We are going to wrap up the blog for the night – there are now just nine and a bit days left of campaigning to go.
The campaigns will both take off from Canberra early tomorrow morning, but with the latest royal baby expected to be shown off and probably named (or at least release the name, I am sure the little poppet has a name by now) it might be a slow start to the press conferences.
Then we have Labor’s costings on Friday. Then the Liberal party will launch it’s campaign (officially) on Sunday and we will be off and running into the final week.
More than 1.15 million people have voted already. There will be about the same vote by next Friday. That’s a lot of people who have stopped listening. And makes all those other people even more important for the parties.
So get some rest – we will be back with you early tomorrow.
Big thank yous all round to everyone. And as always – take care of you.
Updated
I’m going to get in early and say that Simon Birmingham is going to say Scott Morrison won the debate.
Jim Chalmers, surprising no one, thinks Bill Shorten won that debate.
I mean, it would be news if he didn’t think his leader won the debate.
Meanwhile, the government doesn’t seem to have any further plans for those still on Manus Island and Nauru, beyond the US resettlement plan, and what is already in place with PNG and Nauru.
Labor said again it would look at at other third-country resettlement options, including the New Zealand option the government has rejected as being too close to resettlement in Australia – because of the freedom of movement allowed between the two countries.
Updated
Now, having a look through those questions again, it is interesting that both leaders chose to ask each other questions about Labor policies.
Bill Shorten asked Scott Morrison if he would support Labor policies on cancer spending and childcare.
Scott Morrison asked Bill Shorten about Labor’s policy on superannuation and negative gearing.
This entire election campaign has been about Labor’s policies. The entire campaign. For both sides.
Meanwhile, off campaign, but in the ballpark
Have a watch/listen and see if you think Craig Laundy confirms Peter Hartcher’s story that Morrison’s people white-anted Turnbull. https://t.co/CnfuSygNhs
— Craig Reucassel (@craigreucassel) May 8, 2019
Meanwhile, off campaign, but in the ballpark
Well, I don’t know about you, because I haven’t read the comments, or tweets, but I call that a draw.
Mike Bowers’ view of the two leaders ...
Updated
Given the debates on debates, next time, will they both agree to an independent debate commission setting the guidelines and rules?
Scott Morrison: Yes.
Bill Shorten: Yep.
Annnnnnd we are done.
Updated
What will Australia look like under your government in 10 years?
Scott Morrison:
Well, for a start there will be 2.5 million more Australians employed in this country with jobs. We will have been, we will have achieved our 2030 emissions reduction target that we set for ourselves in 2030. We have ensured that we’ve maintained an increased funding at record levels for our hospitals and schools and our roads.
We will have delivered $100bn in infrastructure investment, busting-congestion in our cities and making our rural and regional roads safer so Australians can get home sooner and safer, whether it’s from being out on the town and getting back on the farm or getting home on Race Course Road out there in La Trobe.
All of these things, the investment in our hospitals, the investment in our schools, youth suicide, it’s my goal in this next election, in this next term to ensure woe tackle this with a vigour and a resource and a focus that we’ve never seen in this country.
And to ensure that every single Australian who needs those affordable medicines like young Luke Emery with cystic fibrosis, gets them every single time, by managing our money and keeping our economy strong.
Bill Shorten:
I want my kids to grow up in 2030 and see a more modern Australia. I want them to see a nation which has embraced climate change and action on climate change. I want to see half of our energy coming from renewable energy.
I want to see the young women in my family, my daughters, being paid the same as my son. So I want genuine equality for women.
I want to see us have an expenditure on science and research in this country, which is currently 2% of our GDP, go to 3%. I want to be a scientific nation, a research nation.
I want to make sure that this is an economy which works in the interests of working and middle-class people. I want to see a country where your postcode, your gender, your parents’ wealth, the faith you follow and how many generations you’ve been in this country are not the predictors of your success.
I want us to be a nation which is more equal and, in becoming more equal, what we’ll actually deliver is a more prosperous and wealthy nation for my kids and, indeed, their kids after that.
Updated
Which leads to this exchange:
Morrison: Who will your home affairs minister be?
Shorten: We will pick after the election.
Morrison: I was wondering.
Shorten: Will you keep the same environment minister?
Morrison: Yes.
Shorten: Where is she?
Morrison: I can answer the question, Bill. I can answer the question.
Shorten: If you win you’ll have more people to promote because so many of your current ministry is leaving.
Morrison: No need to get nasty .
Shorten: I’m sorry if you think, I’m sorry if you think ...
Morrison: Smile, it was a joke.
Shorten: I’m sorry if you think that so many of your people leaving is the source of great amusement. I think it’s more a judgment on the government.
Morrison: I will pick him up there. He has just said that Kelly O’Dwyer, who is a dear friend of mine, who decided to retire from parliament because of her choices, about her own family, and I won’t allow that statement to stand, when Australians who have served in our parliament on either side, many of who have served on the Labor side and many on the Liberal side, when they decide to retire, politicise a tough business. Today, our families shouldn’t be part of the things that happen in terms of politics and political exchange. And I agree with that. But certainly we shouldn’t reflect on members for their decisions to leave the parliament as the leader of the opposition just did.
Shorten: Just on Mr Morrison’s, meaningful and appreciated expression of sympathy for today, I appreciate that, but the point I was making today wasn’t about my own mum.
It’s about thousands of Australian men and women who were denied a fair go by virtue of lack of financial opportunity. So when I was speaking today, I’m speaking, and that’s why I believe in the fair go and that’s why I wants to be PM because I want a lot of people to get a fair go, not just our immediate families.
Updated
Bill Shorten on that same question:
The initial parts of Mr Morrison’s contribution I agreed with. Lake’s committed to 2% of our GDP being on defence expenditure.
In terms of national security, as Opposition Leader I’ve been very diligent in terms of maintaining high level communication and briefings with not just defence, buts with our security agencies. Whenever the Government’s proposed new security laws essentially voted them through.
We’ve had to tidy them up and make them a little more effective. But they’ve worked.
So I’ve worked with Tony Abbott, I’ve worked with Malcolm Turnbull. We’ve worked with the current Government too. I notice, and so that’s true and we respect the contribution of our ADF, I’ve made it a part of my feature of my six years as opposition leader to engage both overseas and with the Defence Forces here. We agree on that.
I’ve had plenty of my family serve, like many Liberals.
When Mr Morrison repeats untruths such as that they’ve built all the ships and nothing happened under Labor, I heard him say it before, it came as a bit of homework to set the record straight.
On the LHD vessels, they were started under Howard. In terms of the plan to have them.
And they were, the construction was under Labor.
Under the Air Warfare Destroyers, they were initiated in 2001 and construction was 2010.
Under Future Frigates, they were Labor who initiated them, there’s no construction started, although the OPVs will start in October or November of this year, this Government sent our sup life vessels to be built in Spain.
The Future Subs were proposed under Labor and they would be built in Japan if Labor didn’t stand up. If we’ve wan to talk about the record of ship building industries, the Newcastle shipyard is shut, the Williamstown is shut. Osborne shipyard has a thousand less people working there.
This government wraps the flag around itself and says, “Look at what we’ve done.” On national security there’s a high level of concensus that this Government’s record - and they’ve had five Defence Ministers in six years, that’s not exactly providing certainty in national security, is it?
Updated
Question: When you consider how unstable the world has become and the uncertainty with our trading partners, China and the US, what approach will you take to national security to ensure Australians’ interests are protected? Scott Morrison?
Morrison: Well, this is obviously been a strength of our Government ever since we came and it wasn’t just by securing our borders, it was restoring the investment in our National Security Agencies that have thwarted 15 terrorist attacks here in Australia. It has been about investing again in our Defence Forces, our Defence Forces which for investment had fallen to 1.56% of GDP in this country, which is the lowest level since the Second World War and we’ll get that back by 2021 to 2%, restoring the investment in the defence of our nation that our soldiers, our men and women wherever they serve in our Defence Forces, get the support and equipment and capability that they need that we ask them to do that job.
I on the National Security Committee now for five out of the last six years and every time I’ve been part of a decision that’s sought to put, and we have 1,600 servicemen and women around the world today, for them to go in harm’s way, I’m going to make sure they have the right equipment and the right tools.
We have commissioned over 50 ships to be built since we have been elected. Under the previous government they didn’t commission any. Not one. They let our defence spending run down.
And let down our Defence personnel by raiding their budget to pay for their budget blowouts. This is the big problem.
This is why this matters to people, because when you can’t manage money, not only do they go after yours in higher taxes, but they go and raid important things like the private health insurance rebate.
Or they go and raid the defence budget. And they allow that to run down. They don’t list medicines on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme when they run out of money as their own budget papers show. When you’ve don’t manage money you can’t run the country and it means you can’t defend the country and protect our national interests. We’ve invested in the agencies, we’ve backed them in, we’ve secured Australians’ future and secured our borders.
And Australians know they can trust us to make the right decisions to keep Australians safe and our borders secure.
Your regular reminder that the Coalition took the decision in December 2017 to use international permits. It remained policy until just before the election. Now they are dreadful, for reasons that have never been explained #ausvotes
— Katharine Murphy (@murpharoo) May 8, 2019
We get a back and forth:
Morrison: So I take it that’s a no? That’s a no?
Shorten: You heard the answer.
Morrison: So there’s no guarantee?
Shorten: No – you heard the answer.
Morrison: I asked you a simple question, will you guarantee rents won’t go up and values won’t go down?
Shorten: You don’t like our policy but that doesn’t give you the right to scare Australians or ignore first-home buyers.
Morrison: All I know, Bill, is first-home buyers now have reached up to the highest level of the housing markets in nine years. That’s what’s happened.
Shorten: We hear from the government, nothing to see here, move along, please. Climate change, childcare affordability, first-home buyers, no problems in Australia. They want more of the same of the last six years. Business as usual. Business as usual for the top end of town and everyone else, you have to look after yourselves.
Updated
Scott Morrison questions Bill Shorten
Morrison:
My question to Bill is this. And I ask it on behalf of about 5.2 million Australians, 5.4 million in fact - households, families who own their own home or are buying it. They’re paying their mortgage and the 2.6 million households who rent. And your plans to abolish negative gearing and increase the capital gains tax by 50% and I wonder if you can give on behalf of a Shorten Government an absolute guarantee that those changes will not lead to a fall in value of the value of their home or increase their rent? Can you give them that absolute guarantee?
Shorten: The Grattan Institute and the New South Wales Treasury, even as late as today, have indicated our policies and our reforms will not have an impact on housing prices. The New South Wales Treasury said it would be, it would affect turn of houses by about 0.3% to about 1%.
This is a scare campaign. Looking for some credibility. We’re not making changes to people who have currently invested in negative gearing.
Can this country keep affording to give taxpayer expenditure to people who invest in existing houses, who buy existing houses and make a loss? Like, it’s a very expensive policy.
We estimate that we’re giving $35 billion over 10 years to a group of people who are able to buy investment properties and then claim the loss and offset it against other income. This is a very expensive policy.
As for falling house prices, the biggest falls in house prices have happened under this Government’s watch. If you want to talk about renters, look at the reduction in the amount of social housing.
Like, this is an out of touch Government. They don’t understand that first-home buyers every week save up their money, go along to the auctions and for young people in particular, who have seen the price of housing massively increase in the last 10-20 years, first-home buyers are locked out of the housing market. We want to change that. This is parts of what I think is the problem with the Government.
They argue everything’s OK. Mr Morrison said, he told childcare prices have fallen. Really? Go and ask any of a million households if you think your childcare has got cheaper under this Government.
Ask first-home buyers if they think the real estate market is not stacked against them. This is a country who has to make choices. I choose first-home buyers over future property investors. I choose working families to provide resources for them rather than giving away taxpayer subsidy to the top end of town in the form of the capital gains tax discounts of 50%.
Bill Shorten questions Scott Morrison
Shorten:
The cost to childcare under this government has gone up for everyday Australian households. Whilst the government has made some changes, Labor has proposed, because of our reforms, that we’re able to provide far better subsidies to households up to $174,000 specifically, we proposed to provide 100% subsidy for households whose income is $69,500. Subsidies of households to $100,000 of about 85%. And for household incomes between $100,000 and $174,000, subsidies between 85% and 60%. This means effectively.
SL: Is there a question coming?
Shorten: Oh, yes. It means that’s a benefit of about $2,000 for households. Why does the government think that Australian families don’t deserve this policy?
Morrison: Well, I thank Bill for his question. When I was social services minister I designed the childcare policy changes. When I came into that portfolio we know from the previous government the childcare costs had increased by 53%.
The funding model that was there to support people get access to childcare, I called the policy jobs for families because I understood getting access to child care, particularly for those on low to middle incomes was incredibly important. We set about designing changes.
Those changes have assisted a million families and they’re $1,300 better off as a result of the changes I was able to craft and that we’re able to legislate. What’s interesting is is that the Labor party opposed those changes. They opposed the changes that would achieve that. Since we introduced our childcare changes, the cost of child care has actually fallen by 9%.
The changes that I designed and that our government put in place and we passed through the parliament, without the support of the Labor party, have actually brought down child care costs in the last 12 months since we’ve had that policy in place.
When I see a problem I like to fix it. I just don’t throw lots of money at it.
What you do is you design the system so it benefits people and better targets the resources you have.
I think Australians have got to the point where they’ve grown tired of politicians who come and say give me all your money and I’ll solve all your problems.
I think that’s what a lot of this election is about. Asking for $300 billion of higher taxes, thinking by spending all of that again you can solve all the problems of the world. Australians expect us to do things like we did on childcare.
Think it through, come up with a plan, ref deuce the costs, increase the support for those on low and middle incomes, legislate it, even when the opposition opposes you and then follow it through.
That’s my history of dealing with difficult problems.
Updated
Scott Morrison rebuts that:
The shifty nature of this argument is this, is the assumption that the leader of the opposition is making, is that there is not action being taken on climate change. And that there is an increased investments in renewables and the companies he wants to put increased costs on are doing nothing. None of that is true.
Action is being taken. Businesses are making investments. They’re making themselves more competitive. They’re simply saying, “Tell us the price, Bill. Tell us the price.” It’s not a dishonest question, it’s a fair question, because they’ll have to pay it.
Updated
SL: You’re still taking notes, Bill Shorten?
Shorten: No. I’m happy to answer that. Actually, something that Scott said I agree with, I accept the cost question is not a dumb question. I’ll rephrase that. I think it’s a dishonest question. This argument that somehow... (there is laughter) the government ministers here can laugh. Your six-year record is hardly anything to laugh about. (there is applause)
The idea that you only look at the investments in new energy without looking at the consequences of not acting on climate change is a charlatan argument, it’s a crooked charlatan argument.
You can’t just dump chemicals in the river and it would have cost those chemical companies something to change their processes, to have closed loopholes, not to pollute the rivers. But the cost is not the cost of them upgrading and stopping polluting, the benefit is our rivers are cleaning. The same with asbestos.
There was a cost to stop using asbestos in buildings.
But I tell you what the advantage was – it saved lives. When we’ve look at the debated about cost it is a dishonest argument when you’ve don’t look at the net benefit.
I’ve been up at Sun Metals in Townsville and they had a cost of $200m to put in their solar farm. But it’s what’s kept the ref finery open now. Renewables are generating power at half the cost of the coal fired power stations.
What this government calls a cost, I call an investments. What this government calls a cost, I call the future. What this government calls a cost, I call a transition in our economy to a low carbon, much more productive economy.
Updated
SL:
Do you wanted chance to rebut that, Scott Morrison? A lot of Australians would be mindful there’s a group of MPs in your party that tore down the NEG which Malcolm Turnbull negotiated. They do worry those forces might resume business as normal if you’re re-elected?
