that too is a momentous event following on the vote to leave the European Union. In that environment, an opposition is proposing to run higher debt, more deficits and higher taxes on investment when clearly what we need, now more than ever, is prudent economic management, living within our means and encouraging investment.
#imagine
#CanYouImagineWhatWeNeed?
What we need now is the strong economic leadership that brings the country together.
I gather the prime minister is currently mid flight in one of his Dr Phil circle sessions in Banyo.
Updated
Labor's @billshortenmp and @MikeKellyofEM at the Royalla solar farm, near Canberra #ausvotes pic.twitter.com/JtmRV7FP0q
— Adam Todd (@_AdamTodd) June 27, 2016
Bill Shorten is asked about Labor’s now confusing position on superannuation. Labor has said it will bank the revenue from the government’s reform proposals but not commit to implementing the specific details.
Bill Shorten:
What we will do in a calm and methodical fashion, upon being elected to government, is examine the changes and get to the heart of the matter and the fact of the matter is with superannuation, it’s only Labor who has increased superannuation, it’s only Labor who has ever really championed making sure that low-paid people get a proportion of superannuation.
A question on building regulators, which is a proxy for Shorten being beholden to the CFMEU, then a question on the efficiency dividend, which Labor is now reviewing. Then the same-sex marriage plebiscite.
Q: What’s your position if it is a plebiscite question, if you’re in opposition, would you support the enabling legislation and secondly, if it wasn’t, would you vote for it?
Bill Shorten:
Labor’s in this election to win it and we can win it. One of the reasons we can win it is because we’ve got the most straightforward policy on marriage equality. Why Mr Turnbull can’t be like old Malcolm Turnbull as opposed to new Malcolm Turnbull I cannot understand. Why on earth are we having $160m taxpayer-funded opinion poll?
Malcolm Turnbull can’t even bind his cabinet ministers to that. Now I thought [Peta] Credlin’s contribution was very interesting because what it shows is the opening skirmishes of the inevitable and coming Liberal civil war no matter what happens on July 2. The fact of the matter is that Mr Abbott, for instance, we haven’t heard from him on marriage equality in recent times. Will he be bound by the outcome of a plebiscite nationally on the outcome in his seat or will he not be bound by it at all?
Mr Turnbull knows he’s come up with the second best option. He knows if he had his way, if he was genuinely leading the Liberal party, if he was actually the man in charge rather than simply the guy who is the front for the Liberal party, then he would go for a vote in parliament.
I promise Australians that if and when we’re elected, within the first 100 days we will legislate for marriage equality, it will be a conscience vote and it will happen.
Updated
Q: What do you make of the allegations that Tony Windsor physically abused some of his peers while at school?
Bill Shorten:
I think it sounds like – I don’t know the facts of matter – but it sounds like the National party is threatened by Tony Windsor.
Q: Is the Labor party still committed to scrapping the reach rule?
Bill Shorten:
We think it’s outlived its usefulness. The fact of the matter is there’s a technology challenge there and regulation is not keeping up with technology. What I’m most committed to in regional Australia is local content. What I’m most committed to in our media is diversity.
Updated
Q: What do you make of Saul Eslake’s comments that Australia’s AAA credit rating would be at greater risk under Labor than the Coalition?
Bill Shorten:
I don’t think that’s right, that’s the fact of the matter.
Q: Wouldn’t [deficits] be higher under Labor and isn’t that a risk given what we’ve seen in Britain, the uncertainty and instability?
Bill Shorten:
As we’ve done by revealing our costings and independently verified by our costings panel of eminent Australians, what we’ve shown is each year we will improve the budget bottom line. We will get to balance in the same year they will and we’re making structural changes to the budget. We can’t keep handing out billions and billions of dollars in unsustainable negative gearing tax subsidies to property investors trying to buy their 10th house. We can’t afford to give $50bn away to the largest companies in Australia and multinationals and make our healthcare system and our school system pay the price. So we’ve got long-term sustainable growth, we’re pulling the right levers.
