With polls suggesting a tight contest, could we be heading towards another minority parliament?
The Greens seem happy to fan that analysis, with Adam Bandt, the MP for Melbourne, telling Radio National the party would be open to forming a “stable progressive government” with Labor.
But he said Labor seemed to be of the mind that it either governed alone, or not at all, which he said was a “a pig-headed approach”.
Labor’s deputy leader, Tanya Plibersek, certainly indicated that was still the party’s endgame: “We are playing to win,” she said, “not playing to be part of a coalition government. Every seat we lose to the Greens makes it more likely we’ll have Malcolm Turnbull as prime minister.”
And later, in Townsville, the Labor leader, Bill Shorten, quoted The Castle in his out-of-hand dismissal of the idea – yep, telling Bandt he was “dreaming”.
As Guardian Australia’s Bridie Jabour noted in today’s election blog, even entertaining the idea of potential alliances and preference deals presents the government with the opportunity for a scare campaign.
Sure enough, Malcolm Turnbull later asked voters to “consider what it would be like if we have the same old Labor with the same old deal with the Greens”.
This won’t be the last we hear of the possibility of a Labor-Greens government, no matter how keen Labor, at least, are to strike the idea from our minds.
The two major parties continued their campaigns along the lines established yesterday, which is broadly to say, businesses (with some robots) versus schools (and Indigenous issues).
Country matters
Turnbull’s day began at the Mitre 10 hardware store in Forde. Branch owner Ian Gill was in favour of the tax cut the Coalition has to offer, telling Guardian Australia’s political editor Lenore Taylor he’d use it either to employ more people or make more profit. On how this latter point would assist jobs and growth, Turnbull said it was “well understood ... that if you reduce the level of business taxes ... you will see more investment”.
Ian gill owner of mitre ten Shailer Park (in Forde) explaining why we are here @murpharoo #ausvotes pic.twitter.com/gBLlAahcX6
— Lenore Taylor (@lenoretaylor) May 9, 2016
Turnbull continued to beat the drum of jobs, growth and technology, speaking with enthusiasm about robots and looking positively gleefully at an “acetabulum reamer” at a Brisbane hospital.
He said he could “see the spirit” of the government’s national economic plan (“the confidence, the optimism, the determination to get ahead” – that national economic plan sure sounds like a winner, doesn’t it?) all around him in Queensland.
And once again, Shorten’s day began at a state school, this time in Townsville. It seems the setting is symbolic of what Labor believes the Liberals have forgotten (“The best way you demonstrate your bona fides is by ... prioritising the proper funding of schools”).
Campaigning in north Queensland set him apart, he said, “because I will be a prime minister, if elected, who governs for all Australia, not just the cities of Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane”.
Labor’s education spokeswoman, Kate Ellis, directly invoked the contrast with the Coalition, saying that Turnbull “may want to talk about youth and jobs but ... you don’t care about youth and jobs if you don’t care about an adequately supported, quality education system”.
But Labor was distracted from its desired talking point by questions over its boat policy, prompted by both the Daily Telegraph’s reporting of tensions in the ranks and the appearance of protesters calling on them to “let them stay” at Shorten’s appearance alongside Herbert candidate Cathy O’Toole.
The Liberal party took the opportunity to riff on Labor’s “100 positive policies” campaign while simultaneously capitalising on its reputation for being stronger on border protection.
Under Labor more than 800 illegal boats arrived. Whether weak borders or more dysfunction, same old Labor #auspol pic.twitter.com/GCZ7UBwaae
— Liberal Party (@LiberalAus) May 9, 2016
The cross-party social media sniping is well under way – and making Twitter even more intolerable than usual, with the platform’s in-house analysis of the #ausvotes hashtag so far finding more mentions of @AustralianLabor than @LiberalAus – make of that what you will.
Super-troopers
The conservative thinktank the Institute of Public Affairs is gearing up to run an aggressive public campaign against the Turnbull government’s superannuation changes. Its members are furious at the super reforms revealed in Scott Morrison’s budget, and met this morning to discuss how to formally oppose them.
Central to the issue is whether capping lifetime contributions to super and limiting the amount of super balances which can earn tax-free income are retrospective changes.
The government has insisted that’s not the case, with trade minister Steve Ciobo telling ABC News Radio this morning there was nothing retrospective about increasing a tax from zero to 15%.
But IPA executive director John Roskam told Guardian Australia the government’s proposed super changes had become an “absolute firestorm” among Coalition supporters and IPA members, and the government’s claim that the changes were not retrospective had made people “even more angry”.
Best of Bowers
Further reading
- Thanks for paying for my house, loser (Fairfax) “There are a lot of mum and dads with negatively geared property investments. Once upon a time, I was one of them.”
- Solidarity forever? (The Monthly) Bill Shorten has announced that, if elected, he will govern like a trade unionist. Alas, in these unhappy times, it was not the right thing to say, writes Mungo MacCallum.
- Australians crave change. But this election won’t deliver it (Guardian Australia) What lies ahead is a gruelling and expensive campaign that will leave the country much as it was before, writes David Marr.
And also ...
Immigration minister Peter Dutton announced this afternoon that he would not be appealing against a federal court finding that he breached his duty of care to the asylum seeker known as S99, who became pregnant after being raped on Nauru. Dutton will now have to fly S99 to a country where she can safely undergo an abortion.
Meanwhile, in the rest of the world ...
A Scottish man has been arrested over a clip that allegedly “shows a pug sitting in front of a screen showing footage of Adolf Hitler and appearing to make Nazi salutes”. The Sun has identified the dog as Buddha.
And if today was a song ...
Self-described Aussie battler Duncan Storrar is being hailed as a hero of the common people after apparently sticking it to assistant treasurer Kelly O’Dwyer on Monday night’s Q&A. (Though her passing reference to a “$6,000 toaster” did some of the work for him.)
Storrar’s question about the negligible impact of lifting the tax-free threshold for high-income earners was doing the rounds on social media all day, with #IStandWithDuncan trending on Twitter. Fairfax even profiled the 45-year-old father of two, the “human face on the budget battle”.
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