Morrison:
Let me deal with some of the points Bill made and I’ll come to that. It’s been now well over three weeks during the course of this election campaign, it’s about 10 or days so that everyone will go to the polls. And we still haven’t heard what the cost to Australians is what?
What price Australians will pay in their hip pockets, in their jobs, in economic costs as a result of the policies of 45% emissions reduction target.
Bill Shorten said it was a dumb question the others day to ask what the cost was. I don’t think it’s-t is, I think it’s a fair question. I was down at a transport company in northern Victoria the other day. They are one of the companies that will have to go and pay for carbon credits from overseas, could cost them as much as $10 million a year. And on the Coast of New South Wales, they’ll have to pay more out of their pockets. That’s money that could be in Australia, employing and paying Australians. So I don’t want to see Australians disadvantaged.
I want to see Australians advantaged. And I think you can do that and take action on climate change as we’ve demonstrated.
Updated
SL: You have a chance to rebut, Bill Shorten. I see you’ve been busily taking notes.
Shorten: If you believe the PM we’re doing everything that needs to be done and no need to look any further. Move along. I don’t buy that. The reality is that carbon solution’s gone up under this government. When Mr Abbott was elected, about 512 megatonnes of carbon pollution. Now it’s 541 mega tonnes and going up to 563 mega tonnes. We’re going up in pollution.
What they’re doing it’s not working. When we look at this issue, what has happened is Australian businesses and Australian households have invested in renewables despite the Government. We’ve had 13 different energy policies.
The single greatest driver of energy prices in this country going up and up and up and up as they have is a lack of coherent energy policy.
That is the biggest single problem. We all know the Liberal party tears itself apart over climate change. This isn’t me saying that. Just ask Malcolm Turnbull. So what we’ve proposed is serious policies which are more ambitious than the government’s. But we understand if we don’t take action now the cost to our kids will be greater. The other thing is there’s trillion of dollars of investment around the world. If we don’t invest in renewables, someone else will get the jobs, the technology. We should be an energy superpower in Australia. We’re the sunniest and windiest continent but we have a government that is so far behind the Australian people it’s one of the key issues at this election.
Updated
Scott Morrison on that same question:
It’s important we act on climate change. I think that’s a matters of consensus between almost all of the members of parliament. We believe that [there needs to be action]. I have kids, you have kids, others have kids. And their future environments depends on taking those actions. And you take responsible actions.
You take measures that you can implement and that you can achieve and recognise, particularly on climate change. Australia doesn’t act alone. Australia doesn’t solve climate change by itself. It actually does its bit in concert with other countries. Let me tell you what we have done.
We talked about renewables. We had $11bn of investment in renewable energy in 2017. That was the third highest per capita of any country in the world and the seventh absolute. We’ve got $25bn of investment in renewable energy technologies going into Australia between 2018 and 2020. These are record levels of investment in renewable technologies and energy in Australia.
Now on top of that we’ve got 2.1 million additional households now with solar panels on their roof.
When we came to government there were 980,000. All of these things have occurred as a policy we’ve pursued as a government over the last 5.5 years and under the policies we put in place we will meet our Kyoto 2020 targets and we have the policies in place to meet the 2030 targets as well. So the question here at this election is not should we be taking action on climate change, that is agreed.
The question here is what is a responsibilities approach to take should we be choosing between our economy, which my kids are interested in as well by the way, and the environment, and my view is you don’t have to pick between those two. You can accommodate both by setting responsible targets that you achieve and continue to take action.
Updated
That takes us to the climate change question:
Sabra Lane: Turning to climate change which unfortunately has prompted a lot of fracktuous debate online. There are many signs that things are changing on our plan. Warmer temperatures, more intense cyclones, dry conditions in the bush. Business, agriculture and science sectors are all urging action. To both of you, your approach in this next parliament, whoever wins, will they have a mandate to enact their policies and should the opposition, whoever that be, acknowledge that it’s time to end the climate wars? First to you, Bill Shorten?
Shorten: Well, if the government win the election, I think their minimalist approach to climate change means the argument goes on. Now the good news is if we win the election some of our ideas we borrowed from Malcolm Turnbull, so hopefully at least half the Liberal party could back them in pretty comfortably. (There is laughter at that)
We need to take real action. We need to have ambitious targets. Climate change is a gigantic problem. I listened to Mr Morrison talking about fire and drought and there’s a role climate change plays in that.
We want to go to 50% renewables by 2030. We’ve want to get to 45% reduction in our emissions. Now the government says that’s too hard or too expensive. I think that the cost of not acting is even more expensive. The more that you delay the solutions, the more expensive the solutions become. And the greater the damage is done in the course of the delay.
Updated
And that last bit leads to a little bit of bipartisanship:
SL: It can and make public life really hard living. You both agree with that?
Morrison: Social media can sometimes make public life very hard living? Yes. I Certainly agree with that. You should read my Twitter feed. The comments on it. I suspect Bill’s is similar.
Shorten: I don’t always read my Twitter feed. I saw very funny cartoon, a meme of Michelle Obama and Barack Obama’s looking at a computer screen and Michelle is saying,” “Don’t read that. Just go to bed.”
Good advice there I suspect.
Bill Shorten on religious freedoms and Israel Folau:
I think this is one of these topics which thankfully for Australians the leaders of the two parties have a closer sense of position than a greater sense of argument. People should be free to practice their religion.
I think you go, so we’ve got to work through the Australian Law Reform Commission’s working out how we work this through and how we work out exemptions in the law which get the balance right between anti-discrimination laws and religious freedom. So we’ll work through that.
If we’re elected the government we’ll sit down with the churches and lawyers and Law Reform Commission and work through that issue.
You went to the specific issue of Israel Folau.
Mr Morrison is right there, it’s a contractual negotiation at one level but I’m uneasy about where that debate’s gone.
On one hand, I think Israel Folau is entitled to his views. And he shouldn’t suffer an employment penalty for it. So I’m uneasy about that part of it.
But I also think that we’ve got to be mindful about the other side of the equation.
People putting out on social media that if you’re gay you’re going to go to hell, I get that’s what he genuinely believes.
When you’re a public figure, that has negative impact, a hurtful impact on other people. So I understand the matter for Mr Folau is under appeal.
Let’s hope that common sense prevails and they find a happy medium. I don’t think it’s a simple issue.
I don’t think it’s a clear-cut issue when the edges bump up against each other. I don’t think if you’re gay you’re going to go to hell. I don’t know if hell exists actually.
But I don’t think if it does that being gay is what sends you there. So I am uneasy. On the Folau matter I’m also uneasy if he has genuinely held views and he could suffer some sort of really significant penalty.
It’s a matter of respecting each other and I do wish that, this is one of the challenges of social media, it can really dumb things down, can’t it?
Updated
Question:
Turning to religious freedoms. Wallabies star Israel Folau has been found guilty of a high breach of the Rugby Australia rules over his social media posts. Should people be allowed to express their fundamental beliefs or is free speech being threatened in this country? Scott Morrison?
Morrison:
Free speech is one of our fundamental freedoms, so is religious freedom. I feel this very strongly. I mentioned it in my maiden speech to the parliament. If you’re not free to believe, what are you free to do in this country The reason so many Australians who have come from other countries, escaping religious persecution in other places, I spoke about the Lebanese Maronite community and they have come here to escape that and they want to be sure in the future their religious freedoms are protected. They want to be sure about it.
That’s why we’d be pursuing a Religious Discrimination Act which would provide the same protections to those of sexual gender and appropriate forms of discrimination we have. Freedom of speech is important but we have to exercise it responsibly and exercise it in a society such as ours with civility and due care and consideration to others.
That is why I seek to do as a public figure and as public figures we have I think a higher and more special responsibility in relation to what happens in matters of contracts law and employment law, we’re all subjects to those. If we enter into those contracts. But I admire people of religious conviction. I admire people who draw strength from their faith. I am one of those people.
I admire people who have no faith. That’s their choice. That’s the great thing about Australia. You’re free to believe. I want to ensure Australians can always be free to believe but feel they can be free to believe.
Updated
Bill Shorten gets applause for that and Scott Morrison gets a chance to rebut:
I know Bill had a lot of explaining to do on that one and that’s why I’m sure he took the extra time. It is part of the tax law. It is a franking credit. There is a value for every franking credit on the tax paid by the company. And the value of that franking credit is passed on to the shareholder. And all of those shareholders who invest in Australian businesses, Australian businesses, should all get the same value of that same credit.
And that’s why under what Mr Shorten is proposing, some people on high incomes will get the full value of that franking credit and those whose marginal tax rates are lower than 30 cents in the dollar, they will actually lose the benefit of that credit. Because the whole purpose is not to tax twice.
The company pays the tax, and then it is ultimately taxed in the hands of the shareholder at their marginal rate of tax. That’s the tax principle. As a Treasurer, I understand how the tax system works. And Mr Shorten is misrepresenting it. That means he’s saying to Australians who you rightly say have depended on this for their income, he’s changing the rules and I think they should take Mr Bowen’s advice, if you don’t like it, don’t vote Labor.
(Annnd there is applause for that too.)
Bill Shorten on franking credits:
Mr Morrison’s deliberately calling, taking back a subsidy that gets paid to people and he’s pretending it’s a tax. It’s not. If you get an income tax refund and you haven’t paid income tax in that year, it is not a refund.
It’s a gift. It’s not illegal. It’s not immoral. It’s the law. But it’s not sustainable.
When John Howard introduced this gift which can go to people where they can get a tax cheque back even though they haven’t paid income tax that year, was costing half a billion dollars.
Now it’s costing $6bn a year to the budget. Mr Morrison says it’s not fair these people are being treated differently.
Under our proposals, if you receive a dividend from your superannuation accounts, you will not be taxed on it. We won’t give you a 30% top-up.
Why should millions of Australians go to work and pay their taxes and give it to people who have not paid any tax and give them a refund. What we can’t keep doing is afford to giving a gift to people.
I mean, some people under this scheme are getting hundreds of thousands of dollars from the government because they got dividends from their shares. It’s a tax refund. It is not a tax refund when you send money back to someone when they haven’t paid tax.
It’s a gift. $6bn will soon become $8bn. What schools do you want to cut? What hospitals do you want to cut?
We’re the only country in the world where you can get an income tax refund when you haven’t paid income tax.
No-one else in the world does it and there’s a good reason why they don’t, because it’s not a good, sustainable idea. (There is applause)
SL:
Just a quick follow-up question. A lot of people who have built their retirement planning around this policy think that they are being penalised. Why aren’t you grandfathering this provision when you’re grandfathering the negative gearing?
Shorten:
It’s not sustainable to keep paying people $6bn a year. It’s not sustainable to keep paying people $6bn a year in the form of an income tax refund when they’re not paying income tax. I can understand why some people don’t want to lose the money, I get it. But there’s no principle of tax law anywhere since the ancient Romans which says you get a tax refund when you haven’t paid income tax. It’s a gift. But it ain’t a principle of tax law.
Updated
Birmo and Corman in the front row looked to each other, checked, then turned back to Morrison to shake heads "no" to Sabra saying leadership team considered threatening to pass Labors tax changes. @AmyRemeikis #leadersdebate
— Paul Karp (@Paul_Karp) May 8, 2019
Question: To the PM, we hear often you talking about Labor’s policy on taxing, on credits, sorry, franking credits, negative gearing changes.
In 1993 Paul Keating warned the public in parliament that if John Hewson won that election – which was contested over the fight back GST plan – that Labor would pass this package holus-bolus in the Senate and it wouldn’t block it.
Why don’t you use the same tactic this time around?
Morrison: Because you’re right. It was a tactic. Politics isn’t about tactics. (the audience laughs) Politics is about what you believe.
SL: I have it on authority that leadership team has considered this?
Morrison: It’s not of interest to me. It’s a heinous tax on Australians who have worked hard all of their lives. And to be told they have to pay a higher rate of tax than others do on their dividends based on their marginal rate of tax I think is wrong. I think to treat retirees as if they’re self-funded retirees who have put themselves in that situation to say they’re no longer independent and a recipient of some special largess from the Government is very offensive to them.
All we’re simply doing is making sure that they get the same benefit of a franking credit than anyone else does, that they get the full value of that franking credit regardless of what the marginal tax rate is.
It’s not right that someone on a large income, that Bill and I can own shares, and get the full value of the franking credits that are passed through in the taxing system but someone who has worked hard all of their life and relies on that income, up to $10,000 and others to pay their private health to pay their bills, to pay their electricity bill and ensure they can spend time with their kids at Christmas, this is real income that these million Australians are relying on.
And Labor is callously taking it away. And I will never support that (applause).
Updated
Question: Mr Shorten, I will come back to you. You said you won’t need to allow the budget to slip further into deficit because of the policy changes you’re making. What are the other options open to you given monetary policy at the moment is at its limits?
Shorten: Invest in infrastructure, build more public transport, work with the states in our big cities, spend money on important regional roads like the Bruce Highways or the beef roads of western Queensland.
SL: To spend money on infrastructure, you need to get that money from somewhere?
Shorten: That’s true, Sabra. The other proposition, along with infrastructure which I want to go to, we will take real action on climate change. I waited to see if the PM would say that’s going to be a challenge in the future around the world and it is. It’s a very real challenge. We’ve got policies to tackle climate change. I don’t think you can be a government that’s serious about tackling future challenges if you don’t have a fair dinkum approach on climate change, which is what we do.
The third strategy we offer, along with infrastructure and having policies on climate change, is investing in people.
The best thing this countries has going for it is its people. We intend to invest in 3-year-old and 4-year-old kindergarten.
We intend to invest in our schools and put back the money they were promised and never delivered and apprenticeships and university places.
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Scott Morrison on that same question:
We are facing some difficult challenges ahead, not just globally. Here in Australia we face the drought. We face the floods. There’s been the fires. I’ve been right out across rural and regional Australia and I know how much pain there is there. And so that starts us in a difficult situation. And with a trade war between China and the US, and all the other uncertainties, that are in our region, I believe that what’s important for Australians who will live in our economy is that we ensure that they have as much resources able to them themselves as possible. That’s why I believe - the short answer to your question is yes, we will keep the budget in surplus. We have brought our Budget back to surplus we are the party, woe are the party and government that has done that. And I think Australians can trust us to keep it in surplus.
Sabra Lane: It’s not in surplus now.
Morrison: I said next year. I said we brought the budget back to surplus next year. (The audience laughs)
The last surplus Labor did was in 1989. So if you want to have a competition on that score. But it’s not about that competition. It’s about how you keep a Budget in surplus. The way you do that is you keep your expenditure under control, and you back Australians who go out there and create economic activity. The small and family businesses that are out there who have created together with the rest of the economy the record employment growth, 100,000 young people employed in just one year, the strongest growth of youth employment in Australia’s history.
You don’t grow your economy by taxing it more. You didn’t hear Mr Shorten safe tax once. When he talks about changes and hard decisions, that reads $387 billion in higher tax and that will put a dead weight on the economy on all Australians, on small and family businesses, which will hold them back at a time when we need them to be as absolutely match fit as possible. Higher taxes will slow the economy down and ensure Australians are not in the strongest possible position to face the challenges ahead.
(More applause)
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Question: Whoever wins, there are no doubts there are very strong economic challenges ahead. There is a global slowdown happening and a trade war will only exacerbate that. In the event of sharp downturn, will you allow the Budget to slip further into deficit? First to you, Bill Shorten?
Shorten: We won’t have to because of the reform decisions which we’re presenting to the Australian people at this election. You’re quite right, there are global trade winds. The biggest problem I see globally is expanding global debt. 10 years ago it was $130 trillion US, now that’s $230 trillion US. This is an enormous challenge. What we need to do is create a surplus which is a national fighting fund to deal with what happens in the future. We are making hard decisions. We are saying we don’t want to keep spending taxpayers’ subsidy on people to make a loss on their investment. We can go for better surpluses than the Government’s proposing because we’re willing to actually future-proof our economy. We can also do this because we’re making serious reform decisions and still reverse the cuts to schools and hospitals and the investment in people which is also important in sustaining our economy in the future.