Q: Can you guarantee that Australia’s credit rating won’t be downgraded under a Labor government?
Bill Shorten:
I’m very confident that our plans are the best plans for sustainable improvement in Australia. We all know that the Liberal party’s got fake cuts or zombie measures which they’re relying upon to improve or artificially inflate their budget position. The way we have long-term sustainable growth is we have inclusive growth.
The real challenges in the Australian economy are flatlining wages growth, a fragile economy based on flat wages growth. What we need to stimulate the growth in our economy is making sure that we’ve got the best skills possible, making sure that our work force of the future gets the best training. What we need to help generate that long-term confident growth is making sure that we’re investing in public infrastructure, rail and road. A first class NBN. This is how we generate it, invest in people, invest in industry, invest in innovation.
This is the worst time, the worst time possible to take $50bn out of the budget. Australians, as I travel around this marvellous country, they are decidedly anti-a $50bn tax cut for large companies. We’ve seen new reports today which show that the principal benefit of Mr Turnbull’s only economic plan for the future is to in fact see this budget hole and the money being sent overseas. Now is not the time for the savage cuts of the Turnbull government and the austerity that goes with it. Now is not the time to make Australians pay for the $50bn tax cut by getting worse health outcomes and worse schooling outcomes.
Bill Shorten addresses reporters
By some strange coincidence the Labor leader is opening his press conference today with things the prime minister isn’t mentioning: the NBN, apprenticeships, renewable energy and climate change.
Q: Will the RET be extended as part of Labor’s plan to achieve 50% renewables by 2030 and if not, how will you achieve that goal?
Bill Shorten:
Well, first of all, RET is set for a certain period into the future and we will renegotiate that but we will do it on a basis of reaching out to the opposition, because hopefully we’ll be the government, and hopefully if we win this election, what it will mean is that the climate sceptics will be told to head back into their caves in the Liberal party and maybe even we can see a more progressive brand of pro-science, pro climate change Liberal finally emerge out of the wilderness of the Liberal party.
So I’m optimistic that we can create longer-term stability in the RET. When you look at how else we can improve renewable energy as a mix we do it by creating investment certainty. It’s a funny thing really but the government loves to talk about markets but when it comes to a market for climate change they don’t trust the market.
Updated
Here's a list of what we don't know in this election
I thought it would be worthwhile tallying up the things we don’t know in a policy sense about this election contest.
The Coalition
Higher education: After failing to get its highly controversial 2014 higher education changes through the Senate, the government released an “options paper” alongside the 2016 budget, which said the Coalition would continue with the 20% cut to commonwealth grants to universities, but would only deregulate fees, that is, allow them to rise, for some (unidentified) courses. The aim was to stymie Labor’s “$100,000 degrees” attack but at the same time leave all the details until after the election. The Coalition is effectively going to the election without a higher education policy.
Vocational education: In response to widespread rorting of vocational education funding, the new minister, Scott Ryan, announced a series of immediate changes and a discussion paper, with submissions due after the election, leaving the future policy uncertain.
Industrial relations. The former prime minister John Howard pointed out this week the Coalition had not, in fact, ruled out further deregulation of industrial laws after the election. It was, he said “unfinished business” which at some point needed to be addressed. “And I don’t see anything in what the government has said to rule that out. But as to when it happens and what form it takes is obviously a matter for the government of the day,” he said. In fact, it doesn’t seem to have an industrial relations policy at all. It has a policy to protect vulnerable and exploited workers and the prime minister told the Facebook leaders’ debate the Coalition would not legislate to overturn Fair Work Australia’s decision on whether to reduce Sunday penalty rates. Some conservative commentators think this means the Coalition won’t do anything. The employment minister, Michaelia Cash, has said there will be no “lurch to the right”. The absence of a policy means that if the Coalition did push changes, it would not be breaking an election commitment.
Climate details: Industry and environment groups assume the Coalition will tighten its so-called safeguards mechanism after the election so that it becomes a type of emissions trading scheme and helps force down industrial greenhouse emissions. But the Coalition refuses to say, one way or the other.
