The government’s most helpful former employee, Peta Credlin, has posed a theory to Sky News overnight. Marriage equality will doom the Liberal party leadership.
“It is very likely [the plebiscite] will be opposed by the Greens and Labor and Labor has got stronger in this campaign, not weaker,” she said.
“The government might claim a mandate but if Labor block it and the Greens block it in the upper house, what is plan B?”
Credlin predicted if the plebiscite vote failed, Turnbull would push for a parliamentary vote and that would create “enormous stresses” in the party, similar to the split over the ETS which saw Turnbull lose leadership the first time.
The big picture
The Coalition will release its costings this afternoon. The treasurer, Scott Morrison, yesterday said they would be “within the envelope” of the most recent budget.
Both leaders were given the Sarah Ferguson treatment on Four Corners last night, grilled on their pasts, personalities and policies, and quickly cut off if they started to speak like politicians.
When asked about asylum seekers held in offshore detention, Turnbull said Australia was not responsible for them.
“You have to remember that those places are … those centres are managed by the respective governments, PNG and Nauru. That’s a fact,” he said.
“But are you not responsible for the people in those centres or on those islands as the Australian prime minister who runs the regime that holds them there?” responded Ferguson.
“Well, we don’t hold them there. We don’t hold them there. That is not correct. We do not hold them there.”
Asked a similar question, Shorten, said: “I feel a responsibility that we make sure that we solve the problem. We do owe them a duty of care.”
A new report has found that more than 40% of the benefit of the Coalition’s $48bn company tax cut will go offshore in dividends to shareholders of multinational corporations and foreign tax authorities.
And new modelling has found a majority of families would be better off under Labor’s childcare and family payments policy than under the Coalition’s plans.
There is an escalating dispute over budget repair, with the Coalition accusing Labor of banking $3bn in Coalition savings from the most recent budget, while promising to “revisit” them if Labor wins.
Labor is in a tricky position, having to convince the electorate to trust their plan for higher deficit in the short term in return for long term surplus.
The fight for New England is getting extremely dirty. Tony Windsor has called for the removal of a Nationals attack ad which he says made suggestions about his personal life.
And Senator Ricky Muir is sticking around. He’s told AAP if he loses he’ll run again at the next election.
“Whether it be the Senate, the lower house, the state, even local council,” he said”.
“One way or another I’ll find my way back into politics.”
On the campaign trail
The PM is visiting Brisbane and Petrie today. Petrie is the country’s second most marginal electorate, and you can read about it here.
Turnbull will begin with a forum of small business owners and construction industry stakeholders.
Shorten is expected to visit Eden-Monara today, before appearing at the National Press Club around lunch time.
The campaign to watch
Far away from the “heartland” seats of Western Sydney, the bellwethers, and the city seats, Lingiari covers more than 1.3m square kilometres, with just 65,000 odd people, 42% of whom are Indigenous. One of the biggest issues is roads – and not because the traffic’s bad but because quite often you just can’t drive on them.
The incumbent is Labor “Man with the Mo”, Warren Snowdon, but he holds it by just 0.9%. He’s hoping to see off CLP candidate, pastoralist Tina MacFarlane.
The two went head to head on ABC NT Radio’s Country Hour yesterday. You can have a listen here.
And another thing
As if England wasn’t hurting enough after Brexit, they’ve now been humiliated in the football.
The manager resigned immediately after the side lost 2-1 to Iceland. Here’s part of the write-up from the Guardian’s Daniel Taylor:
For Roy Hodgson, it was a desperate and ignominious way to end his four years as England manager. Whatever else happened in that time, his period in charge will probably always be remembered for the full-on humiliation that accompanied this defeat and the knowledge it will rank among the more infamous results in the history of the national team.
How can it not when the suffering comes against a country with a population roughly the size of Croydon and absolutely no history of tournament football? What heroes Iceland were: brave, organised, superb.
Iceland right now #ENGICE pic.twitter.com/kb6qkNMSAJ
— marcus kelson (@marcuskelson) June 27, 2016
1 in every 1,000 Icelandic men (age 25-29) was on that pitch vs. 1 in every 200,000 British men. They still beat us. pic.twitter.com/NtWZa2AEnb
— Mona (@MonaChalabi) June 27, 2016
