Welcome to the end of week four, and the half-way point of this extremely long drawn-out campaign: all the more reason to thank goodness it’s Friday.
The questions over the Coalition’s superannuation policy that defined debate this week have not been dismissed completely. The assistant defence minister, Michael McCormack, committed to raise the changes in the party room after the election, prompting the prime minister to pull rank over the policy.
Malcolm Turnbull was in South Australia, campaigning in Mayo with Jamie Briggs, who resigned from the ministry in December over revelations of inappropriate behaviour involving a female diplomat in a Hong Kong bar. Briggs’s former staffer Rebekha Sharkie, who criticised him for alleged sexist comments, is running against him in the electorate for the Nick Xenophon Team, and is polling strongly.
Turnbull was called in for backup, insofar as larking about with Christopher Pyne with augmented reality tech at Saab in Adelaide can be called a show of support.
He refused to be drawn on how concerned he was about Xenophon’s impact in Mayo and Sturt (though the fact he held a virtual town hall there last night suggests the answer is at least “a bit”). Turnbull also dug his heels in over the Coalition’s changes to superannuation. “Remember, I’m the prime minister for all Australians.”
Shorten rocks Cradle Mountain
In Launceston, in the electorate of Bass, Bill Shorten announced a $44m fund for tourism infrastructure, specifically to benefit Cradle Mountain, Burnie and the north-east of the island.
Shorten said the $15m on the table for Cradle Mountain would give investors confidence “to be able to do what they need to do – to say, ‘great, we’ve at last got a partner for Tasmanian tourism infrastructure and it’s called a federal Labor government’.” At last.
Labor got a bit tetchy today over the Coalition’s announcement that it would ban the sale of cosmetic products tested on animals if it wins on 2 July – not because it opposes it, but because it was its idea first. The assistant health minister, Ken Wyatt, said Australia should follow in the example of the European Union’s ban – as proposed by Labor in a private member’s bill in February.
Labor’s assistant health spokesman, Stephen Jones, said the Liberal and National parties did nothing to support that bill. Seems an impending election makes all the difference.
Repatriation regret
Shorten and Turnbull both addressed criticism from war veterans over their absence from the repatriation ceremony held in Sydney on Thursday, marking the return of the bodies of 21 Vietnam veterans, three servicemen killed in Malaysian conflicts, two spouses and six children.
The Labor leader apologised for not attending, saying he wanted to avoid politicising the event, but Turnbull stood by their decision, saying the “ceremony was designed to be ... for the families”. Shorten also acknowledged Tony Abbott’s role in organising the repatriation when he was prime minister.
Further reading
• Are our political leaders out of ideas? (ABC) In this episode of the ABC’s Minefield podcast, Project presenter Waleed Aly, editor Scott Stephens and journalist George Megalogenis wonder if last Sunday’s “boring” leaders’ debate concealed a deeper malaise
• Lazy “gotcha” journalism ruins political debate (Crikey, $) “Beyond exposing that some candidates and MPs are not infallible policy-regurgitating automatons, the public interest value of gotcha journalism remains questionable.”
Meanwhile, in the rest of the world ...
A seven-year-old boy who went missing in bear-inhabited forests in northern Japan after his parents apparently abandoned him as punishment has been found alive.
Yamato Tanooka was found by chance by military personnel in a hut on one of its exercise areas 5km from where he is believed to have gone missing. He had sustained only cuts.
“The first thing I said to him was that I was really sorry,” said father Takayuki Tanooka, 44, of his reunion with his son. “He nodded and said OK, like he understood.”
And if today was a pop song ...
Tony Abbott was back in the headlines today on the back of his interview with the Conversation’s chief political correspondent, Michelle Grattan. Among other revelations, he said he hoped he could one day resume his friendship with Bronwyn Bishop, with whom he had not spoken since she lost preselection. In good times and bad times, That’s What Friends Are For.
Bronny, of course, has moved onto better things since her nosedive out of politics, joining Peta Credlin on Sky News – which seems to be turning into something of a lifeboat – as a political contributor.
We spend months telling people Credlin and Bronny couldn't organise a shit fight in a barn,then wheel them out as experts #gofigure
— Phillip Coorey (@PhillipCoorey) June 2, 2016
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