Mike Bowers’ view of the early stages of the debate ...
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Scott Morrison asks his second question of Bill Shorten
There is a bit of an exchange here, so stay with me
Morrison: I have a simple question. How many Medicare benefit items are actually addressed under your policy? How many have changed? How will you make the specialists and others who are treating pay only the fee that you’re saying they should pay and not pay a higher fee and only put their prices up because in my experience, Bill, every time you subsidise something, it always pushes the price up? (There is a smattering of applause)
Shorten: I welcome your second question. In terms of the Medicare items, there’s two specifically we’re proposing to change. In terms of access to scans and in terms of seeing specialists and oncologists are two. There are well over 100. But we’re improving two which are fundamental. Six million more scans, three million more visits to oncologists.
Morrison: What about the other 100?
Shorten: Don’t look so disappointed I answered your question. The second one in terms of the, what was the second part of your question, Scott?
Morrison: I was simply asking how you were going to ensure the specialists and others don’t put their fees up because subsidies lift prices?
Shorten: Thank you for that. If you want to claim this item you have to 100% bulk bill. If you want to go to someone else, they won’t be able to offer you the increased bulk bill item, the repayment or the payment from the item from Medicare. We believe, and we have spoken to oncologists and specialists, and some have been helpful, the competition which will mean if a special wants to be able to offer the full 100% bulk billing, then that will keep the others honest.
Morrison: So the others will charge more and you’ll pay more? OK.
Scott Morrison got applause for that answer. Sabra Lane tries to move on to the next topic, but Bill Shorten asks:
Sorry, was that a yes or a no on cancer plan? A definite maybe?
Morrison: Bill, once you can tell us what everything costs and what your policies are, then people can assess them. And I think Australians are still waiting to the answer to that question on all of your policies and all your taxes and still waiting till the election on Saturday week.
There is applause for that as well.
Shorten: It’s a very important issue the out of pockets for cancer. Mr Morrison unfortunately is out of touch with what’s really happening in the day oncology wards around Australia. I can give some real life examples very briefly.
Elaine Smith, Royal Brisbane Hospital, she’s had to draw upon her superannuation to pay for out of pockets because she doesn’t want to die and leave her family a debt. Sandy and Kim who I met more recently, at Nepean Hospital in Western Sydney, level four stage 4 pancreatic cancer. I said is the system free? She said, “It’s cost us $100,000.” It’s about priorities and choices. Mr Morrison said about our costings.
The reality is that our cancer package which will help out of pockets and help hundreds of thousands of people in the fight of their lives is $2.3 billion.
The cost of the changes to our superannuation treatment which you asked earlier will be about $30bn in savings over 10 years.
(There is applause there too.)
Updated
Bill Shorten questions Scott Morrison
Shorten:
I announced a plan to help eliminate to quite a great extent the cost of cancer treatment. What that included was millions of extra scans funded through Medicare, visits to oncologists, a range of measures which we think will help with the out of pocket costs of fighting cancer. Initially the government, you’ve ruled that out, that you’re not interested in $2.4bn cancer plan. I would like to invite you to, would you agree to implement our cancer plan which will lower the out of pocket costs to practically nil for hundreds of thousands of our fellow Australians?
(Morrison is shaking his head as this is asked)
Morrison:
Well, I thank Bill for his question and our government has listed 130 drugs for cancer patients. Important medicines that become affordable for cancer patients to be able to access those medicines that save their lives and improve their lives and lengthen their lives. The Labor party have put forward a proposal which is not frankly clear to us the details of that policy so we can properly assess it.
If we’re elected I’m happy to assess it in the context of the next budget. For Australians, if you’re in a public hospital at the moment, all of your cancer treatment is free.
And you know that to be the case and I think that is exactly as it should be. There are out of pocket expenses of course, when it comes to dealing with the challenges of meeting the costs of having been sick and having cancer.
That’s not if you’re in a hospital, there are plenty of out of pocket costs and people can attest to that. If you’re receiving public treatment for cancer it is funded and funded by the commonwealth and supported as well.
The point I was going to make is to meet those out of pocket expenses for those Australians who are doing it through the private system and other systems, you need your private health insurance and that is really important.
Now there’s only one side of politics in this election that has absolutely ruled out any changes to the private health insurance rebate. We don’t have any plans for it, we’re not doing it.
Never would we attack the private health insurance system when Labor was last in power that’s where they went to get the money when they ran out of money and they used that as a slush fund to try and cover up their wasted expending in so many areas. I applaud Bill for highlighting the issue of cancer, I do.
We will continue to work on that issue as we always have and deliver.
SL: Not everyone can afford private health.
Morrison:
And that’s why you have a private health insurance rebate and that’s why it is targeted to those on low and middle incomes. If you take away the frank credits for people, retirees, and that’s what they use the money to pay which is their private health insurance, I guarantee Australians your private health insurance rebate will be safe with the Liberals.
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Scott Morrison questions Bill Shorten
The prime minister won the toss and gets to ask the first question of his opponent.
Morrison:
The question I have for Bill, and it’s on behalf of more than 800,000 Australians, and I would like to know, and these are self-employed Australians, Australians that when they make their superannuation contributions, self-employed people, these are tradies, these people running home-based businesses, men and women, entrepreneurs, they will not get access to the tax dedications for their superannuation -- deductions for their superannuation contributions that wage-earners get. Why does Bill Shorten wants to target those individuals, those self-employed Australians and how much revenue will he be raising from that increase on tax on those Australians?
Shorten:
First of all, superannuation will still be preferentially treated. What I mean by that is if you pay money into superannuation it is taxed more beneficially than it will be if you take it as income. So this general government scare campaign that somehow superannuation’s not going to be available to all is not correct. But we are making some changes. There’s no question about that. And in terms of the costings we’ll release our final costings on Friday.
SL: That’s a bit of a copout. You won’t give us an example tonight?
Shorten:
We’ll be releasing our full on Friday and you said it’s not to your satisfaction, the Liberals released their costings two days before the election in 2018. And three days before in the 2013 elections. We intend to release them eight days before. There’s no doubt what we’ve want to do is superannuation will still be preferentially treated but not as generously treated as before.
Shorten then confirms costings will be released on Friday.
Updated
Question: The Coalition ditched Tony Abbott and it turned to Malcolm Turnbull. You’re now the leader because of Peter Dutton’s failed attempt to take the prime ministership. What lessons have you learned specifically from this era and if you win how will you ensure your party’s conservative wing doesn’t continue the era of disruption?
Morrison:I will lead, as I always have, from the middle. As I said to my party after I became PM, I said you have elected me to lead and I’m asking you to follow. That I wouldn’t be running off to one side or the other side. I’ve always been very clear in my views and my position on things. And to work with everyone from across the party and that’s always been my history. When I used to work in the party itself or worked as a Minister, a Treasurer, a PM, working right across the spectrum of our party. And so I’ve said to my party, “This is the direction I’m heading in and I’m asking you to join me,” and they have. The Liberal Party has not known the level of purpose and unity under my leadership than we’ve seen for a very long time.
Shorten rebuts:
Some of the reasons why the Liberal’s had instability has nothing to do with rules. They’ve got to do with climate change.
Half of the Liberal Party don’t accept climate change is real or if they think it’s real they don’t think they should do anything about it. So I think some of the fault lines in this current government extend beyond rules.
The reality is that if the Liberal Party and the National Party were united, then Malcolm Turnbull would still be PM because they’d have a policy on climate change. So I think some of the fault lines in the Government are real. Another example would be the increasing move to the extreme right and the pre-selections of Liberal candidates. We have the lived experience of some pretty extremist people being picked in the Liberal Party.
And then of course the third concern I have about so-called ending the chaos in the Government is that they’ve now done Coalition, not Coalition, preference agreements with Pauline Hanson, they’ve got preference agreements with Clive Palmer.
I tell you, when you do a deal with Clive Palmer, there’s always a bill to pay him at the end.
(There is a smattering of applause to that)
Scott Morrison gets a chance to rebut:
Morrison:
Bill and I came into the parliament in the same year in 2007 and since that period of time I think there’s been a toxicity in politics which Australians have grown very tired of. This whole era of where PMs were changed during the course of elections of course began with the rolling of Kevin Rudd and it ended with Malcolm Turnbull, the end of his prime ministership and that’s where it must end and that’s where it should stop. The reason I believe that is the reason I changed the rules after I became PM. The Labor party has changed its rules. The Liberal party has changed its rules. Our rules are the strongest change we’ve seen since Robert Menzies founded the party. For the first time since 2004 the Australian people can go to this election and they can be absolutely confident, because of the rules of both parties, that who they elect will be the PM for the next three years, either Bill Shorten or myself and that’s their choice.
Question: Party can change the rules again?
Morrison:
It requires a special majority, even stronger majority that it requires to change in the Labor party. I think that era is over and I set about changing the rules to make sure it was over.
Updated
Bill Shorten gets the first lols of the night.
Question:
Many Australians are still were about the issue of stability – are still worried about the issue of stability. What lessons have you learned from the era, including your own role in removing PMs? The factional divisions and and are you sorry about it – undermining and are you sorry about it?
Shorten:
Well, I think we need one more change of PM and then we can finish it for a while.
The audience laughs
Shorten:
But I think that, I know the Labor party’s learned. And it’s been on both sides. But Labor has the lived experience of the last six years. Whatever one says about all of our policies, we’ve demonstrated that we can be a united force in opposition. We don’t have government to bind us together. So I started off leading the opposition against Tony Abbott, and it went to Malcolm Turnbull, now it’s to Mr Morrison. So we’ve learnt our lesson. We’ve put in place rules, five or six years ago, but it’s more than just the rules. There’s no doubt that when you look at a united party, Labor is the better of the two mainstream parties.
Question: Are you sorry about it?
Shorten:
I do regret we had the instability in our time, absolutely. But what I’m also sorry about is the Australian people, they’re fed up with politics as usual. The idea that they can vote for one PM and get someone else.
So we understand that if we’re to re-win the trust, it’s not just our stability, it’s also putting forward good policies to the Australian people and creating greater institutions and more institutions which Australians can trust, such as a national integrity commission.
Updated
Bill Shorten brings up the New Zealand offer again:
We agree that we want to discourage people coming here by boat. We want to discourage people being exploited by people-smugglers and indeed risking their lives as we’ve seen with cost. But in terms of the remaining people on Manus and Nauru, if I was elected your PM we would put as much effort as we humanly could to resettle them.
I don’t accept that the strong borders is in definite detention, so I acknowledge the work of Malcolm Turnbull in terms, and all the department who negotiated with the US in securing that deal, and we would redouble our efforts, we would contemplate using New Zealand as a source to resettle people and revisiting that offer from Jacinda Ardern.
Updated
Question: Both of you have raised the issue of both turnbacks. This is a follow-up question to both of you. What happens to the 950 approximately people still left on Manus Island and Nauru? First to you, Scott Morrison?
Morrison:
One of the first things I did as PM was continue the work to ensure we got every child and every family off Nauru. And I commend the former PM, Mr Turnbull, for the arrangement he put in place with the US to achieve that and we followed through on that but largely we continued the policy of dealing with people’s medical situations and ensuring we got all those children off Nauru.
People who illegally come to Australia will not be settled in Australia. We seek to fulfil the arrangements with the US. And the bottom line is, as difficult as this policy is, if you change it, if you weaken it, if you show a lack of resolve, then you invite on this country and the poor souls who would take the risks, the worst of all possible outcomes, I can never return to that.
Question: But my question is what happens to the 950 approximately people there?
They have been recognised as refugees in both of those countries for those who remain there. And the refugee resettlement program and the United Nations treaty, what it does is ensures people don’t return to the country in which they were persecuted. And that will not happen to them.
Updated
Bill Shorten on that same question:
Well, thinking through my time in public life, even before I was in politics, when I was a union representative, sometimes you have to say to people you’re representing that there was only so much which could be won for them but no more.
Sometimes you’d have to argue in favour of workplace change which would see people have to change their work practices to maintain the long-term profitability of the organisation.
More recently in politics, we’ve had to confront some issues. I know for example that some in my party didn’t want to support boat turnbacks, that would have been easy to say to people that we shouldn’t change our policy in terms of boat turnbacks and regional processing, but I felt that the experience of defeating the people smugglers proved that Labor needed to change because I have a view that Labor isn’t always right an everything and Liberals aren’t always wrong and of course vicea versa.
Question:
Sometimes, hopefully all the time, leadership is about doing what is right and sometimes it’s not popular. Could you please give me an example of a decision that you have made in your political life that wasn’t popular but was right? I’m going to go to you first, Scott Morrison.
Morrison:
I’ve made many of those decisions. It started off when I was shadow minister for immigration and became the minister for immigration. Many of the policies we took to that election to secure our borders, to turn boats back where it was safe to do so were opposed by many people and the turnback policy wasn’t popular. But we did it and achieved the outcome.
We saved thousands of lives and we were able to secure our borders and ensure that ultimately we have got every child out of detention and off Nauru. This was a hard decision.
As a social services minister I reformed the retirement incomes. As a treasurer, we’ve been bringing the budget back to surplus for many years and that’s required difficult decisions, often disappointing many people on my own side of politics. Took those policies to the last election.
But these are the decisions you have to make if you want to have a strong economy and strong national security. Over my political life I’ve always focused on what I believe is the right thing to do and have always pursued that with everything I have.
Updated
The pair shake hands and smile for the cameras, including Mike Bowers, who I can see up the front there.
The leaders get two minutes to answer each question, and rebut.
They also get to ask two questions each of each other.
Third and final leaders debate begins
The leaders are in place, and so are we.
Ring the bell!
The Sydney Morning Herald and the Age reports that Clive Palmer’s political party is “undecided” on vaccines.
You are not reading that wrong, and yes, we have been here before – it was just with Pauline Hanson last time.
Now for those asking, tonight’s debate, hosted by the National Press Club, will have just the one moderator, Sabra Lane, in her capacity as the press club’s president.
She’ll ask all the questions.
There will be no victor declared, no worm, no audience poll. So it will be up to you (and the commentators) to decide who wins, for yourself.
There has been no slow down in the coverage in Bill Shorten’s response to the “gotcha shit” he labelled the Daily Telegraph story on his mother.
It led all the evening news.
As did Penny Wong’s response to Simon Birmingham when he once again brought up Paul Keating’s “nutter” comments at a discussion at the SA Press Club this afternoon.
While the blog was napping, Sarah Hanson-Young called on Bill Shorten to go further and ban drilling in the Great Australian Bight.
Shorten today, for the first time, committed to review the risk of an oil spill. Hanson-Young who has been campaigning very strongly on this issue for years, says it just needs to be a ban, because the risk is too great:
“Concerns over drilling in the Bight are biting. Bill Shorten must commit to acting on this review when it inevitably shows drilling in the Bight is not worth the risk,” she said in a statement.
“We have seen Equinor’s modelling. We have seen BP’s modelling. An oil spill will devastate SA’s economy, putting thousands of South Australians out of a job. It would destroy Australia’s southern coastline.
“The Greens stand shoulder to shoulder with South Australians who overwhelmingly oppose drilling in the Bight.
“The Greens in the Senate are fighting for our tourism and fishing industries, our beautiful beaches and marine life. But we are also fighting for real action on climate change.
“Bill Shorten has finally woken up to the fight for the Bight, but without a commitment to no new coal, oil or gas, he isn’t taking climate change seriously.”
Updated
And we are back
We are going to tuck the blog in for a nap and wake it up again just before the debate tonight. We’ll see you back for the debate, just before 7pm, unless something major happens.