Long-term hospital funding: Malcolm Turnbull has offered the states an extra $2.9bn over the next three years for public hospitals, but has said longer term funding – which the states insist will need to be substantial – would depend on a post-election negotiation.
Research and development tax breaks: The government said it would save $900m by cutting the research and development tax break, but this was never legislated and it then commissioned a review of the entire policy which it has received but not released.
Arts: The arts minister, Mitch Fifield, did not have a policy when he attended a campaign arts policy debate, but said he was “absolutely committed” to the existing architecture of the arts and wanted to consult more with the sector to bring the arts into the Coalition’s innovation agenda.
Labor
Some details of climate policy: Labor is proposing two different emissions trading schemes, one for the electricity sector and one for industry. The fine details of both are to be determined after the election, but the form of the latter is particularly vague.
Long-term hospital funding: Labor has offered an extra $2bn on top of Turnbull’s $2.9bn over the next three years. Despite having long criticised the Coalition for “cutting” $57bn from long-term hospital funding over 10 years, Bill Shortenannounced two weeks ago that his long-term funding will also depend on negotiations after the election. Labor has not set aside any contingency or extra money to cover its extra hospital funding in its 10-year costings.
Superannuation: Labor has banked the savings from the Coalition’s superannuation changes, and says it will adopt those which achieve the same ends as its own previous policy, but will also “consult with stakeholders”, including on the $500,000 lifetime cap on non-concessional super contributions, about which it holds grave concerns. It will also ask Treasury to conduct a review.
Research and development: Labor has said it will wait for the government’s review and then find some other way to save the same $900m.
Energy supplement: Despite railing against any reductions in what it says are already inadequate unemployment benefit and pension payments, Labor is now banking the savings from the Coalition’s 2016 budget decision to axe an “energy supplement” for new pension recipients, but at the same time says it would also “seek further advice about the impact” of the measure as part of a review into the inadequacy of unemployment benefits.
Ahead of the press club address today, Bill Shorten has deployed to the southern reaches of Canberra. We expect both leaders to bob up over the next little while.
Brisbane has a suburb called Banyo. Why?
Joyce was also asked whether he would withdraw an advert that Gabrielle Chan drew to our attention to yesterday. The ad shows a woman discussing her relationship with the independent candidate Tony Windsor and then rejecting his texts for “another chance”.
Barnaby Joyce:
Not for one second does anyone believe that is any sort of insinuation about Mr Windsor and any part of his personal life. It’s a ridiculous insinuation to make. It’s a statement about an actor. It’s an actor making a comment about the seat of New England and where the seat of New England goes.
So we’ve made that open offer that we’re happy to withdraw all negative advertising as long as, of course, Mr Windsor’s team withdraws all negative advertising. But of course if we were withdraw ours and he continues on with his then in an election campaign, he just takes votes off us.
Speaking, as we were, of New England, the deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce is asked how dirty the battle in New England will get in the next few days?
Barnaby Joyce:
Well I hope not dirty at all. Really and truly, this is something that I never ever wanted.
Helen has mentioned it already but it’s worth pausing on the subject again for just a moment. There is a story in The Australian this morning about Tony Windsor, with former school students at Farrer Agricultural High School alleging bullying by the would-be independent during his high school days. I have no issue with journalists looking at politicians backgrounds, in fact that’s part of the job. But The Australian is clearly subjecting independent candidates to more forensic scrutiny in this election cycle than their major party counterparts: Tony Windsor, Rob Oakeshott and Nick Xenophon have all been turned over during the course of the campaign. As to this Windsor story, no-one sensible would defend bullying if that’s what actually happened decades ago at Farrer, institutionalised brutality is the stuff of shame, but there’s a broader point to register here. Taking Tony Windsor right out of the equation (he says he’s consulting lawyers about the story, which he’s termed “gutter journalism”) – setting him and the specific (contested) allegations completely aside and looking at the bigger picture, the sort of conduct depicted in the story this morning has flourished in single sex schools and boarding schools and university colleges around the country, the only corrections happening after public exposure. A lot of politicians in the Australian parliament are products of that environment. If people’s conduct decades ago in institutionalised contexts is now fair game, then can we expect a whole lot more exposes from Sharri Markson?
