Let's blow this crazy popsicle stand
Right folks, at 11.20pm, that’s enough. Thanks for your company this evening, it’s been all kinds of good times.
The live #ausvotes coverage will be back in the morning, from first light, with Helen Davidson on early shift and Gabrielle Chan taking the day shift tomorrow because I’m off to Melbourne for our second Guardian Live election debate at the Malthouse Theatre. It’s not too late to book for tomorrow night’s panel discussion about the economy with Lenore Taylor, George Megalogenis, Jenny Macklin, Christian Porter and I, with a special appearance from Mike Bowers, with tales of the trail. Click here if you want to purchase a ticket. Do it. The Sydney event was huge fun.
But for now, grab a camomile tea and hit the sack. Thanks for reading.
So how did that go?
Malcolm Turnbull got through Q&A still in possession of his voice – tick, and even though there was the odd pulse of irritation, he didn’t lose his cool. Two ticks. Give that man a barley sugar and a whisky.
His backroom will think that went well enough. He got all the talking points up, he pulled the you elect me to lead formulation when pressed by an asylum seeker on Manus Island, which sounds prime ministerial to political advisers. He put some distance between himself and Tony Abbott, and between himself and the right wing of the Liberal party, while insisting he was a team player at heart. Malcolm Turnbull is not even close to being a team player at heart, but he will be if that’s the price of political leadership. He’s demonstrated that amply since taking the prime ministership, that he won’t strain theatrically on his leash, he’ll just move his head slowly every now and again just to prove he’s still in there somewhere. We saw that tonight. Slow head movements, but a whole lot of compliance, in succession. A funny sort of signalling. Not terribly convincing to the voters who would like him to be more progressive, vaguely irritating to colleagues who think he’s a communist. Such is life, at least Malcolm Turnbull’s life.
This is a very superficial observation but I’ll make it anyway. The head cold leant his voice a patrician quality that it doesn’t normally have. If you listened to him rather than looked at him he sounded very controlled, entirely calculated. This morning he sounded like Neville Wran. Tonight he sounded a bit like Malcolm Fraser, which was a bit odd.
Less superficial, entirely interesting, is the low balling effort I mentioned in an aside during the live call. Malcolm Turnbull is trying to get up this concept that you only have to give him another three years. It’s not a lifetime commitment. It’s not a tattoo, it’s just three years. I really do find this fascinating and the pitch is deliberate. He thinks he can persuade undecided voters to shut their eyes, hold their noses, and let him have one term to make his case. He thinks this is a compelling pitch, otherwise, why make it? And the lack of ambition attached to that says everything about the mood of the Australian electorate right now, expectations are low, there is a weariness with the shenanigans. Will it work? Well, in two weeks, we’ll find out.
Do-overs
Q: When you took office, I think there was a great sense of optimism in the community. If you reflect back now on your past 10 months in your job, are you satisfied with your leadership and achievements of you and your government? And if you got a do-over, what would you do differently?
Malcolm Turnbull would like to actually answer this question but he knows people will shout at him if he doesn’t deliver the talking points as this is the final question. This could have been interesting, but it wasn’t, just the stump speech.
That’s it from Brisbane. I’ll be back shortly with a couple of quick thoughts.
Arts
Q: Will you commit to funding a strong, completely independent Australia Council for the Arts?
Malcolm Turnbull his new arts minister has not directed arts funding politically. He’s a bit irritated because the questioner is persistent.
OK, if you let me finish, I’ll just complete the answer.
Abortion
A question on the consequences of late term abortions. Babies dying in clinics. Turnbull is clearly horrified, but he holds the line. Abortion is a state issue.
Malcolm Turnbull:
The law that relates to abortion is very much within the jurisdiction of your parliament here in Queensland.
Plebiscite: show me some leadership, and do your job
A woman with a gay son wants him to get married, like his siblings.