See you soon.
Updated
That moment between Simon Birmingham and Penny Wong can be seen here:
Tense moment between @SenatorWong and @Birmo at the SA debate. Birmingham says Keating's China comments show Labor lacks consistency on the issue. Wong is fuming, accuses Birmingham of politicising foreign policy. Refuses his offer of a handshake at end of the debate. pic.twitter.com/Fj7P1m34fC
— Stephen Dziedzic (@stephendziedzic) May 8, 2019
Bob Katter has promised to overhaul the department of veterans affairs “after it has become clear that the veteran community around Australia is being left to manage their post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) on their own”.
From the Katter’s Australian party statement:
Veterans from the north, including KAP Queensland Senate Candidate, Alan Webb (announced today as number three on the Ticket) say they are being left out in the cold by the DVA and blame top-heavy bureaucracy within for being reactive to veteran issues, rather than proactive which could put an end to the epidemic of veteran suicides.
Mr Katter proposed an oversighting authority which would sit above the DVA comprised of ex-servicemen and soldiers to ensure proper procedures and actions were being carried out to support veterans, especially those suffering PTSD.
“There needs to be serious change within the DVA. They just aren’t seeing what needs to be done and people are dying that shouldn’t have to die,” Mr Katter said.
“The oversighting authority needs to be under the control of ex-servicemen themselves. These blokes should be in charge. It is vitally important that a majority of that Authority are not Officers; they are NCOs – Warrant Officers down to the Diggers. Unless that occurs, this situation will just continue.”
Mr Katter said he was tremendously proud to announce Alan Webb as the third on the KAP Senate Ticket today, citing his prominence in the RSL and veteran community on the Atherton Tablelands. Mr Webb, as a Vietnam veteran, spoke to media about post-traumatic stress within the local community saying that the disorder has ended marriages and driven diggers to alcoholism and drug use when the alcohol isn’t strong enough.
“From the inside out there doesn’t look to be anything wrong with the Department, but from the outside looking in there is a problem and there are many people that desperately need assistance that have been waiting for years. With the way the DVA currently is, it can take years to get the support. And these people won’t make noise, there is a lot of pride involved.”
You may remember that was one of the issues raised during the Sky Peoples’ Forum in Brisbane last week.
Updated
Wong fires up as Birmingham rehashes Keating spy comments
Penny Wong and Simon Birmingham have appeared at the South Australian press club, where Wong refused to shake Birmingham’s hand at the end of a discussion, after he again brought up Paul Keating’s comments on Australia’s intelligence agencies, and said he was not “an isolated figure” within Labor.
Wong accused him of “desperate politics” and was visibly, well, pissed.
From the ABC clip:
Birmingham: Paul Keating made comments that were firstly insulting to the heads of our intelligence agencies who have managed to intercept at least 15 major potential terrorist incidents. I know that Labor have distanced themselves from the remarks but Paul is not an isolated figure.
Wong: Speaking of not being [appropriate] this is not appropriate and it is desperate politics. It is not...
Birmingham: We will make sure that we maintain a firm and consistent approach and in doing so make sure we keep Australia’s economic interests strong but our national security interests strong too.
The moderator brings the discussion to a close and thanks the senators, and Birmingham turns to Wong with a smile to shake her hand, but she removes the microphone from her lapel and shakes her head, and gets up to leave the chair, giving him a look that may haunt the back of his eyelids for some time.
Updated
Michael McCormack, still holding the Nationals’ wombat mascot like a lifeline, says Nationals voters are frustrated at the drought, not necessarily his party, in a chat to the ABC, where he continued his impersonation of an anthropomorphic loaf of white bread:
Question: Some people at pre-polling booths don’t know who you are, you had to explain you are the deputy prime minister, is that a problem for you as The Nationals leader?
McCormack: Not at all. I am delivering. I was up there announcing a $21.6m road for Michelle Landry. I have been out and about delivering the sorts of things that regional people want, need, expect and most of all deserve.
Question: If that is the case, why are people frustrated, do you think, and where is that anger directed?
McCormack: I think they are frustrated at Labor’s lack of vision.
Question: That is not what they are necessarily telling us though. There are people who are very frustrated with the Nats.
McCormack: They are already frustrated by a very prolonged drought. Whenever there is a drought there is that sense of frustration. When the rivers go dry as far as the Darling has, it does go dry many times, 57 times in the last 57 years, there is a sense of frustration when they can’t get the water to grow their seed and think they see some of the rivers running a bank up because they have environmental flows that they can’t get water to.
Updated
The campaigns have gone quiet a little earlier than usual today as both Scott Morrison and Bill Shorten prepare for the third and final leaders’ debate.
It’s being held at the National Press Club, with the AM host, Sabra Lane, in her capacity as press club president, asking the questions.
And yes, we will be blogging it.
Updated
If you have a spare moment or two and want to be inspired, check out the #MyMum hashtag on Twitter, where people are telling their own stories of sacrifices their parents made.
Not political, no, but inspired by a very real moment in our political discourse. Which, it needs to be said again, Scott Morrison also condemned.
Updated
Tony Abbott is warming to his theme:
Make no mistake, a vote for an Independent is a vote for Labor and a green light for Bill Shorten's damaging economic policies. Labor will undo years of hard work that have benefited thousands of Warringah residents and businesses. #VoteSteggallGetShorten #WarringahVotes #auspol
— Tony Abbott (@TonyAbbottMHR) May 8, 2019
For those who missed the answer Bill Shorten gave on the story about his mother today:
The Wilderness Society has responded to Bill Shorten’s announcement that Labor would review oil spill risks in the Great Australian Bight:
“It is a positive development that Labor leader Bill Shorten is taking the risk of an oil spill seriously and will not simply rely on the NOPSEMA process,” said Wilderness Society National Director Lyndon Schneiders.
“He is breaking the bipartisan silence in the issue but the best way to reassure concerned Australians is to rule out all support for the project, full stop. Communities across southern Australia are demanding leadership and iron clad commitments that this project will not go ahead and that Bight will be protected.”
Updated
Bookie takes $1m wager for Labor to win the election
We don’t usually run this stuff, but it is noteworthy because of the huge numbers we are talking here:
Online bookie Ladbrokes has announced it has taken its single biggest wager in history – $1,000,000 for Labor to win the election.
That’s with $1.23 odds.
The punter lives in NSW and the bookies report it is only his second wager with Ladbrokes.
“We’ve obviously seen some sizable bets come through in recent times, many of them on WINX, but clearly this gentleman thinks the Labor Party is a safer bet than the now retired mighty mare,” Ladbrokes Australia Chief Executive, Jason Scott said in statement.
The punter will profit $230,000 should Bill Shorten lead the next sworn-in government, a bet which looks a lot smarter than the $800 another Ladbrokes client placed on the United Australia Party on Monday at odds of 300-1.
The previous biggest political bet struck with Ladbrokes Australia (which entered the local market in 2013) was $250,000 on the Coalition to win the last Federal Election.
The biggest bets on the 2019 election, prior to today’s million dollar wager, were $15,000 on the Coalition at $4 on April 23 and $10,000 at $1.53 on Labor back in August last year.
Updated
PM under pressure over Liberal who linked marriage equality to paedophilia
Following the news the Greens candidate for Lalor has had to step down over social media posts, Kristina Keneally has released a statement on Scott Morrison’s answer on his Scullin candidate, Gurpal Singh, who linked marriage equality to paedophilia in a SBS radio interview in 2017.
From Keneally’s statement:
This is the candidate who linked same sex marriage to paedophilia, telling SBS radio:
“Here we are doing something that is against nature…”
“How do you perceive that situation and what is the overall impact? I think there is also an issue of paedophilia.”
Today, when questioned on this candidate, Scott Morrison failed to show any leadership and confirmed he accepts this standard.
Journalist: Just to clear something up Prime Minister, last week you said the standard you walk past is the standard you accept in relation to Mr Creasey, I think it was and the comments he made. You got a candidate in Scullin who in an interview in 2017 linked paedophilia with same-sex marriage. Do you and the Liberal Party accept those comments from him?
Morrison: No that matter was dealt with by the party organisation several weeks ago -
Journalist: Why is he still the candidate?
Morrison: The party organisation dealt with that.
Journalist: What did they do to deal with it Prime Minister? You said that they dealt with it what did they do?
Morrison: His candidacy has continued.
This comes after Scott Morrison told reporters in Melbourne last week: “all I can say is the standard you walk by is the standard you accept”.
Based on his own test and failure to show any leadership, Scott Morrison accepts this standard from his candidate for Scullin.
This also comes after the Liberal candidate for Wills was disendorsed for making similarly homophobic remarks.
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Greens candidate quits election race over offensive social media posts
The Australian is reporting another candidate has quit over social media posts:
The Greens candidate for the Melbourne seat of Lalor Jay Dessi has been forced to quit after numerous offensive social media posts emerged, including a racist joke in which he questioned “which eyes are the real eyes” of an Asian friend.
Greens leader Richard Di Natale, who asked for a full briefing on Mr Dessi’s comments, said the ex-candidate’s posts between 2012 and 2015 were “clearly unacceptable”.
“Jay Dessi has given an unreserved apology to anyone they may have offended. I have now been advised that he has stood down as Candidate for Lalor,” Senator Di Natale told The Australian.
Updated
The pair finish up:
David Littleproud:
Let me just say – agriculture is sexy again. The story of agriculture is just add rain. And when it rains, we’re going to make a lot of money in regional and rural Australia. If you’re not out here, you’re going to miss the boat.
We have a lot to be proud of. We have done the hard work and put the foundation stones to ensure that the next generation, we bring them home. We perpetrated our own mystery.
It’s not our first one. We’re going to have droughts and floods again, but we have to be loud and proud about what we do and when we do it. If we don’t, we’ll have draconian laws that impinge on our right, our trust, to manage this land, to manage our future in regional and rural Australia. It is not only time to bring Cam and Carolina [two young people he had mentioned as returning to family properties] home, time to bring all of the people home to regional and rural Australia.
Joel Fitzgibbon:
I can’t remember whether David Littleproud played rugby league, but he did a fair bit of ducking and weaving today.
He avoided so many questions. The ag visa, the methodologies for carbon farming, because he doesn’t have one. The problem is that he’s had six years to do these things.
Now he’s asking the Australian people, the agriculture sector, our farmers, to give him three more years, to give him another chance. Well, they don’t have three years to wait, David.
They’re growing impatient. Now, hope springs eternal. It’s just going to rain and everything will be OK! It’s not how it works, David. And it’s time a government started to act. The ag sector is at a crossroads.
You can take the present path, or worse given the changing climatic environment, or take the higher, more sophisticated role, the innovative role, the modern path, to greater success.
And we want to work with the sector to develop that strategic plan, the plan they need, to build investor confidence – to get the investment flowing, to improve, respond to the climatic conditions and to help them build resilience, productivity and sustainable profitability.
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Fitzgibbon on that question:
David gets the award as the first Morrison government minister flushed out and forced to respond to the UN report. Everyone else is in witness protection, and I’m sorry David, I’m sorry.
One farmer in the Hunter Valley can’t save the extinction threat posed by human activity. It needs leadership from government, and government does need to be involved. Stewardship programs – fine. But it’s not going to make the difference.
We’ll do plenty, David, and Tony Burke announced a big package of investment this week, including for indigenous range, $100m extinction fund.
And the answer to Katharine’s question is – absolutely, we don’t make promises in areas like the establishment of a federal environmental protection agency without following them through.
People can be in no doubt – every policy we make at this election will be a policy moved through from the Shorten Labor government.
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Parties grilled on UN extinction report during agriculture debate
Question:
The UN this week delivered a truly alarming report that one million species are at the risk of extinction. Human populations at risk. It really is a terrifying outlook. So, firstly, to David – can you explain to me in the light of that why Scott Morrison’s on the front page of a newspaper today railing against green tape? Can you also explain to me why some of your colleagues – not you, in fairness – but some of your colleagues frustrate climate action when climate action is so important to the sustainability of agriculture and to farming in Australia?
And to Joel Fitzgibbon, the Labor party has signalled an overhaul of environmental regulation, including overhauling the EPBC Act and an Independent EPA. Can you supply today an absolute guarantee that those reforms will be implemented if you win the election?
Littleproud:
Farmers have been facing a changing climate since we first put a till in the soil. We have to continue invest in science and technology to make sure we give them the tools to adapt.
That is why this buy you diversity – biodiversity fund – that report scares me.
We can’t generalise. Farmers, as a rule, are so proud of the environment that they manage. But we have got to make sure that we reward them. That’s why a stewardship fund that encourages them, incentivises them, not only through government programs and market – we can lead the world. We can actually lead international markets by giving them a biodiversity seal of approval that is internationally and nationally recognised. And that – that is the reward system that we should put in, not a big stick. We need to address those that do the wrong thing.
Make no mistake – we should have a strong regulatory framework. We shouldn’t distrust our farmers. You have to have faith and confidence. Their profit and loss is tied to the health of the land. I can tell you – I have seen it.
Driven around in the Hilux and seen where someone’s given me a bough that ain’t worth two bob because I have seen the country. It’s tied to them intrinsically.
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As this debate on agriculture policy rolls on, Scott Morrison and David Littleproud have made this announcement:
The Morrison Government is backing our dairy farmers with new measures, including:
- $10 million from the Energy Efficient Communities Grants Program to support dairy farmers reduce energy costs through more energy efficient equipment;
- Establishment of a “Dairy Specialist” position in the ACCC Agricultural Unit – established by the Liberal and Nationals Government in 2015 – to give the dairy sector a dedicated voice to ensure enforcement and compliance with the Mandatory Code of Conduct;
- An additional $8.1 million injection into the ACCC Agricultural Unit, over and above our 2020 Budget commitment to ensure it is well resourced to continue its work on fair-trading and competition for the dairy and agriculture sector;
- $500,000 to Dairy Australia to extend their financial and legal advice service to more farmers, and to improve legal and financial literacy for contract negotiations with processors;
- $150,000 to Australian Dairy Farmers to develop with processors a simple standard form contract that incorporates the requirements of the Dairy Mandatory Code of Conduct;
- $300,000 to Australian Dairy Farmers to develop a real time dairy payment system and supply chain information sharing capacity using blockchain technology; and
- $3 million for a Starting Farms Cooperative Program to provide grants to assist farmers groups establish farm cooperatives and other collaborative business models.
Today’s announcement builds on the work already underway in support of the dairy industry, including implementation of a Dairy Mandatory Code of Conduct, a commitment of $560,000 to deliver a new marketing and trading platform to give dairy farmers more say over how and when they sell their milk, and access to Farm Household Allowance and dairy recovery concessional loans.
Only the Coalition Government through our strong economic management and genuine commitment to agriculture is standing by our farmers and their communities in difficult times.
Updated
On that same issue, Joel Fitzgibbon says:
“He’s had six years. He is asking for three more years to do more study.”
On whether or not Labor will have an ag visa, Fitzgibbon says:
There will be a policy. No one can tell me what an ag visa is ... I tell you what it needs – it needs a fresh approach, flexibility, potentially needs re-entry. If you’re training workers, they can come for a second...
... I’m admitting, unlike David, we don’t have a fixed policy position. They have had the resources of government and haven’t been able to land somewhere.
I’m not going to try to do it from opposition. He just can’t stand there and say he is supporting a visa, but his prime minister is on the journey.
His prime minister backed down from his commitment of the National Farmers congress, backed down within days. He’s had an opportunity to back the ag visa, hasn’t done so. It is complicated.
Updated
On agricultural visas, David Littleproud says:
The reality was I’m prepared to stand up for it and some of my colleagues were prepared to make that public. But the prime minister is now on the journey as well.
