Julie Bishop stepped into the breach to take some of the heat off David “here come the vultures” Feeney when she fronted up to a Neil Mitchell radio interview while not across the minute detail of the government’s superannuation policy. Usually not knowing policy detail outside a portfolio is not a cardinal sin but this is an election campaign and Mitchell, along with Alan Jones and Ray Hadley, have been blowing the bugle against these superannuation change all month. They really, really care about the 4% of Australians affected by the changes.
Mitchell: Are you aware of the transition to retirement scheme?
Julie Bishop:
Well I’m certainly aware that we have one, yeah.
How does it work?
Well Neil, this is obviously a gotcha moment, you want me to go through … it’s not my portfolio and –
No, no. This is the hole in your whole logic. You’re saying it’s only 4% of taxpayers. You, Josh Frydenberg, neither of you understand the transition to retirement. That’s clear and this is where you’re hitting average people. Not the fat cats, the average people.
I don’t accept that that’s the case. I’ve had a briefing on this and I’m told that 96% of people are either better off or not affected.
Malcolm Turnbull looked entirely un-thrilled to be asked about it at his press conference but backed his deputy party leader, saying superannuation policy was “notoriously complicated” before launching into an explanation of it.
Bishop was also asked about any leadership ambitions she may be harbouring.
Of course I can’t say I would never [run for the leadership] if there was a circumstance, but I certainly don’t see one.
I don’t envisage that. I am very, very happy being the foreign minister. I’ve been deputy to a number of leaders and I think I play a positive role in that regard and most certainly my colleagues appreciate me being the deputy of the party.”
The Liberal party can keep thanking its stars (Beyoncé and Taylor Swift, presumably) for Feeney, though, as he was busy tweeting support for a school that is under investigation from the Victorian Registration and Qualifications Authority.
The Maharishi school in Reservoir received a $500,000 federal government grant while it under investigation after complaints about poor record keeping. As part of the curriculum the school has students take part in the “daily practice of transcendental meditation”.
Parents have also expressed concerns about the removal of sports that are not “peaceful enough”, such as football and basketball.
A spokesman for Feeney said he had been invited there:
He was there in his capacity as a local member alongside Greens and government representatives, doing his job as a local MP. I’ve seen the comments about the school being under investigation. He was just there in his capacity as a local member.”
‘That’s so embarrassing’
Malcolm Turnbull was out on the hustings keeping his messaging firmly on the economy, saying Bill Shorten has “no plan for economic growth at all”.
He is declaring war on business. He is trying to suggest that somehow or other there is a conflict between a strong economy and successful businesses who are paying tax, and spending money on health and schools where in fact you can’t do one without the other – every Australian understands that.
He’s taking a thoroughly anti-business approach and that can only lead to slower economic growth, a weaker economy, weaker revenues for the government, tax revenues for the government and less money to spend on schools and hospitals.”
Turnbull spent the morning at the Children’s Cancer Institute at the University of New South Wales, attached to the Sydney children’s hospital, where he met Lulu Demetriou, aged six, who lives with neuroblastoma. She was diagnosed at eight months old and has had a tumour in her abdomen and extensive cancer in bones and bone marrow. She has undergone chemotherapy, surgery, transplant, radiation and an immunotherapy trial but has not responded to any conventional treatments. She continues to live with cancer and her prognosis is very uncertain.
The prime minister was presented with a collection of pictures Lulu has made, by the artist herself.
Meanwhile, Shorten started the day in far north Queensland, where he announced he would hive off $1bn from the government’s $5bn northern Australia infrastructure facility and repurpose it for tourism projects in the north.
He also announced a separate $500m fund to help protect the Great Barrier Reef through better research, coordination and environmental programs. He headed to Brisbane once he was done in Cairns.
From the spend-o-meter to the cringe-o-meter:
A friendly local suggested I stop at the florist, great advice #winning pic.twitter.com/G9jQnSqwTC
— Bill Shorten (@billshortenmp) May 31, 2016
Shorten dropped $65 on a bunch of flowers for his wife, Chloe, with the media pack trailing along. Her reaction?
That’s so embarrassing.”
Greg Hunt’s lament
The environment minister was not out on the campaign trail per se but one of the strangest manoeuvres of Greg Hunt’s “already rather gymnastic career” was revealed by Michael Slezak.
The minister’s department requested the removal of references to Australia and the Great Barrier Reef from a Unesco report – and Slezak got his hands on the original.
What he found was not that bad for Hunt or Australia. The minister had effectively made an international scandal out of what could have been a good news story for the government. You can read the story here.
Best of Bowers
Labor MP Terri Butler plays around after Bill Shorten left a campaign event at Coorparoo football club in her Griffith electorate. Photograph: Mike Bowers for the Guardian
Further reading
• Remember when the government used to care about women working, by Kristina Keneally:
“Women, what do we want?
Jobs and growth and female workforce participation to increase by 4 percentage points!
When do we want it?
In 20 to 40 years’ time!
• Fact check: is government spending today higher than it was in the GFC?, ABC. Anthony Albanese is accused of “distorting reality”.
And also …
There is “strong evidence” New South Wales police deleted photos from the phone of a woman who says the images depicted an officer who had just groped her breasts, a court has found.
Simone White was part of protests against a Reclaim Australia rally in Sydney in July 2015 and says she was groped by a police officer. But she was the one who ended up in court after she was charged with assault.
The charge has been dismissed and a judge has ordered White be paid $13,500.
Meanwhile, in the rest of the world …
The DNA of the Duke of Edinburgh is being used by Russia to establish whether the remains of bodies are those of the Romanovs, executed by the Bolsheviks in 1918.
The historian Simon Sebag Montefiore has revealed that the DNA of Prince Philip, a descendant of the Romanovs, is helping to solve a historical mystery that may end up being used by the president, Vladimir Putin, to bolster his nationalist reputation.
This story has everything.
And if today was a pop song …
The Fair Work Commission increased the minimum wage by $15.80 to $672.80 a week as the ACTU secretary, Dave Oliver , debated the chief executive of the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, James Pearson, about labour market regulation at the National Press Club.
It had us asking, along with planet Funk, who is a slave to the minimum wage?
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