Q: The $160 million plebiscite money is better spent treating depression, alcoholism, drugs and suicide prevention. Why are you not amending the law within the Marriage Act? It is a parliamentary process. We elect representatives into parliament. Just show me some leadership by doing your job.
Malcolm Turnbull says the woman makes a compelling point, but the policy was a government decision before his time as leader.
Q: You’re the prime minister!
Malcolm Turnbull:
I am the PM but I’m not the dictator. Some people like the idea of prime ministers that ignore their colleagues. I don’t agree with that. I’m a strong believer in traditional cabinet government. And that means compromise. That means listening to your colleagues. That means being the first among equals and respecting the views of those in your cabinet and in your party room that you may not agree with.
Equal opportunity social conservatism
Q: Sheikh Shady Alsuleiman has made comments calling homosexuality an evil act which brought evil outcomes. How are these anymore abhorrent than the comments by Senator Cory Bernardi suggesting that homosexuality leads to beastiality or George Christensen saying Safe Schools leads to grooming?
Malcolm Turnbull says he rejects and condemns any comments which disparage any group of Australians. By anyone.
NBN
Turnbull is challenged on the NBN. The prime minister gives his standard response, Labor mucked this project up. We are fixing it.
Malcolm Turnbull:
We have taken this failed project and we’re delivering it and we’re delivering it quickly and at lower cost.
Manus part III
Q: I’m thinking of the homophobia response that you made only last Thursday night where you said that we are, our democracy is based on respect. The better we are at doing that, and showing love, is the best way for us to go. Why can’t you change, and take that concept and put it on to Manus Island?
Malcolm Turnbull:
Thank you. And that’s a very fair question. This is the problem. If we were to say to all of the people on Manus: “OK, come and settle in Australia” that would be the biggest marketing opportunity for the people smugglers you have ever seen.
The boats would be setting off again.
He rounds out with tough choices. You elect me to make them.
Manus, part II
Q: Mr Turnbull, recently a contractor who worked on Manus Island was returning to his work there and in very low tones he said to the editor of the Australian Adventist Record, “It is terrible the way they treat the people there. They are treated worse than animals.” Will you visit this concentration camp and see it for yourself?
Malcolm Turnbull says no-one has hearts of stone.
The Manus Island facility is managed by, as you know, by the government of Papua New Guinea. We are satisfied that the conditions there are not as described by the contractor you referred to. Look, I recognise all of us, every one - none of us have hearts of stone. All of us understand how harsh it is, our policy is in terms of its impact on particular individuals.
Now he’s into the risks of Labor, restarting the boats.
Malcolm Turnbull:
I grant you [the policy] is tough. It is tough. But the alternative is far worse and that is what I, as PM, that’s the tough choice that you entrust me to make as this nation’s leader.
Dispatch from Manus island
The prime minister gets a question from a detainee on Manus Island.
Tony Jones explains his background.
He’s an Iranian Kurdish journalist who fled his country to avoid imprisonment from his writing. He does meet the criteria to be recognised as a refugee. But he’s been detained for three years on Manus. Can you offer him any hope that he will be released from there?
Malcolm Turnbull says he’s sure this man would like to come to Australia but that isn’t an option for him. He says the policy is firm and it needs to remain firm to stop drownings at sea. He says the policy is working.
Q: We have just received an SMS from the gentleman who sent the earlier video question. He says that we need firm action, more than soft words. Future reform needs to be more bottom up and inclusive. Do you have structure in place for this?
Malcolm Turnbull:
Well, the answer is that we just talked about them, the early psychosis centres and Headspace. But I have to say that there is a place for, if not soft words, at least kind words.
Destigmatising, removing the taboo on discussing mental illness and being alert to it is very, very important. A lot of people can go all too quickly from being down to being depressed to being self-destructive. And that warm hand of outreach is more than a soft word. It can be a saving word. It can be a saving outreach.
Suicide
The next question is youth suicide. A man who had lost two kids to suicide. Completely ghastly.