In fact, the NFF congress – he made a commitment to working towards an ag visa. You just don’t rush into it and have unintended consequences. You have got to make sure... You have to make sure that you don’t have unintended consequences on your immigration policy, whereby we are there to protect you – the Australian people.
We’re also there to protect those farmers, to make sure that they get the labour when they need it. That’s the reality. There is over 200,000 people come in through the holiday maker program.
Let me tell you what Joel’s not telling you, is the AWU – we extended it out to a two-year visa.
What the AWU want to do is cut it back to one year. What do you think is going to happen after the election when Bill Shorten takes a Lodge? God help us if he does.
The reality is you will bring it back to one year. Our farmers are going to start to have to compete with other nations, like Canada and New Zealand. There is a shortage as it is now.
So the reality is, you start tinkering with that, the way that they are not telling you, the unintended consequence of a union running the country is you’re going to see that farmers are going to have to leave fruit on the vine. That’s the stark reality. We are in a competitive globe. Can’t run away from it.
We have got to be sensible and methodical. We work through with Pacific Island nations, making sure we get the visa system right, tending the holiday worker program broadly, but I am a believer in an ag visa.
The prime minister wants to move to it because it gives protection to workers. That is why you have to do it in a calm way, that we protect Australians, but also get the fruit off when we need it.
Updated
Our Indigenous affairs editor, Lorena Allam, had an interview with the man Labor hopes to make the nation’s Indigenous affairs minister, Pat Dodson.
From her story:
Labor’s plan for Indigenous affairs represents a “watershed for the nation”, Senator Pat Dodson has said.
“Labor’s committed to pursuing this,” Dodson, a Yawuru man and Bill Shorten’s pick for Indigenous affairs minister, told Guardian Australia.
Labor has released its “Fair go for First Nations” policy, which includes creating regional assemblies for First Nations involvement in decision-making about everything from service delivery to negotiating treaties. It is the result of three years of work led by the First Nations Labor caucus: Dodson, Northern Territory senator Malarndirri McCarthy and New South Wales MP Linda Burney.
“The devising of the platform, we’ve been instrumental in that,” Dodson said. “The reconciliation action plan the party’s adopted, Linda’s been instrumental in that, so we haven’t just been sitting there stagnant in opposition.
“There are some big agenda items that are being driven by First Nations themselves. We’ve been responsive to that, and been effective in getting the party to be responsive.”
You can read more about that here:
Updated
More on the Murray-Darling Basin from Joel Fitzgibbon:
We do not have a minute to lose. We just lost up to six years or probably from the point when Barnaby Joyce became the water minister, which might only be five or so years ago, Barnaby Joyce did many things wrong. But his greatest crime was to unsettle the agreement of the plan.
This is a fragile plan between the commonwealth, the states and all the stakeholders who rely on the Murray-Darling Basin. It’s very fragile. When you upset it like Barnaby Joyce did, it’s very hard to get it back. We are losing time. We don’t have a moment to lose. We need to restore the integrity of the plan. We need to get the water flowing again. We need to save those regional communities.
And David Littleproud on whether the government would look at splitting the Murray-Darling Basin Authority between regulator and manager (as recommended by the PC):
Well, we’re open to the PC report, but it’s not just our decision. You have to understand we have to have the basin states agree. This isn’t just my plan. This is a nation’s plan. That’s why we haven’t had progress, because politicians from all political persuasions have decided to pay politics.
We will sit down with the states and work through that. I’m agnostic. If we think we can get better outcomes, then we will.
We have taken steps in terms of compliance. I will put a tough cop on the beat with Mick Keelty. He is out there making sure compliance is upheld. We made a commitment of $25m for the basin, another $26m to use the best of the 21st century, to use satellite technology, remote river sensing, to use cameras to make sure the flows are coming through, that they are protected, there is integrity to the plan.
You don’t go and politicise it and blow it up. You put structure around it. You do that in a calm and decisive way. You don’t yell at one another. You are not going to get that unless you have cooperation of the states.
That’s what we have got. For the first time in our nation’s history – we should be damn proud – we have cooperation from the states and commonwealth on the basin plan. We should use that as a stepping stone to build on, to make sure we deliver.
People are fatigued. People up and down the plan are fatigued, want out, they want us to get it done. I won’t be faced.
I faced 100 angry irrigators in Shepparton. The easiest thing for a politician is to fly in, tell them what they want to hear, and never see them again. I will tell them the truth – we will get a worse plan if we get to get the politicisation. This is about leadership. Not about personalities. This is not about trying to pick someone off against the other. We have to rise above that.
Updated
The election campaign has been largely bereft of international policies, outside of Penny Wong’s speech to the Lowy Institute last week.
But two peak bodies for the sector want to change that and have called for whoever wins government to commit to an independent review of foreign aid.
Australia now spends nine times as much on defence as it does on development – an increase on five times as much spent in 2012. “This is unbalanced,” said the Australian Council for International Development (Acfid) and the International Development Contractors Community (IDCC).
The two organisations have joined together to warn that Australia’s “international operating environment is deteriorating”, putting at risk advances in democracy, human rights and the rule of law in a region “dogged by political instability and civil society repression”.
The organisations said Australia has “too often” taken the Pacific for granted, and warned the government not to take Asia for granted in rectifying that, amid the Coalition’s increased focus on Pacific neighbours.
“We must move decisively to reestablish our credentials as an Asian Pacific nation that wants to work cooperatively with others to shape the future of the region,” they said in a joint statement.
“The circumstances that warrant a larger defence budget, also require a larger diplomatic and development effort.”
It called for:
- A new international budget strategy, increasing the funding for DFAT to deliver the efforts outlined in the foreign affairs White Paper, and to undertake intensive diplomacy and development cooperation.
- An increase to Australia’s level of development cooperation, currently in the bottom third of OECD countries.
- A phased and predictable pathway to reach the foreign aid target of 0.5% of GNI.
- Making “substantially stronger” humanitarian contributions to reduce suffering and halt large-scale people movement.
The head of Acfid, Marc Purcell, said there hadn’t been a review of foreign aid since 2011.
“Dramatic shifts in our partners’ priorities and geostrategic dynamics have not been matched by changes to the program and a re-examination of its purpose is overdue,” Purcell said.
“Amongst a trade war and geopolitical contest, we cannot lean on our traditional allies as we have before. A bigger and more responsive Australian development program should be a key part of our response.”
Updated
On the Murray-Darling, Joel Fitzgibbon says:
We’ve got to do this in cooperation with state governments and they are key players in this. And the internal water management plans are largely a matter for them.
David forgot to say that on his watch and on Barnaby Joyce’s watch, we’ve had non-compliance, possibly corruption, big payments for non-commissioning, which hasn’t occurred. We had fish kills in the Mendinee.
Things are really bad on his watch. Now, we do need bipartisanship. We do need to get more environmental water into the system. There’s no magic pudding. We need more environmental water. We’ve said we’ll take the cap off buybacks for example. Buybacks put money back into regional communities.
The recent royal commission said, the Productivity Commission said before, that it is the most efficient way of saving water, and there’s a $13bn tax bill at stake, so we have to do it [properly] and responsibly, but it’s all about getting water back into the system. There is no alternative solution.
David Littleproud:
That’s why I sent it to the auditor. Not to politicise or play politics. I have said not only the one that’s been questioned – there is a $330m purchase that Penny Wong made.
They should be put under scrutiny. I’m quite confident that everything will be above board. I’m getting the independent umpire to have a look. Not to politicise it. To actually be mature about this. This is why you can’t trust Labor with agriculture or water. They don’t understand it.
When you want to look at one purchase in isolation, that’s politicisation. I’m sorry, the Australian people see that. I want to look at them all. The reality is if you are saying you want to put more water back in the environment, the only way to do that is with a blunt instrument with buybacks.
You destroy communities. You pit regional communities against city communities. The city doesn’t understand the plan.
Those people out there are hurting in those towns. That’s the instrument they want to use. They don’t want to back ourselves with the technology of the 21st century, in terms of infrastructure, to give the delivery of the water. They want to use a blunt instrument because it works, for a message in Adelaide.
Updated
Fitzgibbon on that same question:
The problem with that, David, is that you’ve done nothing, other than shout at the supermarkets. And we all know that the supermarkets have a role to play.
But I wouldn’t call our policy a re-regulation, but I just heard 1,000 dairy farmers applaud when that’s what you called it. Because what they need and want is structural intervention from the government. We are losing our dairy industry.
They are leaving en masse. And it’s not an over statement to say if we don’t do something about it, we won’t have a dairy industry in this country. We’ll be importing, even our drinking milk, in powdered form. This is a serious issue that invites serious government consideration and government intervention.
Now, shouting at the supermarkets is fine – you secure a temporary 10 cent levy, which diminishes over time. As sure as night follows day, when the media caravan moves on, the 10 cents will disappear.
We’ve got no intention of having it disappear, but that’s the reality of the market. We need structural reform. We have a suite of policies – a mandatory code of conduct. A properly structured and developed one, which David still hasn’t given the sector.
A suite of policies, but the focus is the minimum farm-gate milk price. It’s the only way to ensure our dairy farmers have a living wage, and know from one period to another what their income will be at least.
If they know that, they can confidently reinvest in their farm system. They can lift their productivity and hopefully secure more sustainable profitability. Now, we’ve been responsible.
We said that we would have the test assessed and help us design this. I’m not asking the ACCC to tell us why it’s too hard. I’m asking the ACCC to tell us how this can best be done.
David can stand here and keep shouting at the supermarkets but the reality is that I’ve been talking to dairy farmers in every corner of the country over recent weeks and none of them believe 10 cents a litre levy from the supermarkets is the answer to the structural and long-term problems.
Updated
Question: Mr Fitzgibbon, you’ve outlined Labor’s lines for re-regulation of the Australian dairy industry. As we know, it’s an industry under a lot of stress, and Mr Littleproud, you had some success with the dollar a litre milk at one stage, although it remains to be seen how long the supermarkets will adhere to that. I’m interested to hear how you think you can support the Australian dairy industry, and how, particularly in your case, Mr Fitzgibbon, a floor in the milk price would actually help an industry given that we’re likely to see the likes of Fontero import more milk?
Littleproud:
It’s a cruel hoax. We had some schemes like that. The reality is, you set a floor price, it sets a price below what they’re prepared to pay and you’re talking about a perishable product. There will be a point where it all falls apart.
The other dangerous and reckless thing of this is – you tear away at the trade agreements that we put in place.
Not just for dairy, but for every commodity. This is a dangerous thing to do. You’ve got to go and tell people the truth.
Not tell them what they want to hear. And yes, the dairy industry has a lot to do, and you know what, I did call the supermarkets out and I’m going to keep calling them out because I’m worried that they’re going to shirk, and I have intelligence to suggest that if Labor gets in, they’ll take the 10 cents off. Coles are already talking about this. They’re circling.
We need structural reform and have done that with the Dairy Code of Conduct, in terms of market.
Having it the same and similar to what cotton and wheat get to undertake. This is about true purity of market. That’s the only time a government should interfere in a marketplace. That’s what we’ve got to do.
It’s a multifaceted approach to this and there’s no silver solution to this.
I’m really concerned about what will happen with this. I asked them with time. Asked them to work with me.
We’re losing so many dairy farmers every day out of the industry because they can’t hold on. That’s where the supermarkets have a social responsibility to come with us.
I’m doing my bit, but I need time and I need to keep the farmers going. I’m not going to promise them falsehoods.
I would rather look them in the eye. Tell them the truth. Tell them what I can do and what I can’t. And I’m not going to put a floor price in. That would be a falsehood. It would be dangerous, not only to dairy, it would be dangerous to agriculture.
Updated
David Littleproud responds:
Let me just say, the real answer to that is: if you’re going to impose vegetation management laws, a nationalised approach, are you effectively locking up the potential of agriculture?
You are taking away a farmer’s right for the stewardship of their land. And what you are saying is that you’re going to bank that carbon abatement and that credit in the government’s pocket, not the farmer’s pocket.
That’s what’s going to happen. And the fact that they haven’t done the methodology, the fact that they haven’t done the numbers says to me that it is on the run and populist. So agriculture isn’t exempt from the 45% reductions.
Labor is lying. The reality is this. The reality is this. Is that you are going to get in place a system to take away farmers’ rights to make a living.
So if they haven’t done the work, they might need another three years in opposition to do the sums and come to the Australian people with it.
You have to be honest with the Australian people if you want to be the next government.
You can’t slink your way through. Be honest that’s going to happen with the vegetation laws that they’re going to have across the country.
Updated
The first question is on land clearing – Joel Fitzgibbon is asked what Labor’s plan is.
Fitzgibbon:
Well, we are hoping to put 10 years of carbon wars behind us. We have a very robust policy. We’ve excluded the agriculture sector, I think very responsibly.
In fact, we’ve done that each time we proposed a policy. We’ll put them in the carbon market. We’ll spend $40m creating methodologies so that they can earn revenue out of the carbon market. The land sector provides the cheapest offsets.
Our farmers will be creating them when we get the methodologies right. This is the best defence to drought – building resilience on farm through the carbon market.
We’ve also got a $100m Farm Productivity and Sustainability Profitability Fund to help them build that resilience.
We are not rolling out national laws on land clearing, but we are determined that that lowest cost abatement remain..., grows in the market.
What we have seen is that we won’t hesitate to use the commonwealth’s powers when typically conservative state governments are winding back the clock, and winding back land clearing laws that we developed over a number of years.
So, for example, in Queensland, where our political opponents like to shout for hours on this issue, nothing changes. Because we are satisfied that the laws in Queensland on native vegetation and land clearing, generally, are robust. So there is no change in Queensland. But, again, we won’t hesitate.
If conservative governments are doing the wrong thing and have reckless native vegetation laws not with our aspirations to tackle climate change both on mitigation and adaptation, and helping farmers build resilience, then we won’t hesitate to move against them.
Question: Can I clarify on this? Is this a changed position? You’re no longer seeking to replicate Queensland’s laws in other states? Or are you now saying that you’ll only act if a state waters down their existing laws?
JF: This is not a change in policy. This was always the policy. The one you’ve described was a figment of the imagination of our political opponents.
Updated
The National Press Club debate between David Littleproud and Joel Fitzgibbon has begun.
As has been pointed out by many people today, Bill Shorten hasn’t hid that his mother went back to university – he has repeatedly spoken about how they went to uni at the same time.
Speaking to Katharine Murphy late last month, he mentioned it again:
April was the fifth anniversary of the passing of my mother. She was born in 1935. She came from a very poor family. She was the first in her family to go to university. She had to take the teacher’s scholarship, because there were three others and the family had no money.
“She always wanted to do law and did as a mature-aged student. In her 50s she topped the Monash University law school while I was there. She was never bitter, but she could have been a high court judge as far as I am concerned, she was a mind of such acuity and cleverness.
“My father left school at 14 and became a fitter. He didn’t want to be at school. Both my parents were far smarter than the opportunities they had.
“This is what I think about poverty: why waste the potential of people? You never know what you’ve got going in society unless you give people a chance.”
Pauline Hanson says she had to wait late in life to join politics – which she did at age 42.
“I don’t like Bill portraying that he is a battler, and he’s not,” she says, because he went to a private school.
Pauline Hanson is still claiming she is being personally targeted – “that we have this garbage thrown up again” – because apparently after 20 years in the political game she hasn’t learned accountability.
She says she feels like a “punching bag”.
“I am on the fence with the media, I really am, because I feel like you are just trying to discredit me,” she says.
Because yes, how dare journalists ask questions about someone who is representing a party which wants to hold the balance of power in the federal parliament.
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Pauline Hanson is on Sky News, saying her party has always defied the polls, after she is reminded Newspoll has her party at 4% to 5% of the vote.
She is trying to explain the backstory of the many, many members who have fallen out with her, while still trying to explain why she is not to blame, despite having chosen them.