Updated
Warming up on the hustings.
This is going to be a belter. Turnbull-in-the-round. pic.twitter.com/DDfz84bFEJ
— Mark Di Stefano (@MarkDiStef) June 27, 2016
True character
Good morning everyone and welcome to Tuesday. I’d share my first world problem this morning, which involves losing my wrist watch in a very small space, but you’d correctly conclude that I’d lost the plot, and it’s very important that neither you, the reader, nor me, the live blogger, acknowledge anything like loss of plot, because I have absolutely no intention of losing the plot before this campaign ends. See? We can now all agree that it’s best I steer very clear of the watch.
Let’s stuff that tiny flash of nervous exhaustion in a box and look at Tuesday. Like yesterday, today is full throttle. The Coalition will release election costings, and a blessing – the treasurer Scott Morrison seems to have dialled it down a fraction from the gasping, microphone chomping performance of yesterday. (Perhaps Scott has also lost his watch and can’t talk about it – who can say?) The Labor leader Bill Shorten will make his final pitch at the National Press Club, and Malcolm Turnbull will press on slapping backs and inquiring after the precise vintage of pet rats in Brisbane’s bustling marginal seats quarter. Never a dull moment in other words.
Just one more thought before we march happily onwards. I’d strongly recommend you chase up last night’s Four Corners program if you missed it, not for any stunning news developments, but because Sarah Ferguson actually succeeded in getting moments of truth from the prime minister and the alternative prime minister, particularly in the opening few questions, when Turnbull and Shorten were pushed back off their talking points.
It’s not so much what they say in the course of the program, it’s their reactions that are telling. You do get a very good sense of their respective characters from the program, and given politics is a performance art, true character can sometimes be hard to discern. Some people can maintain a mask for years and years. On Twitter I deployed a bit of shorthand to convey what I mean by this, I said this contest between leadership alternatives is Mr Brittle versus Mr Pliable. Turnbull revealed the full spectrum of his character: erudition, confidence, charm and gritted teeth irritation when the questions weren’t to his liking. Shorten displayed the porous quality that for me at least, makes him such a difficult subject to convey successfully to readers. The Labor leader didn’t peak or trough, he kept his tone and reactions very even, he was confident, but it was clear to this viewer at least the quality that all his friends point to: a desire to be liked. Anyway, chase it up in iView, and five paws Sarah Ferguson, who is without peer when it comes to the broadcast interview.
Let’s crack 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. You can find him here.
Katharine Murphy is armed with tea and politics, and waiting in the wings. A quick look at some of today’s front pages before I go.
See you again tomorrow.
Financial Review front page. Tuesday 28 June 2016. @FinancialReview #ausvotes #election2016 #brexit pic.twitter.com/LvcO5faBgz
— Dave Earley (@earleyedition) June 27, 2016
The Age front page. Tuesday 28 June 2016. @theage #ausvotes #election2016 #brexit pic.twitter.com/tbzBW6tbMI
— Dave Earley (@earleyedition) June 27, 2016
The Australian front page. Tuesday 28 June 2016. @australian #ausvotes #election2016 #brexit pic.twitter.com/TBEZrQLNAB
— Dave Earley (@earleyedition) June 27, 2016
The Herald Sun front page. Tuesday 28 June 2016. @theheraldsun #ausvotes #election2016 pic.twitter.com/pdAQMOlnpZ
— Dave Earley (@earleyedition) June 27, 2016
The Sydney Morning Herald front page. Tuesday 28 June 2016. @smh #ausvotes #election2016 #brexit pic.twitter.com/nVlvpXx3vJ
— Dave Earley (@earleyedition) June 27, 2016
The Daily Telegraph front page. Tuesday 28 June 2016. @dailytelegraph #ausvotes #election2016 pic.twitter.com/dAhwOA5EnM
— Dave Earley (@earleyedition) June 27, 2016
Deputy prime minister, Barnaby Joyce, has pledged to vote in accordance with the result of a plebiscite.