Mental health is not a partisan issue, Malcolm Turnbull says.
Everybody is committed to this.
A follow up question on why the government is cutting funding for early psychosis intervention in the Headspace centres.
Malcolm Turnbull:
Well, the answer is we’re not. The answer is we are not.
Short termism, an interjection
Very interesting, the short termism in the Coalition’s election pitch. There is a ten year plan for tax cuts, but Malcolm Turnbull says you only need elect me for another three years. Just like the new advertisement, with #faketradie. Give us a go, for a while.
Trickle down
Next question is on the company tax cuts.
Q: Mr Turnbull, your jobs and growth mantra is based on the trickle-down economics theory. Your former employer Goldman Sachs, and many other trusted sources, have raised serious concerns about these tax cuts and confirmed a significant proportion of the windfall will benefit overseas investors, shareholders, and not trickle down at all. Over 10 years the plan will cost the Australian taxpayer in the vicinity of $50bn. Why should ordinaryAustralians support cuts to our services to give companies a tax cut that according to so many experts probably won’t create jobs or contribute to growth significantly? And elsewhere has been shown to increase inequality in society?
Malcolm Turnbull:
Well, thank you. Firstly, let me say that the cutting company tax does not increase inequality in society. There has been a long trend towards reducing company tax right around the world. The biggest cutter of company tax in our lifetimes is in fact Paul Keating.
Now we are into the cut throat global competition for capital. And the importance of enterprise.
The questioner persists.
Q: There is no requirement on companies to invest in jobs. They could just pocket the windfall. So it seems to me to be an experiment at the expense of services that Australian taxpayers expect?
Malcolm Turnbull says first up the tax cuts are for small firms. If you don’t like the results of the first three years of a re-elected Turnbull government, you can chuck me out, the prime minister says.
I’m asking for a three year renewal of my government’s job, serving you.
Tax
The next question is about tax reform: why aren’t we looking at income tax reform and GST reform. Malcolm Turnbull says the budget did contain income tax changes. On the GST, the case wasn’t made to change anything through the distributional analysis.
Malcolm Turnbull:
And that is why we are not touching the GST.
We will not touch the GST. It does not stack up from an equitable distributional point of view.
Expenditure restraint
Q: Both of the major parties have pledged a return to surplus in 2020, 2021, and say their spending promises can be funded. Given treasury forecasts have fallen short by billions of dollars, it would seem that future projections are unreliable. With this historic reality, it appears a commitment to surplus and generous promises are being made on the never, never. Without going far enough with necessary spending cuts, are both sides guilty of ignoring economic facts?
Malcolm Turnbull launches a homily on the perils of forecasting. Tricky business, forecasting.
Q: We would be sceptical about your promise to come to a surplus then because that’s beyond the period of the budget?
Malcolm Turnbull:
No.
Q: It’s a forecast. Isn’t it?
Malcolm Turnbull:
Let me go on.
The prime minister smiles widely when Jones keeps pulling him up before launching the sledge, with smile fixed.
Q: I have to jump in here ..
Malcolm Turnbull:
Of course you do. You have to defend the Labor Party, Tony.
Bulk billing
The next question is about priorities. Why would you cut tax for filthy rich companies and slap co-payments on health services? I can’t afford to pay a co-payment every time I need a blood test or a scan. Why would people’s health by your lowest priority?
Malcolm Turnbull says bulk billing is at an all-time high. He says we have to keep the economy strong to fund the health system.
Malcolm Turnbull:
If you are bulk billed there’s not a co-payment.
You will be able to get a bulk billed service from your pathologist going forward.
Public hospital funding
A young hospital resident is worried about hospitals funding.
Q: Your government has continued to book much of your public hospital funding cuts, your predecessor Tony Abbott proposed. Something has to give and we are worried that something is going to be our patients.