It’s hard being president for life.
Updated
The other thing which emerged from Bill Shorten’s press conference was his commitment to a review into the consequences of an oil spill in the Great Australian Bight.
Equinor wants to drill into the Bight, declaring it could be one of the world’s largest untapped oil reserves, but it has come up against a pretty giant protest campaign, which Sarah Hanson-Young has been at the forefront of.
Shorten’s announcement is the first move from a major party to look at addressing the issue, directly.
I know we go on and on about the “real” version of a politician and a lot of people hate it.
But, in my experience, it is rare to see a politician this vulnerable and this authentic. It’s pretty powerful viewing. The whole answer runs for about 10 minutes, but it’s worth watching, if you haven’t. Words on the page don’t quite cover it.
.@billshortenmp responds to The Daily Telegraph story about his mother.
— Sky News Australia (@SkyNewsAust) May 8, 2019
MORE: https://t.co/5wQi5xwUjf #newsday pic.twitter.com/prUSvda167
Bill Shorten finishes the press conference with: we’ve had a pretty good go here, and I just want to finish up and I want to say, thank you for being patient with the answer about my mum. I love her dearly and I appreciate the chance to talk about her.
Question: Just in relation to the waiting lists – everybody likes the idea of reducing waiting lists. But $250m is not a big amount of money in the scheme of things for the health budget. So how much would $250m reduce waiting lists by?
Shorten:
Well, I’ll get Catherine to supplement the answer, but I want to add a couple of numbers on to the $250m to reassure you. First of all, our $500m investment in emergency departments will reduce waiting lists there. The $500m in cancer treatment to reduce waiting lists there. So in fact, it’s well north of $1bn. So why don’t I let Catherine talk.
Catherine King:
What we did when we were last in government, this is what the Liberals do, they cut. There was a national partnership improvement and it had the targets to get waiting lists down.
Now, we’ve deliberately spent money on capital, which is helping patients get out of hospital. So we’ve announced money for palliative care, for subacute facilities, to get people out of the acute hospital area and to improve patient flow. What we’ve done with the targets when we were last in government is – they drove a downward trend in waiting times and in the waiting times for elective surgery. We’ve got some work to do with the states and territories and with the hospital sector about how we actually get that, but it’s that sort of work that will drive the waiting down.
Updated
Question: There are a number of protests taking place, led by surfers here in Gilmore who oppose drilling in the Bight. What’s Labor’s stance on the matter?
Shorten:
That’s a good question. There is a company who is doing some test drilling in the Bight.
If I form a government, one of my first decisions will be to get an oil spill study. I want to understand the consequences of an oil spill in the Bight.
This is a new development. No one has said that, but that’s what we’re going to do if we form a government.
We want to understand what are the consequences, and I think that that is what is concerning a lot of our surfers and people who care about our coastline.
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Question: Last time you were here, I think it was four days before the 2016 election and you said that Fiona was an “outstanding candidate and a Labor government would deliver better Medicare, better schools and better funding for the Gilmore electorate”. Clearly the polls said then that locals didn’t buy it. Why should they this time?
Shorten:
First of all, they’ve got to know Fiona better. Secondly, the sitting Liberal member is gone, and haven’t the Liberal party been divided down here in Gilmore? They brought in a ring-in from, is it from Roseville?
There is Grant Schulz who was the man. You’ve got the Nats sticking in their [candidate] see if they could shark a vote or two. So one big difference is the division on their side.
Everyone in Australia knows where Gilmore is. And the second thing is, of course, we’ve even honed our policy offerings more since then. Now, one of the big ones is the Pack Highway, but another one is $35m for in-patient treatment at the local hospital.
Our policies have got better, Fiona Phillips is even better, and we’re much more united.
The other thing that I would say in 2016 is, then you voted for Malcolm Turnbull and got Scott Morrison. If you vote for Scott Morrison this time, do you get Pauline Hanson? Clive Palmer? It’s a real surprise lucky dip, isn’t it?
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Question: Isn’t the problem with the childcare policy, obviously everyone wants to see low-paid workers paid more?
Shorten: Not quite everyone, sorry.
Question: But what happens to things like aged care workers? Isn’t this an expensive area for the government to get into, by subsidising industries?
Shorten: Let’s talk about subsidising industries.
Question: Specifically for wages.
Shorten:
I thought that the first question was on the money. Did you know that we subsidise the property industry with negative gearing subsidies? That’s billions of dollars.
Did you know that with the diesel fuel rebate, we subsidise the mining industry? And we’re keeping that, before anyone says anything. But it is a subsidy.
Did you know that we subsidise private health in Australia north of $6bn a year?
If you look around Australia, a lot of industries get subsidies. What we’ve chosen to do is subsidise the workforce. As opposed to the top end. that’s what it’s about.
Did you know that we subsidise the accounting industry in Australia? When they provide professional services doing your tax, you get a deduction on that. We don’t provide other professional services that.
So in terms of aged care, you’re quite right, the pay is too low there. We are not proposing to use this particular mechanism in aged care. There’s going to be a royal commission and let’s see what can be done. We have already outlined other measures in aged care.
But when it comes to wages more generally in this country, we are going to reverse the cuts to penalty rates. We are going to shut down sham contracting. We are going to reform the dodgy use of 457 visas. We are going to make sure that labour hire workers get a better deal in this country.
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Question: Does that include superannuation, the taxpayer-funded increase for childcare workers? Or will that need to be footed by the employers, themselves?
Shorten:
The detail of how we work out the implementation will be done with employers, with consumers. But what we are doing is making room in the budget to make sure that we can improve the wages of early childhood educators. But in terms of the implementation, I remember it was a question that I was asked on the day that I announced it.
It won’t go to union members and non-union members. It will go to people in the industry. We’ll sit down with the for-profits and the not-for-profits. But what’s good for Labor is that if you vote for Labor on May 18, you’ll see a significantly greater amount of support for household cost of living and the early childhood educators will have a pathway towards a better deal.
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Question: Have you thought about any unintended tax consequences for childcare operators under your policy to increase their workers’ wages?
Shorten:
I think that what we want to do is lift people’s wages. I tell you, I’ll tell you the consequences of lifting the wages of early childhood educators.
They’re going to get paid $11,000 more over the next eight years – $11,000 more. That will mean that smart young women and indeed men won’t have to stop being childhood educators.
Another consequence – that the families who the mums where they go to work, their income is eaten up to pay childcare, so they can go to work, so they can pay the childcare, maybe we’ll get out of that vicious cycle too.
The government always says – oh, we can’t afford to look after the wages of childcare educators. They say that we can’t afford to give a $2,000 subsidy per parent, per child. Can’t afford a subsidy for the three-year-olds to go to kindergarten.
This is a government that always says – when it comes to you – we can’t afford it. But when it comes to a tax deduction for the top end, oh, we’ve always got the money for that, haven’t we?
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It was a powerful moment from the opposition leader there, and there are several beats of silence from the journalists, waiting to see what happens next, as the words sink in.
He stays to answer more questions.
He finishes with this:
What I said at Q&A is what drives me.
People say: oh, Bill, you know, you’re popular this, and that, and the polls – who are you?
What I did on Monday night is I explained who I am. I explained what drives me. My mum is the smartest woman I’ve ever known.
It has never occurred to me that women are not the equal of men. It’s never occurred to me that women shouldn’t be able to do everything. That is why I work with strong women.
That is why I believe in the equal treatment of women. But it’s more than that. My parents sent me to a rich school. But we were not rich. We were not poor. We were not rich. We were like hundreds of thousands of other families.
My family spent all their spare cash educating Robert and I. We had three holidays when we were kids. Who cares? I got a quality education.
But the point about it is: my mum has taught me that what matters in life isn’t how rich you are, or how poor you are. It’s not what religion you worship. It doesn’t matter who you know, what church you go to. What news you listen to.
Mum taught me that it doesn’t matter about your gender – it matters how hard you work. But if everyone got the same chance, everyone deserves the same chance.
I’m going to finish up – my mum gave me another bit of advice. It’s advice I follow. I’d go to her, because she’s so smart the when you have your own encyclopaedia, long before the internet, I would go to mum. She would never give me the free ride, she would say, “Look it up.”
So I would say to whoever, when they organised a political hit on me in the election to cast some doubt – I can hear my mum now saying, “Don’t worry about that rubbish.” But she might tell whoever is pulling down a six-figure sum at the Daily Telegraph: “Look it up. Look it up.”
All of what I’ve said is all of what has been said before. Thank you.
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Bill Shorten, still obviously emotional, continues:
She went back to Monash in 2012. I saw a pretty, bloody lazy editorial. I didn’t read it all. Because there’s only so much time in your day and you can’t afford to waste it on the rubbish.
It said she achieved her dream. Who do some people in News Corp, and it’s not all of the journalists – I make that very clear. Who do some of the lazy people think that they are, that because they think that I explained myself at Q&A on a Monday night, that they play gotcha about your life story – more importantly, my mum’s.
I’ve spoken about my mum at length. I choose to give you that last bit of the battle of her time at the bar because my mum would want me to say to older women in Australia – that just because you’ve got grey hair, just because you didn’t go to a special private school, just because you don’t go to the right clubs, just because you’re not part of some back-slapping boy’s club, doesn’t mean you should give up.
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Shorten:
You know, you’re meant to be the commercial students who went to the good schools.
The young ones, the young guns even then, she eventually did her articles.
She couldn’t get articles at a law firm, because you know what – as much as we love law firms, when you’re an older woman in your 50s, you don’t look young and jazzy and you’re doing your work, she had to do it the at the Leo Cousin Institute.
Then she went to the bar, and I noticed the Telegraph said that she was there for six years. I just wish some newspaper people would do some of their homework beyond that.
She got about nine briefs in her time. It was actually a bit dispiriting. She had wanted to do law when she was 17. She didn’t get that chance. She raised kids.
At 50, she backed herself. At 53, going to the bar, she got a barrister and she read from the technical term, the apprenticeship.
She went down and did some magistrates court work. But she discovered in her mid-50s that sometimes, you’re just too old, and you shouldn’t be too old, but she discovered the discrimination against older women.
And so, she eventually, while she kept her name on the bar roll for a number of years.
Do you know that my mum wrote the book on education and law in Australia? Brilliant.
She’s brilliant. And that’s what drives me.
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Shorten:
So she taught, she taught in government schools. She taught in schools in London. She sent me to a Jesuit school.
She came back and met my dad who was a seafarer from England. And then what happened was, she started teaching at university.
And initially, she only had a casual contract, because, of course, when you are a mother, you didn’t get the maternity leave that Labor fought for.
Eventually she moved from casual to full term and a full contract.
Do you know – in the 1970s, while she was raising us, she did her PhD?
Full time... Sorry, she raised us, she worked full time and she did her PhD.
Then in the 1980s, when we were still at school, mum enrolled in law school in her late 40s. She worked full time. She raised us.
My dad was a good bloke, but let’s not pretend – he worked on the waterfront. I’m not going to pretend that he would have passed the definition of modern families.
He didn’t. Nice man, but he wasn’t raising us. And so, in the first year that Robert and I, my twin brother, went to university, she was there.
Now, I’m not saying that I was breaking any records for academic achievement in my first year of university, and the Telegraph doesn’t have to research it – I’ve put it out there.
But mum topped the law school. She was from the education faculty. And whilst you would never want to say that there was a rivalry between university faculties, she was grey-haired.
She was 50. 51. And she topped the university at law. She got a Supreme Court prize, which is the highest award that you can get. And that wasn’t meant to be the case, was it?
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Bill Shorten continues, and begins to get teary as he talks about her eulogy:
But let’s go through why this is an issue. On Monday night on Q&A, I was again asked about my leadership style and what drives you.
I think that was a very fair question. But as part of my answer, I spoke about my mother.
Now, I’ve actually spoken about my mum before.
Many of you might have been here when I spoke about her on April 26 this year at the women’s policy launch.
But one thing I did say about my mum and I started to explain her story.
She was born in Victoria, grew up in North Melbourne, 1935. Peak of the depression. Her mum was a book binder, her dad was a printer.
They’ve even got ancestors in the family tree who were convicts. I’m waiting for that to come out in the Telegraph!
She came from very modest circumstances. She topped her school.
She went to a Catholic convent school, the family were Irish Catholic.
She got the best marks. But no one in my family had ever gone to university. She was very keen to do law.
She had a great brain. But family of four, she was the eldest.
She didn’t have the money to pay for her tuition to go to university.
So she had to take a teacher scholarship. Not unknown, but you know, my mum is the bravest person I’ve known, and she would tell us the story.
She would get on the tram and go into town, go all the way to Melbourne University.
What a world it must have been. Not a lot of women went to university then. Now, she made every post a winner.
Her two younger sisters both became nuns. They both subsequently left holy orders.
The youngest brother, my uncle, who is still alive, he eventually went on to do law.
I come from a great family.
Mum, you know, she was very brave. When she got her teacher’s scholarship, I remember her youngest brother, my surviving uncle George, telling me that they would go down to Station Pier because my mum wanted to see the world.
They would have the streamers. You know when you see the picture of the liners in the 50s.
The reason why they held the streamers is that the people on the wharf would hold one end of the streamer and the family on the boat, and as the ship sailed, it would break.
And I remember my uncle telling me, as I was preparing the eulogy for my mum five years ago, he thought she was the bravest woman he met.
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Bill Shorten responds to Daily Telegraph story about his mother
Question: There was a story in the newspapers this morning about your mother. Is this campaign dirtier than the last one you fought?
Bill Shorten:
Well, I’m going to take a little bit of time on this answer, and thank you for asking it.
My mum suffered a catastrophic heart attack in her sleep sometime in the night of Saturday, April 5, 2014. So she never woke up. So it’s been about five years to last month when she passed away. I miss her every day.
I sometimes, you know, I get a sense of how she would react to things, because she was such a strong and clever woman. But I’m glad that she wasn’t here today to read that rubbish. Just rubbish.
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Question: Mr Shorten, you and Mr Bowen claimed that there would be a mandate for the tax increases should you win the election and would expect them to recognise that. Should Labor lose the election, would Labor recognise Mr Morrison’s mandate for the income tax cuts?
Shorten:
We’ve said that for the first round of tax cuts, we agree. In fact, one of the many reasons I hope we win is we’re offering better tax cuts to up to six million Australians under $40,000.
That first round, though, we said that we’d agree on. But if you’re asking me will I agree to a tax cut which the government plans to implement after another election after this one, where they haven’t explained where they’re going to get the money.
I mean, I can’t speak about the rest of you, but the nation is overplaying a game of hide-and-seek with Mr Morrison, where he hides that $77bn number for the top tier of tax earners and we all have to seek it.
So the initial tax cuts – tick. But in terms of the unfunded tax cuts, which can only be afforded after you vote twice for Liberals, and they have to specify the cuts that they’re going to make to pay for it.
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Question: When will the hospitals actually see the money?
Bill Shorten:
We want to start working with the states straight away. So probably within our first 100 days. We would want to sit down with the states to try to work out how we can rescue our hospital system.
How we can bring the necessary reinforcements so we can reduce the waiting lists, help people in the fight of their lives. But maybe I’ll get Catherine to talk a bit more, because she is a complete expert.
Catherine King:
So it’s a first order of business for any incoming health minister, is to negotiate the next hospital funding agreement.
It’s absolutely a priority and that’s the work I hope to be able to undertake in government.
What we know now is because of the persistent cuts under this government, our hospitals are hurting now and they can’t wait for the funding.
So the agreements would be negotiated very quickly. It’s a first order of business. But we also want to make sure that for the money that the commonwealth puts in, that we actually get reform.
That’s what Labor did when we were last in office. Better data for the My Hospitals website. Improving data to improve the quality of care. They’re the sorts of things that have been abandoned, unfortunately, by the Liberals, with the complete cuts to public hospitals and the failure to actually embed reform into anything that they do when it comes to health.