Joyce said he’ll put aside his personal view - that marriage be restricted to a man and a woman - if the plebiscite calls for marriage equality.
“I will follow the instructions of the Australian people,” he told ABC radio a short time ago.
Leyonhjelm has given his prediction for the NSW senate results.
“Five liberal, four Labor, one Greens, myself and another one,” he says. Suggesting maybe a fifth Labor.
Elsewhere, Greens MP Adam Bandt has told ABC News Breakfast he thinks his party has a good chance of picking up lower house seats. the ABC reports he’s hopeful about winning: Batman (David Feeney), Melbourne Ports (Michael Danby), Higgins (Kelly O’Dwyer), Richmond (Justine Elliot), Grayndler (Anthony Albanese), and Sydney (Tanya Plibersek).
All of them are Labor held, except Higgins where O’Dwyer won with a 9.9% lead in 2013.
“The British voted for Brexit because they wanted to regain control over their own country. Yes there was a bit of an immigration aspect about it but who can blame them, they want to have control over their own borders, similar to Australians,” Liberal Democrat David Leyonhjelm has just told Radio National.
But... their government wasn’t running the country, they were being told what they had to do by unelected officials in Brussels.”
Leyonhjelm says it’s part of a worldwide tendency towards wishing ‘a plague on both their houses’, and towards looking for alternatives.
“I think we’re going to see a much bigger vote for minor parties - notwithstanding what Malcolm Turnbull said on the weekend - in the Senate in particular.”
He says he’s hearing people are voting for major parties in the lower house, but seeking diversity in the Senate.
He said the government was “pathetic” in the way it dealt with the crossbench.
AAP reports: Tony Windsor has referred to his lawyers allegations he was a bully at school nearly 50 years ago.
Mr Windsor, who is running against deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce, described the allegations published in The Australian newspaper as “gutter” journalism, saying he would not dignify it with comment.
“It should be seen in the context of a very close election campaign,” he said in a statement today.
“Cool heads continue to be the order of the day” after the UK lost its AAA rating this morning in the aftermath of Brexit.
“We need to be very conscious of the fact that this event still has a long way to play out, particularly on the political ramifications,” said Morrison on Radio National.
“You need the tightest financial position you can have in Australia with a trade focused agenda, which we do have, and you need to be doing everything you can to drive economic growth.”
He says there is no suggestion that a stimulus package or similar would be required to help the Australian economy over the next four years at least while it remains in deficit.
Kelly offers Morrison the chance to get the costings announcement over and done with now, but he doesn’t bite.
The government has announced about $1bn in new spending since the budget. Where are the savings? Are there more savings cuts?
“So you’re spending more, but you’re going to improve the budget position?” asks Kelly.
“That’s right”.
The Coalition has always paid its way, he says. The costings will be out later today.
Treasurer Scott Morrison has just spoken with Fran Kelly on Radio National.
I’ll get into the bulk of the conversation shortly, but he was asked for his position on marriage equality, and what he would do after a plebiscite vote.
“I will respect the plebiscite outcome. If the plebiscite does not carry, that should be the end of the matter,” he said.
Updated
“One of the things Ford Prefect had always found hardest to understand about humans was their habit of continually stating and repeating the very very obvious,” -Douglas Adams, still not talking about the Australian election campaign.
Good morning everyone, and welcome to day two of the final week. Katharine Murphy will join you shortly, but in the meantime lets dive into the news from overnight.
The government’s most helpful former employee, Peta Credlin, has posed a theory to Sky News overnight. Marriage equality will doom the Liberal party leadership.
“It is very likely [the plebiscite] will be opposed by the Greens and Labor and Labor has got stronger in this campaign, not weaker.