Malcolm Turnbull thanks the doctor for his service in the public system. Turnbull says there’s been a “complete change from the position that had been set out by Mr Abbott when he was PM. So that’s a very large change both in dollars and in methodology and that funding is substantially increased, it’s growing every year. It’s the largest, it’s higher than it has been in the past.”
Tony Jones pushes Turnbull on the future. How do you fund the health system and get a surplus? Health is a very worthwhile investment, the prime minister says, but the health dollar has to go further. And we need strong economy to be able to fund the health system. Turnbull says the ALP isn’t proposing to restore the full funding to the hospitals system promised when Julia Gillard was prime minister. That’s telling, the PM thinks.
Medicare
Turnbull gets the obvious question on Medicare: how can we believe you won’t privatise Medicare given what happened with broken promises in 2013.
Malcolm Turnbull says again that this is the big lie of the campaign from Labor.
I’m saying to all Australians, unequivocally, as PM, that no part of Medicare that is delivered by government today will be delivered by anyone else in the future.
Q: That includes the payment system?
Malcolm Turnbull:
Absolutely.
Q: You’ve reversed your position on that, or add least the goal of doing it?
Malcolm Turnbull:
There was no position to reverse. But the point is this - the payment system has to be updated. It has to get to a sort of smartphone era. I think, as we all know, it is pretty out of date. But we will revive it or renew it. We will modernise it but we will do so within government.
On outsourcing more broadly, Turnbull says he’s not an unabashed fan. People can see that because he set up the digital transformation office within government.
Real Malcolm, part II
Q: A bit over six months ago the Liberal party made you the PM on the promise that you weren’t Tony Abbott. Now, in two weeks...
Malcolm Turnbull:
I think that was a penetrating glimpse of the obvious.
(Ouch).
Q: But the real problem is that in two weeks you hope to continue in the same position on the argument that you’re not Malcolm Turnbull either. Are you?
Malcolm Turnbull:
Well, I’m 61 years of age. I’ve been a public figure one way or another for many years, for decades. I think every Australian knows who I am and knows what I stand for.
The prime minister fronts the Q&A audience
Malcolm Turnbull is still smiling grimly while Tony Jones makes his introduction. Grin disappears with question one which is about trust.
Q: I’m concerned about you doing deals with the far right of your own party that represent a smaller amount of voters than the Greens. Can you convince me to trust you when you’ve already been swayed on climate change, Gonski, Safe Schools, by the ultra-conservative wing of your own government?
The prime minister says his views have remained constant on the issues flagged. He’ll put the yes case in the marriage equality plebiscite. He defends the government’s climate policies.
Tony Jones asks whether he’s done deals with the right for the leadership. He says not, but he adds let’s call a spade a spade. Turnbull says the marriage plebiscite is not his idea. He wasn’t in favour of it. But he says the field evidence is people now welcome the plebiscite.
Jones presses him on deals with the right.
Q: I’m asking whether there was any deal done with conservatives in the party when you got the votes to overthrow Tony Abbott? Any formal or informal deal or arrangement?
Malcolm Turnbull:
The only arrangement is in the Coalition agreement with the Nationals.
Q: What does that state in terms of the issues that we’re talking about?
Malcolm Turnbull:
It states a commitment to the plebiscite which was the government’s policy. And it also refers to committing, maintaining our position on climate change which, by the way, I support.
Turnbull says he believes the world will push the level of ambition on emissions reductions. “We’ll agree on higher targets. At least by 2020, if not earlier. But we are well set-up to meet them and meet them we will.”
The prime minister, minus the pre-prime ministerial Q&A leather jacket, plus smile, is standing by in Brisbane. Hopefully he’s got some hot honey and lemon on stand-by.
Very close to kick off now, just time to refresh beverages. Do it.
The curiosity of Medicare and cabinet
If you didn’t watch the action out on the hustings today, the main focal point was Medicare. The government is battening down the hatches to try and ride out Labor’s campaign in these last two weeks on universal health care. Malcolm Turnbull has dumped the Coalition’s proposal to outsource the payments system attached to Medicare in an effort to simplify the government’s message: there are no plans to privatise Medicare. Not now. Not after the election.