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Bill Shorten press conference
Labor is in Gilmore, which the party is hoping to pick up.
Paul Karp has just spent some time in that seat.
You can read about what he found here:
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Fijian prime minister slams John Alexander's 'higher ground' comments
The Fijian prime minister, Frank Bainimarama, has responded to comments John Alexander made in a forum last week, about Pacific islanders facing climate change impacts should “move to higher ground”.
“He’s lucky that we have the higher ground to allow for relocation at all,” Bainimarama said.
“I’m keen to hear what the honourable member believes that the people should do in the face of rising seas?
“Where the highest point in the country sits at just 1.8 metres above sea-level?”
He also criticised Kevin Rudd’s suggestion from February, in an essay, that Pacific islanders consider swapping sovereignty for Australian citizenship:
A number of neighbouring island states are facing the future disappearance of their countries altogether through coastal inundation.
The most vulnerable of these Pacific Island states to the impacts of climate change are Tuvalu, Kiribati and Nauru.
Australia should consider developing a proposal to these three states to enter into formal constitutional condominium with them, as we currently have with Norfolk Island.
This would require constitutional changes in all four countries. If our neighbours requested this, and their peoples agreed, Australia would become responsible for their territorial seas, their vast Exclusive Economic Zones, including the preservation of their precious fisheries reserves.
Under this arrangement, Australia would also become responsible for the relocation over time of the exposed populations of these countries (totalling less than 75,000 people altogether) to Australia where they would enjoy the full rights of Australian citizens,” Rudd wrote earlier this year.
Bainimarama:
There’s been another suggestion floating around from one of your former prime ministers, that Australia should offer citizenship to Papua islanders, Pacific Islanders whose nations are disappearing, for control of their seas and fisheries.
In a time that we must be future-face, we can hardly tolerate some insensitive neo-colonial ideas.
I am for leaders of Australia to visit the community and see them, see them first hand, before they propose solutions that are so blatantly out of touch with the reality that we Pacific Islanders live with on the ground.
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Andrew Bolt has also weighed in on the story about Bill Shorten’s mum – defending Shorten:
Andrew Bolt supports the Herald Sun decision not to run the story on Bill Shorten’s mother pic.twitter.com/W8iWPj2XX6
— Amy Remeikis (@AmyRemeikis) May 8, 2019
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That bit in bold in the last post is the latest attack line from the government – it has been used a few times today.
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Question: Quickly on the debate, how are you feeling going into tonight’s debate?
Morrison: I’m pleased we’re having the third debate and pleased that the Labor party eventually agreed to do that tonight and I’m looking forward to it.
Because the debate, once again, I think reinforces this simple point, and that is at the election on the 18th of May, it will be a choice about who you want to be prime minister.
Do you want Bill Shorten to be prime minister? Or do you want me to continue to be prime minister? On the 19th of May, people will get up, they’ll wake up, they’ll look at what’s on the front page of the papers, and they’ll either see a picture of Bill Shorten there on who would be your next prime minister or me as continuing as your next prime minister. And I know Australians are seeking to make that decision, many of them already have as they voted in pre-poll.
They will be weighing that choice up and it’s a very important choice. It just won’t affect the next three years if there is a change of government it will affect the next 10 years. It will affect the decade that Australians will live in, it will affect the economy that they will live in over the next 10 years.
I said this morning out at the Business Chamber – it’s because people matter, the economy matters. And that’s why we focus so strongly that Australians live in that better economy over the next 10 years.
I want my kids to live in a better economy for the next 10 years where they’ll have more choices and more opportunities. I want those who are starting families to have that same opportunity.
Those who are going to retirement to have those better opportunities. Those who are – just working hard everyday, I want them to have better opportunities.
Bill Shorten just wants to tax them more because he thinks their money is better off in his hands than theirs.
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I guess that is totally different to the Scullion candidate then.
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Question: On the social media platform WeChat there has been some information, can you rule any Liberal party involvement in those?
Morrison: That’s not the Liberal party’s campaign. I mean I can understand the Labor party would be feeling rather sensitive about the things that the former Labor leader here in New South Wales said about the Chinese community and the Asian community at the last state election.
I mean, it was happening – it was a big issue here in the state election. The New South Wales leader of the Labor party at the last election said that Asians were taking Australian’s jobs.
Now, Bill Shorten said nothing about that until after the election was over. It was six days before he said a thing. So I can understand why Labor might be a bit sensitive about this.
We had Tanya Plibersek say that Indian businesses can’t create jobs. So, look, that’s not what was said by anyone else other than them.
And so, no, I don’t believe, you know – people should be upfront and candid about their policies. That’s what we are doing. I have been outlining our positive plans. I outlined them again for you today. I appreciate your patience as I went through the long list and happy to do it again tomorrow.
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Question: Prime minister, last week you said the standard you walk past is the standard you accept in relation to Mr [Luke] Creasey, I think it was, and the comments he made. You got a candidate in Scullin who in an interview in 2017 linked paedophilia with same-sex marriage. Do you and the Liberal party accept those comments from him?
Morrison: That matter was dealt with by the party ...
Question: Why isn’t the ...
Morrison: The organisation dealt with it.
Question: What did they do to deal with it. What did they do?
Morrison: His candidacy has continued.
Question: That means you think those comments are acceptable?
Morrison: I don’t accept that.
Question: Why did he keep the job?
(He takes another question)
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'Leave families out of it' – Scott Morrison
Question: Prime minister, should Bill Shorten’s dead mother be used as a political tactic?
Morrison:
Look, this is a very upsetting story and I can understand that Bill would have been very hurt by that story. I mean, Bill lost his mother five years ago and I can understand that that would have upset him a great deal and I’m – I would only extend my best wishes to him.
I mean, this election is not about our families.
It’s not about Bill’s mum. It’s not about my mum, you know. Sure, my mum, he loves his mum, and sadly his mum’s passed away.
I’m thankful my mum is still with us. It’s not about our mums or our dads or kids or our wives, as great as they are, it’s about the choice between Bill Shorten and myself as prime minister and I know that Bill and I would very much want to keep focused on that choice, not on our families.
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Question: Prime minister, you talked a lot about the risk of IR under Labor, Sally McManus, you talked about a lot this morning. But can we go a bit further: business has a list of demands from the government.
You say jobs is the answer to that. Do we take from that that there won’t be significant industrial relations changes under you in a new term of government?
Morrison: My answer is the same: we will continue to do things that create employment in Australia.
And we have got the record of creating those jobs, whether they’re youth jobs and the programs we’re putting to creating 80,000 of new apprentices.
And the rural and regional areas that increasing subsidies, whether they’re down in the south coast or up in Townsville or over there in Bunbury in Western Australia, we are investing more in creating those apprentices at the local level for jobs, ensuring small businesses are paying less taxes, and ensure they continue to get the protections that we have afforded through the changes we have made to legislation which Labor will strip away.
Labor will strip away the protections on building sites, for people who are working there and for people who are operating there as subcontractors and we will ensure that they will maintain their protections from thuggish unions like the CFMEU who are bank-rolling both to become prime minister.
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Question: The problem with your campaign at the moment, you either have to talk about a slowing economy or Labor, Labor, Labor. Do you run the risk of sounding like a two-trick pony without any new ideas?
Morrison: No, for this simple reason: on each and every day I have stood before all of you, each and every day, and happy to do it again today, our plan will deliver one and a quarter million new jobs.
Our economic plan. Outlined again this morning and I spoke to the New South Wales Business Chamber. One and a quarter million jobs.
One in five of those jobs being for young people. 250,000 new businesses, ensuring we keep taxes low for families and small businesses because I believe that the economy grows more strongly when we leave money in the pockets of those who have earned it than handing it over to the government and seeing it slow down.
You have asked me what the plan is, I’m running through the plan. So the third point of that plan is to make sure that we keep the budget in surplus, to pay down Labor’s debt. Now, we’re the government that is actually brought the budget back to put it in surplus next year.
Labor is the – when they were in power, they went ... No, no, I’m making the contrast. Plans are always a contrast. And when they were there, they couldn’t manage money.
That’s why I’m saying you can trust our plan which shows that we have brought the budget back into surplus, getting expenditure under control, getting taxes under control, and so we can pay down debt by $50bn over the next four years and eliminate net debt over the next 10.
The fourth point of that plan is to ensure that because of that good management of money, that we can continue to invest to lift our investment in schools and hospitals and roads.
There’s a $100bn being invested all around the country. $33bn right here in New South Wales on roads, on rail infrastructure, and all of these important projects that are creating jobs, our investment in hospitals and schools. I mean, right here in western Sydney, I talked about the cystic fibrosis treatment centre that will be established here in New South Wales, in here in western Sydney, which is going to support those sufferers. So investing in the essential services that Australians rely on.
And the fifth point is we will keep Australians safe, whether it’s with the CCTV cameras that go in parks and shopping precincts around the country, ensuring that we keep our kids safe online and you’re all there for that announcement on the weekend when we sat there in the Healthy Harold tent and we went through the program of how they’re keeping young people safe, investing in our security agencies which I note have thwarted 15 terrorist attacks. Paul Keating called them nutters – nutters!
Just a couple of days a go and keeping our borders secure which is what Australians can rely on us for. That’s what I’m offering at the next election. That’s our plan. I’m simply making the point that the alternative plan is big spending, big taxes and big risk.
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Question: Prime minister, when you first became prime minister, you said you would not be scared to talk about industrial relations. But in your speech this morning all you could talk about Bill Shorten’s industrial relations policy. And in a newspaper article, you indicated there would be no further reform under your government. So have you raised a white flag to making the labour market more flexible and less complex for business owners?
Scott Morrison: No.
Question: Will that mean you will consider ...
Morrison: It just means no..
Question: Does that mean you’ll consider – under a Morrison government, would you attempt to rewrite legislation to make it more flexible hiring and firing as well as making the award system, for example, less complex?
Morrison: What it means is I’m for jobs and under the government that I have been part of and the government I have led, 1.3m jobs have been created.
That’s under the policies we have put in place which includes restoring the Australian and Building Construction Commission.
Ensure we passed the Registration Act.
Took up the fight for the owner drivers in the transport industry which Labor wants to return all of those things back so the building and construction industry becomes the province of the militant building unions, particularly the CFMEU, John Setka along with Sally McManus get to decide what happens on sites in this country and that’s what we’re working against – to stop that happening.
We have made some big changes and we’re going to stand by and protect those changes. I will continue to do the things that I need to do to ensure that Australians get into jobs and stay in the jobs and that means ensuring our economy remains strong in the years ahead with the real challenges that we’re facing over the next few years. Now, is not the time to go and embark on a massive economic experiment, massive big new spending, massive big new taxes.
You know, turning everything on its head, that comes with a big price and Australians will pay it, not just for the next three years, just like it was when they – the government moved to the Labor party in 2007 from John Howard and Peter Costello, it’s paid for it for more than a decade.
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The debate on debates continue – Sarah Hanson-Young wants to debate Melissa Price.
(Someone would have to find her first, but anyway.)
“Melissa Price cannot keep hiding from her responsibilities to the environment or her accountability to voters. I challenge her to a debate in Adelaide on our environment prior to the election,” Hanson-Young said in a statement.
“Melissa Price has been missing in action. Yesterday we laid eyes on the UN’s damning biodiversity report. Again we find this government’s response lacking and our environment minister unable or unwilling to answer the hard questions.
“Melissa Price and the Liberals cannot be trusted to take the bold strides towards environmental repair and protection that are urgently needed. Australia leads the world in mammal extinctions and is the only developed country on a list of 11 deforestation hotspots. We urgently need leadership and instead we are met with silence.
“It is time for Melissa Price to front up to the public and explain her and her government’s appalling record. She has a responsibility to explain to voters, and those too young to vote who have been protesting for action on climate change, why she has failed to take the environment seriously.
“The Greens have the most comprehensive policy to restore nature and act on climate change. We will use our numbers in the Senate to push the next government to act on the extinction crisis and save our environment.”
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Scott Morrison press conference
The prime minister is in Reid, still talking small business and Labor’s tax plan:
There’s a promise that we made as Australians to those who come to our country and all of us, unless we’re Indigenous Australians, of course, have come from somewhere else. And the promise that we have and that we make and we seek to keep is that the opportunities you have in Australia will be to get a job, make a home, save for your retirement and it’s important that we keep that promise to Australians who come here to make their home, to make a contribution, not take one, that they can achieve these things.
And here in Reid, with the many different multicultural communities that there are, that’s what they have been doing. Starting businesses. One-in-three people from an ethnic background who were born overseas work for themselves. They’re self-employed.
They work hard, they start businesses, they invest in property, and they don’t do it to lose money, they do it to actually build their opportunities for the future, to ensure that they’re insulated in the future against any sort of shocks.
They save carefully, they spend their money wisely. That’s why I think Bill Shorten’s housing tax at this election, together with the retirees’ tax and the many other taxes that he has totalling $387 billion, that the housing tax is a real slug on Australians who are just trying to get ahead.
He likes to tell you that it’s for people with their sixth or seventh property. He must be talking about members of his own shadow cabinet.Because most of Australians, they own just one.
It’s one-in-five police officers. It’s small business owners, people who are just trying to get ahead.
And to tax them more and to remove that opportunity for future generations who just want to do the same thing, I mean, why is it fair that for so many years, 100 years, this has been part of our tax law, and previous generations have been able to do this and invest in property and get ahead and provide for their future, but a new generation coming through denied that opportunity while the others continue to enjoy the benefits of it?
Clive Palmer has gone on a tweet storm in response to Mark McGowan’s attack on him in parliament:
Mr Palmer said the WA Premier was grand standing before a federal election and was sour that Labor didn’t get the United Australia Party’s preferences.
— Clive Palmer (@CliveFPalmer) May 8, 2019
“How could I support Labor when they side with the Greens who want to destroy the economy,” Mr Palmer said.#auspol #ausvotes
Well then. A group of adults just proved we can all walk out of a building into the frezing cold and drizzle when an alarm goes off.
The Australian Financial Review’s Washington correspondent reports that Joe Hockey won’t be seeking to stay on as US ambassador, regardless of who wins the election:
Joe Hockey will not seek an extension as ambassador to the US when his term expires, creating a diplomatic test for whichever party wins power next week and takes up the tricky task of working with the Trump administration.
Mr Hockey is understood to have advised the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade as well as friends and colleagues that he intends to see out his five-year term through to January 2020.
After that date, Mr Hockey has decided to pursue a long-anticipated jump into the private sector.
This is an entirely normal election campaign:
There is a building-wide fire drill in Parliament House today, so there may be a delay in posts in the near future. I will be back as soon as I can.
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IBISWorld also looked at those on low wages:
IBISWorld predicts that the industries which rely on low-cost labour will likely be hindered by a Labor government. To ameliorate wage growth stagnation, Labor has adopted a direct policy approach to increase wages through legislation.
“If elected, Labor has pledged to introduce a “living wage” standard which would change the way in which the Fair Work Commission determines the minimum wage. This may undermine businesses in industries that rely on cheap labour, such as the cafes and coffee shops industry, restaurants industry, and the pubs, bars and nightclubs industry,” said Aravanis.
Many firms in the consumer goods retailing industry would also come under pressure due to the higher minimum wage. The Coalition has previously sought to improve wages through fostering economic growth, and continues to support this approach through cutting both business and income taxes. IBISWorld believes the tax cuts announced in the 2019-20 budget may provide some much-needed stimulus to the retail sector through increasing real household disposable incomes.
On property
A Coalition victory would also be welcome relief for property investors, as Labor’s taxation reforms in the housing market are also likely to exert downward pressure on house prices.