“The government might claim a mandate but if Labor block it and the Greens block it in the upper house, what is plan B?” she asked.
Credlin predicted if the plebiscite vote failed, Turnbull would push for a parliamentary vote, and that would create “enormous stresses” in the party, similar to the split over the ETS which saw Turnbull lose leadership the first time.
The big picture
The Coalition will release its costings this afternoon. Treasurer Scott Morrison yesterday said they would be “within the envelope” of the most recent budget.
Both leaders were given the Sarah Ferguson treatment on Four Corners last night, grilled on their pasts, personalities, and policies, and quickly cut if if they started to speak like politicians.
When asked about asylum seekers held in offshore detention, Turnbull said Australia was not responsible for them.
“You have to remember that those places are … those centres are managed by the respective governments, PNG and Nauru. That’s a fact.”
“But are you not responsible for the people in those centres or on those islands as the Australian prime minister who runs the regime that holds them there?” responded Ferguson.
“Well, we don’t hold them there. We don’t hold them there. That is not correct. We do not hold them there.”
Asked a similar question, Shorten, said: “I feel a responsibility that we make sure that we solve the problem. We do owe them a duty of care.”
Let me know what you though of it in the comments.
A new report has found that more than 40% of the benefit of the Coalition’s $48bn company tax cut will go offshore in dividends to shareholders of multinational corporations and foreign tax authorities.
And new modelling has found a majority of families would be better off under Labor’s childcare and family payments policy than under the Coalition’s plans.
There is an escalating dispute over budget repair, with the Coalition accusing Labor of banking $3bn in Coalition savings from the most recent budget, while promising to “revisit” them if Labor wins.
Labor is in a tricky position, having to convince the electorate to trust their plan for higher deficit in the short term in return for long term surplus.
The fight for New England is getting extremely dirty. Tony Windsor has called for the removal of a Nationals attack ad which he says made suggestions about his personal life.
And Senator Ricky Muir is sticking around.
He’s told AAP if he loses he’ll run again at the next election.
“Whether it be the Senate, the lower house, the state, even local council,” he said”.
“One way or another I’ll find my way back into politics.”
On the campaign trail
The PM is visiting Brisbane and Petrie today. Petrie is the country’s second most marginal electorate, and you can read about it here.
Turnbull will begin with a forum of small business owners and construction industry stakeholders.
Shorten is expected to visit Eden-Monara today, before appearing at the National Press Club around lunch time.
The campaign to watch
Far away from the “heartland” seats of Western Sydney, the bellwethers and the city seats, Lingiari covers more than 1.3m square kilometres, with just 65,000 odd people, 42% of whom are Indigenous. One of the biggest issues is roads – and not because the traffic’s bad but because quite often you just can’t drive on them.
The incumbent is Labor “Man with the Mo”, Warren Snowdon, but he holds it by just 0.9%. He’s hoping to see off CLP candidate, pastoralist Tina MacFarlane.
The two went head to head on ABC NT Radio’s Country Hour yesterday. You can have a listen here.
And another thing
As if England wasn’t hurting enough after Brexit, they’ve now been humiliated in the football.
The manager resigned immediately after the side lost 2-1 to Iceland. Here’s part of the write-up from the Guardian’s Daniel Taylor:
For Roy Hodgson, it was a desperate and ignominious way to end his four years as England manager. Whatever else happened in that time, his period in charge will probably always be remembered for the full-on humiliation that accompanied this defeat and the knowledge it will rank among the more infamous results in the history of the national team.
How can it not when the suffering comes against a country with a population roughly the size of Croydon and absolutely no history of tournament football? What heroes Iceland were: brave, organised, superb.
Iceland right now #ENGICE pic.twitter.com/kb6qkNMSAJ
— marcus kelson (@marcuskelson) June 27, 2016
1 in every 1,000 Icelandic men (age 25-29) was on that pitch vs. 1 in every 200,000 British men. They still beat us. pic.twitter.com/NtWZa2AEnb
— Mona (@MonaChalabi) June 27, 2016
Updated