Today, in an effort to play down the outsourcing proposal, the prime minister told reporters it hadn’t been to cabinet. This was a strange thing to say, because the decision to explore the outsourcing option for the Medicare payments system was a budget decision. All budget decisions go to cabinet as a matter of course. So it has been to cabinet on at least one occasion.
Inquiries I made over the course of the afternoon suggest there was another pass in cabinet between 18 months or two years ago, a submission was circulated by the health department which examined options for privatising the payments system. This is obviously before Malcolm Turnbull’s time as prime minister, but he was a cabinet minister during the Abbott period. All pretty curious.
Presumably what the prime minister meant to do was send a signal to voters that consideration of the outsourcing was at a preliminary stage: no decision had been made about whether to proceed or not, or how to proceed. Nothing to worry about, this was an idea floated in passing, which is now over. While it’s pretty obvious the government hadn’t resolved the issue one way or another, it’s not quite right to suggest it was a proposal with no direction or momentum. The issue was being spearheaded by an interdepartmental taskforce, with a budget of $5m. That’s a distance away from nothing to see here.
I’ve got an eye on Four Corners, which tonight is looking at the contest in New England. At the moment the deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce is wondering about climate change. He started wondering about climate change a month or so back, during a profile interview with the Good Weekend. Up until then he was the $100 lamb roast man in Tony Abbott’s swingeing campaign against the carbon price. Joyce tonight says: “I believe there is a drying of the climate in certain areas. And it’s nothing deeper than an observation.”
Take it as a comment
Hello good people and welcome to tonight’s live coverage of the prime minister’s appearance on the Q&A program. Given Malcolm Turnbull is battling a heavy cold I’ll be amazed if he manages to get through tonight with his voice intact. He was battling on gamely but struggling during campaign appearances in Sydney this morning.
Turnbull’s appearance tonight follows Bill Shorten’s decision to front the program a week ago. Shorten wanted the campaign Q&A appearance to be a head-to-head for obvious reasons, such appearances increase your stature when you are in opposition, particularly if you can pull off a debate-like encounter.
But the prime minister declined the double header. So that’s the backstory to tonight. Solo or bust.
Last week when I launched the special edition of Politics Live for Shorten’s Q&A appearance, I explained why the live call, given most people can watch the program. As I said last week, I’m bunging on the special edition for two reasons.
I know there are a bunch of political tragics who count down the hours until they can shout in unison at the television during Q&A on Monday nights. You know who you are. I tip my hat to that level of dedication, which leads me to the second imperative. There are another bunch of political tragics who would rather punch themselves in the head than waste an hour of their lives watching the ego-saturated talking points sass fest that is Q&A. You know who you are. I might even count myself among your number.
So you can consider tonight’s live call a public service to both camps. If you are in tribe A then the beauty of tonight is we can all come together and bellow in unison. We may even succeed in raising the #ausvotes roof if we try hard enough, which is an aspiration worth shooting for. But if you are firmly in tribe B then I can take the hit of watching Q&A and keep you updated on your smart phone or your tablet or your laptop, and you can maintain your Q&A ban. Call it passive consumption. Win-win people. Who says there are no win-wins in Australian politics? A pessimist, that’s who, and that’s a self indulgence no-one can afford in an eight week campaign.
Let’s crack on with tonight’s coverage. The comments thread is open for your business. If the thread’s too bracing for you, feel free to give me a shout on Twitter: I’m @murpharoo. If you only speak Facebook you can join my daily politics forum here. It’s very polite over there. And if you want a behind-the-scenes look at the day and the campaign as a whole, give Mike Bowers a follow on Instagram. Here’s a sample from the hustings today.
You can find him on Instagram here.
Charge your glasses and pop the popcorn, here comes Q&A.