“While this would be beneficial for first homebuyers, Labor’s plans to reduce the capital gains tax discount and limit negative gearing to new developments would likely threaten the real estate services industry. In addition, a fall in house prices may damage consumer confidence and hinder retail spending across the economy,” said Aravanis.
And infrastructure and education:
Infrastructure and education
Despite the policy differences between the major parties, some industries are set to benefit regardless of the outcome of the upcoming election.
Both parties have announced significant infrastructure spending plans, which will benefit firms in the rail passenger transport, road and bridge construction, and heavy industry and other non-building construction industries. Similarly, both parties have committed to greater funding for technical and vocational education and training, as well as preschool education. This is likely to increase revenue across these industries, particularly as Labor has pledged to offer 15 hours of free preschool to three-year-old children.
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On agriculture, IBISWorld claims the dairy industry would “gain from a Labor government” but not all industries would do as well.
“Dairy cattle farmers have struggled amidst the ongoing milk price discounting war between Woolworths and Coles. Farmers typically have little capacity to negotiate prices with the major supermarket firms, and this policy would help relieve pressure within industry,” said Aravanis.
Another agricultural policy Labor has announced is the banning of the live sheep exports. Although this would hinder the sheep farming industry, it would also increase the demand for the services of the meat processing industry, as the sheep that would normally be exported during summer would instead by butchered and processed domestically.
Some other agricultural industries would lose out under Labor. If the Coalition is returned to power, a variety of water-intensive farming industries would benefit from the continuation of the Murray Darling Basin plan. These industries include the cotton farming, rice growing and fruit and nut growing industries. Under Labor, the government would buy back greater volumes of water from farmers and return it to the river to limit environmental damage to the Murray-Darling Basin.
On health, it says:
According to IBISWorld, the public health sector would also likely receive a boost from a Labor government. Labor has committed to a review of the sector by the Productivity Commission and has not ruled out removing private health insurance rebates. Over the next two years, Labor has pledged to freeze private health insurance premium increases at 2%. If private health insurance rebates were scrapped, it would free up an additional $6bn in funding for the public health system.
“Removing the rebate would significantly increase funding for the public general hospitals industry but could also undermine the viability of the health insurance industry. Insured consumers may be worse off, as lower subsidisation of private health insurance would increase premiums. In contrast, the Coalition has sought to assist the private health system and is likely to continue to do so if re-elected,” said Aravanis.
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IBISWorld, an industry research company, have laid out its views on the federal election, based on the major parties policies:
On energy, it says:
The election of a Labor government would influence the performance of several energy-related industries. The solar electricity generation and wind and other electricity generation industries are expected to benefit from Labor’s stronger climate policies, which include a lift in the Renewable Energy Target (RET) to 50% by 2030, and an emissions reduction target of 45%.
“A lift in the RET would likely force electricity retailers to purchase a greater share of their electricity from renewable sources, causing the price of large-scale green energy certificates to rise. A rise in the price of green certificates would increase revenue for solar and windfarms,” said IBISWorld senior industry analyst Jason Aravanis.
However, other utility industries would not be so lucky. IBISWorld believes the oil and gas extraction industry would be threatened by Labor’s plan for stronger natural gas export controls, which would force exporters to redirect supply to the domestic market when prices become too high.
Labor is also expected to more heavily regulate the electricity retailing industry to try and lower utility prices for consumers.
“This may hinder electricity retailers, by forcing them to offer more competitive prices and improve consumers ability to compare different contracts. Electricity retailers may also suffer under the Coalition, given the National party’s support for “big stick” legislation that would break up major retailers that are found to be abusing their market power,” said Aravanis.
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And also what the RBA chief, Philip Lowe reported yesterday:
The Australian labour market remains strong. There has been a significant increase in employment, the vacancy rate remains high and there are reports of skills shortages in some areas. Despite these positive developments, there has been little further progress in reducing unemployment over the past six months. The unemployment rate has been broadly steady at around 5% over this time and is expected to remain around this level over the next year or so, before declining a little to 4¾% in 2021. The strong employment growth over the past year or so has led to some pick-up in wages growth, which is a welcome development. Some further lift in wages growth is expected, although this is likely to be a gradual process.
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In light of that, it might be worth revisiting this story in the Australian last month about the impact of cutting penalty rates:
Cuts to Sunday penalty rates had not created one new job or prompted business to give any extra hours to workers, admits the small business lobby, which has declared the heated political debate over the reduction in workers’ pay to be a “waste of time”.
Federal Labor has pledged to reverse penalty rate cuts within 100 days of assuming office if Bill Shorten wins the May 18 election.
Council of Small Business Australia chief executive Peter Strong said the net impact of the phased-in cuts by the Fair Work Commission had been minimal because they had coincided with above-inflation increases in the minimum wage. “There’s no extra jobs on a Sunday,’’ he said. “There’s been no extra hours. Certainly, I don’t know anyone (who gave workers extra hours). It’s been just a waste of time.”
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And that full quote of all the pay rises Scott Morrison has heard about:
I tell you what really makes me excited is when I see people in businesses ... and they come and say my boss gave me a pay rise because of the tax cuts that you gave him.
And I have heard that so many times, for people who work for small and family businesses.
I mean, Bill Shorten goes around and he attacks small businesses and says they are not paying their workers properly. Businesses that are paying themselves last, you know, 58% I think it is, might be 56%, of people who are on the minimum wage work for small and family businesses.
And one of the things I am most proud of small and family businesses, is when we have gone through difficult times, they have kept their staff on and they have gone without.
And for Bill Shorten to suggest those small and family businesses, and the employees themselves know, that that small business owner kept them in their job, and when Bill Shorten says they haven’t been treating them right, it is an insult to that business.
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On industrial relations, and what his government’s plan is, Scott Morrison says:
I can tell you what will happen to businesses all around the country on the 19th of May and Bill Shorten is elected and that means Sally McManus will now be a board member, figuratively, on every single one of your companies.
The union movement will basically be in control of your businesses if the Labor party is elected on the 18th of May. They’ll be the ones, who will be providing the final approval on what you can and can’t do in your business.
There will be an army of green bureaucrats running around telling you what you can and can’t do in your business. So much for you owning your business after the 18th of May if Bill Shorten is elected, because the unions, the militant unions in particular, the CFMMEU – I mean why do you think the unions are so passionate about getting rid of the ABCC? Why do you think that is? Because they have a personality difference? No. They want control of the Australian building industry again. They want control of every site. They want control of every decision you make.
And remember what Sally McManus said when she first took over the job – that the law doesn’t apply to them. Doesn’t apply to them. Is there any wonder we are seeing people behave the way they are, when you get people in this country running around in positions of authority saying the law doesn’t matter.
The rule of law is what provides investment certainty in this country. And if on the other side of this election, if Bill Shorten is the prime minister of this country, you can be sure that Sally McManus will get her way. And she is the one along with the movement union, who will sit effectively on every board in this country. Every board. Large country boards, every small business, family businesses, as you gather around the kitchen table and work out the next six months, she’ll be the one calling the shots, not you.
I want you to keep your choices in running your business. I want you to keep those choices. Because you are the ones making those investments, you’re the ones putting things at risk, you are the ones putting on people, you are the ones who are paying your employees first and yourself last and that point is just not respective by Bill Shorten and the Labor party.
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Asked about his reputation as a “marketing man” and whether that has been a “value add” to the Coalition campaign at the Sydney Chamber of Commerce meeting this morning, Scott Morrison says “it’s not about that at all”.
“I am a former treasurer, I have run a big economy, and right now, next year, there will be a $2tn economy. And the skills you need to run a $2tn economy are the skills I have demonstrated as being a member of the expenditure review committee for five years.
“To keep Australians safe, I have been on the national security committee for the last five years, started off in the government by stopping the boats, something Labor said couldn’t be done and most other people said couldn’t be done, but I got it done, because of our plans.
“So the skills and experience I bring to this job have been proven in the job and that is why in this election, it is a choice, as I just said, it is a choice between the economy you want to live in under the Liberal party, which means lower taxes, stronger growth and guaranteed funding for essential services, or the economy you’ll live in under Labor, which will mean higher taxes, spending out of control and them coming after your wallet.
“I joked the other day, Bill was a bit, we are having our debate tonight, we’ll be standing behind lecterns so, he may feel a bit more comfortable. The only space that Bill Shorten is going to invade, is your wallet.
“That’s what he’s going to invade, I can tell you that”.
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Scott Morrison is talking about all the people he has heard from, who have said they have received pay rises from their bosses, because of the tax cuts the government has introduced.
Over in the Western Australian parliament, premier Mark McGowan had a few things to say about Clive Palmer yesterday who is hoping to get at least a senator up in the state.
I am growing increasingly concerned about someone who is posing a threat not just to investment but to jobs in Western Australia.
Clive Palmer is directly threatening more than 3,000 jobs at the Sino Iron Project in the Pilbara.
Clive Palmer, Mr Speaker, Clive Palmer, who has made many millions out of that project is now stopping Sino Iron from expanding and operating properly.
The state government is continuing to explore our legal options regarding Clive Palmer’s threat to the more than 3,000 West Australians who work on the Sino Iron Project.
Mr Palmer does not employ anyone on that project.
He milks more than a million dollars a day – cash – from the Chinese investors, then attacks Chinese investment.
He is a greedy hypocrite.
He is running a disgraceful attack on our biggest trading partner.
Mr Palmer takes and he doesn’t give.
He doesn’t pay his workers, he rips off Aboriginal people, he’s threatening West Australian jobs, he’s moved his company to Singapore.
It’s disappointing and dangerous that the Liberal party has entered into a preference deal with Mr Palmer.
I hope, Mr Speaker, I hope the leader of the opposition [Mike Nahan] does not support this preference deal and still supports this government’s efforts to resolve the issues between Sino Iron and Mr Palmer, including potential legislation.”
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He mentions how small business has helped lift the economy and have moved Australia forward.
“Paying your employees first, paying yourself last,” he adds.
I guess, except if you are Clive Palmer. Who the Liberals have entered a preference deal with.
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Scott Morrison repeats the line which has become the crux of the Liberal party campaign:
Because people matter, the economy matters.
Because people matters, managing money matters.
And if you can’t manage money, you can’t run the country.
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Scott Morrison is in western Sydney talking to a the NSW Business Chamber.
“People matter,” Morrison says, as he details why he cares about the economy, because the economy looks after people.
He lists people who he has met who have cystic fibrosis, and a drug the government was able to list on the PBS last year, which can add decades to the life for those diagnosed with it.
The ABC boss, David Anderson, who was formally appointed to the role last week, has addressed claims he has interfered in the federal election, by speaking about what the $80m or so indexation cuts would mean for the public broadcaster if the Coalition was re-elected (Labor has committed to restoring the funding).
Look, we have been talking about this indexation freeze for some time. It came in place a year ago and we have – I think a number of occasions presenting to parliamentary hearings, we have talked about over the last seven months when I have been acting just what that’s going to mean,” he told ABC Breakfast.
... Of course people are sensitive to it but we have been consistent about $84m reduction to the ABC over three years from July and what that might mean.
The fact that people are going to ask me questions about that, I’m still going to be consistent with that response. I want to be genuine about how we’re going to meet this challenge. I don’t think we can meet this challenge without there being some reduction in staff and services.
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Former Labor prime ministers Paul Keating and Bob Hawke have reunited to publish a piece in the newspapers formerly known as Fairfax in support of Bill Shorten’s economic credentials.
AAP writes:
In a rare show of unity, the pair who led the economic reform of the country in the 1980s, have attacked Liberal prime minister Scott Morrison for “the fallacious claim that Labor can’t manage the economy”.
“It is a blatant denial of history for Scott Morrison to allege that the Labor party cannot manage the economy when he knows the design and structure of the modern Australian economy was put in place exclusively by the Labor party,” they wrote in the Age and Sydney Morning Herald on Wednesday.
Opposition leader Shorten and his team had a well-thought-out agenda of economic reform that will benefit Australia, they said.
“While we are proud of the achievements of our governments, the baton of reform is being grasped by the next generation of Labor leaders.”
Party campaign spokesman Jim Chalmers said it was inspiring to see the pair back together.
“A lot of us joined the Labor party because of Hawke and Keating,” he told ABC News.
“So to see them together and just speaking about Labor’s proud record of economic management, compared to the Liberals, I found to be really uplifting.”
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This is Bill Shorten’s full statement in response to the Daily Telegraph article criticising him for neglecting to mention his mother, who died five years ago, returned to university later in life:
My mum passed away five years ago last month, but she’s still my biggest inspiration.
I’ve told her story a lot in recent years. I told it two weeks ago when I launched Labor’s women’s policy. I told it again last night on Q&A.
In a new low, the Daily Telegraph has decided to use my mum’s life as a political attack on me, and on her memory. They think they know more about my mum than I do.
So let me tell you about Dr Ann Shorten.
She was a brilliant woman.
First in her family to go to university. They weren’t rich. She wanted to do law but had to take a teacher’s scholarship to look after her younger siblings.
She loved being a teacher and she was very good at it. She later became a teacher of teachers. She worked at Monash University for over three decades, but she always wanted to be in the law.
Much later in life, in her 50s, she did just that. When my twin brother and I went to university, she was enrolled at the same faculty.
When I was in my first year of law school, she was in her final year. She was her brilliant self and won the supreme court prize.
She finally realised her dream and qualified as a barrister in her late 50s.
Mum was never bitter. She had a remarkable life and she felt very fortunate. But because of her financial circumstances, she didn’t get all of the opportunities she deserved.
I can’t change what happened to my mum. But I can change things for other people. And that’s why I’m in politics. That’s why I’m asking to be your prime minister.
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And Peter Dutton also wants in on the debate action.
It is now clear that Mr Shorten does not stand for strong borders, strong law enforcement and strong national security - Labor stands for the complete opposite.
— Peter Dutton (@PeterDutton_MP) May 7, 2019
But something tells me he won’t be taking up this offer
Hi Peter. I’ll debate you on national security and immigration. Name the time and place and I’ll be there. https://t.co/hrSk71mKWO
— Nick McKim (@NickMcKim) May 7, 2019
In other debate news getting less attention, David Littleproud and Joel Fitzgibbon will go head to head on agriculture policy at the National Press Club at lunchtime.
Water policy should dominate that one.
Good morning
There are 10 days left in the campaign and both parties find themselves back in Canberra for the third and final leaders’ debate – the last time Scott Morrison and Bill Shorten will face off against each other before the poll closes on 18 May.
But Shorten starts the day responding to a Daily Telegraph front-page story involving his mother, who passed away five years ago.
My mum. #auspol #qanda pic.twitter.com/VXi04aLoYS
— Bill Shorten (@billshortenmp) May 7, 2019
During his Q&A appearance on Monday night, Shorten spoke of how his mother, Ann Shorten, inspired him and motivated him, explaining that she was the first of her family to go to university, and had wanted to be a lawyer, but took a teaching scholarship in order to help her family financially.
What motivates me, if you really want to know who Bill Shorten is, I can’t make it right for my mum but I can make it right for everyone else,” he said on the night.
The Daily Telegraph story criticised Shorten for neglecting to mention his mother returned to university in her late 50s and practiced law for six years. Shorten has previously spoken of how he and his mother attended university at the same time.
The university itself tweeted about it during Q&A.
Arts/Law alumnus The Hon. @billshortenmp returned to Clayton campus last night to appear live on the ABC's Q&A. His late mother Ann also completed Law degree and PhD in the Faculty of Education at @MonashUni https://t.co/aiWrBijn4d.
— Monash Alumni (@MonashAlumni) May 7, 2019
Expect responses to that to dominate the morning news cycle of the campaign, ahead of the debate.
As usual, there is a lot to get to, so grab your coffee. I have wrangled three so far. Plus some leftover Easter egg, because I know how to live.
Ready?
Let’s get into it.
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