The Turnbull campaign has wrapped things up.
An upbeat prime minister gave his final press conference of the official campaign, on the 16th floor of the Wentworth Hotel in Sydney, with views of nothing in particular.
“So tomorrow the Australian people will make their choice,” he told the television cameras. “They will make a vital, momentous decision.”
He had the energy of someone who could see the finish line and who couldn’t see any competitors ahead of him.
The Coalition will know by the end of the weekend if his gamble to call a double-dissolution election has paid off. It may take weeks to know about the Senate.
Turnbull spent the last day of his official campaign going through the motions.
He made a perfunctory visit to a factory in Newington, in Sydney’s west, that had one machine it in. The machine packed and wrapped Cenovis krill oil with a robotic arm.
He lapped the machine, with wife Lucy nearby, as the television crews and snappers caught his facial expressions. Then he gave a stump speech, standing on a pallet.
The crowd was 99% ring-ins. About 50 young Libs in blue T-shirts cheered and clapped on cue. No one from the general public was there to listen to him implore people to vote Liberal.
He was then ushered away into a private room, through a throng of journalists trying to ask him questions – but he didn’t say a word.
There had been a kerfuffle on the press bus an hour earlier when his staffers said it was unlikely he would give any press conferences on Friday. He’d already done two TV appearances and a radio interview that morning, they said, so that would be enough. But the reaction from journalists may have encouraged them to hold one last press conference a bit later. Who knows?
After the factory visit Turnbull travelled to Burwood, for one last street walk. Street walks are the most dangerous part of campaigning, with too many opportunities for something unexpected to happen. But his staff seemed relaxed enough not to care. They were in a happy mood. Turnbull walked up the street slowly, in a crush of TV cameras and locals wondering what was happening. He ducked into a baker’s shop, then a butcher’s. He avoided the Thai massage place.
A lone protester dressed as a big fluffy yellow sun cleaved to Turnbull’s entourage, like a happy friend.
After the street walk, Turnbull travelled back to the city to the Wentworth Hotel, for his final press conference before election day.
He was asked about his claim on TV on Friday morning patients would “absolutely” not have to pay more at the doctor as a result of his decision to keep freezing the Medicare rebate.
“What I said was this. Let’s be very, very clear on this,” he said. “Doctors can charge what they like ... if indexation were restored today today doctors would receive less than 60c [in] addition, so if the doctor chooses to charge his or her patients $15 more or $10 more or $20 more, it’s not because indexation has not resumed, it’s because they want to charge $15 or $20 more.
“The freeze on indexation means that doctors ... do not get an extra 60c ... so the argument that these large increases in doctors charges are a consequence of indexation not being continued are simply not correct.”
And that was that.
