Everything’s fine, we’re all good, says Tony Abbott about Malcolm Turnbull.
Abbott appeared on The Bolt Report last night and maintained his comments of late that he’s content where he is and is not gunning for his old job back. He and Turnbull have had constructive conversations, he said, delivering definitely-not-threatening reassurances.
“Let us suppose that someone has done the wrong thing, for argument’s sake, do you want to hurt the country to punish them?” he told Andrew Bolt. “You never want to try to get even with an individual if that means hurting the country, and I say that as a general principle.”
Abbott said the “general advice” should appeal to “decent, patriotic, conservative Australians”.
He also shared advice he’s given to other parliamentarians.
“All sorts of things might happen in the future but right now you’ve got to be content with serving your electorate and with serving the country as a member for whatever seat or a senator for whatever state it might be.”
And just for kicks, Abbott was also asked if he thinks “Australia was invaded by whites”.
“I would certainly describe it as a settlement, maybe even an occupation. But I certainly wouldn’t use the word invasion because I think that connotes the primacy of armed force.”
.@TonyAbbottMHR disagrees with @TurnbullMalcolm in labeling British settlement as an 'invasion' #ausvotes https://t.co/rUCKrZTiKr
— Sky News Australia (@SkyNewsAust) June 22, 2016
Just about every question Andrew Bolt has asked @TonyAbbottMHR has been an invitation to whack @TurnbullMalcolm. Admirable consistency
— James Massola (@jamesmassola) June 22, 2016
The big picture
Labor is changing it up a little on Medicare, moving to accusations the Coalition would privatise school children’s vaccination records.
The ABC reports Labor’s spokeswoman for health, Catherine King, will today call on Turnbull to “guarantee” he won’t privatise the confidential vaccination records.
Bill Shorten is also expected to announce his plan for jobs in South Australia today, including commonwealth support for apprentices.
We’re also sticking with boats. Labor’s Medicare campaign is reportedly working, so the Coalition is likely to keep up its own tried-and-true.
Mathias Cormann told Sky News last night the Coalition has a “clear policy framework” with temporary protection visas, regional processing and boat turnbacks “where it is safe to do so”.
The Labor MP Andrew Leigh said his party “would pursue the same set of policies the Coalition would in terms of deterring people coming to Australia”.
“But we don’t believe that it is necessary to have people locked up in punitive conditions in Manus and Nauru in order to achieve that.”
The New South Wales Liberal Democratic senator David Leyonhjelm and colleagues have negotiated with a Labor “preferences whisperer”, the Australian’s David Crowe reports.
In return for Labor helping them in the Senate, the Liberal Democrats would reportedly preference Labor ahead of Liberal in at least 10 seats.
The seats include Macquarie, La Trobe, Dunkley, Petrie, Brisbane, Herbert, Dickson, Braddon and Cowan, the Oz reports. All are held on small margins by Coalition MPs, except for Dickson where Peter Dutton has a healthy 6.7% margin.
A plebiscite on same sex-marriage may not even get through the next parliament, with the raft of new independent senators expected to fill the upper house, writes Fleur Anderson at the Australian Financial Review.
The spotlight is again on political fundraising, after the Liberal party was forced to apologise to Lucy Turnbull for headlining one of her job titles at a fundraiser without her consent.
Invitations to the fundraiser cited Turnbull as the chief commissioner of the Greater Sydney Commission, when she was under the impression her appearance was as the prime minister’s spouse. The Liberal party has apologised and donated all funds raised to charity.
Was yesterday ridiculous enough for you? No? You’re in luck. Enter halal food. A Liberal candidate in Western Sydney stands accused of forcing “complete Islamisation” of Liverpool. “One halal sausage at a time,” writes the Daily Telegraph.
Councillor Peter Ristevski, whom the Tele describes as a “longtime council enemy”, has cited an apparent ban on pork sausages at a council event as evidence against candidate Ned Mannoun. “What else would you call this other than complete Islamisation,” Ristevski told the Daily Telegraph.
Mannoun said the claims were “ridiculous”.
Tony Windsor has apologised for disparaging comments he made about a former school friend, who is a Vietnam veteran. The pair had fallen out after Windsor backed the Labor party in 2010, and Windsor had told ABC radio “the Vietnam war does funny things to people”.
“They were an unfortunate choice of words and I apologise for that unreservedly,” Windsor said.
Now to tax: “For every $1 of cost to the government budget, the company tax cut provides a gross benefit to consumers of $2.39 in the long run,” says economist Chris Murphy in the Australian Financial Review.
Hold your horses, says Janine Dixon, an economist at Victoria University’s Centre of Policy Studies.
“The logic is that if the company tax rate is lower, companies won’t put as much effort into avoiding it,” she replies in the head-to-head article. “Although tax avoidance may be reduced somewhat, with a domestic tax rate of 25% compared to tax havens charging little or no tax, incentives to dodge tax will remain in place.”
The founding NBN Co chief executive, Mike Quigley, has hit out at the Coalition’s national broadband plan as a shortsighted “colossal mistake”, writes Jennifer Dudley-Nicholson for News Corp.
Quigley appeared at the University of Melbourne last night and criticised the Coalition’s plan to use old technologies such as copper and pay-TV cable. Australia would suffer the “consequences of those decisions for years to come in higher costs and poorer performance”, he said.
On the campaign trail
Malcolm Turnbull is in Geelong this morning in the seat of marginal Corangamite, held by the Liberals with 3.9%, where he is expected to commit to a jobs boost for the region. The area has been affected by the milk crisis and impending closure of the Ford factory.
Bill Shorten is in South Australia, where he will announce Labor’s plan for jobs in the region, including extra manufacturing jobs and commonwealth support for apprentices.
The campaign you should be watching
In the Liberal electorate of Barker in South Australia, things are not looking good for the incumbent MP, Tony Pasin.
According to a ReachTel poll commissioned by the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union, the Nick Xenophon Team candidate, James Stacey, has a solid chance.
According to the poll, 85% of Labor, Family First and Greens voters would preference Stacey over Pasin, giving him 52% to Pasin’s 48%.
Barker was a very safe seat, held by Pasin with 16.5%, so he probably didn’t see this coming.
In a safe Liberal electorate like Barker, I can hardly believe I've written this. #ausvotes https://t.co/izv1Xb1Xfn
— Peri Strathearn (@PeriStrathearn) June 22, 2016
And another thing
My colleague Michael Slezak attended a small vigil for the slain UK MP Jo Cox last night, on what would have been her 42nd birthday:
Although the mood was sombre, there was also a sense of hope, as the attendees expressed a desire to ensure that following Cox’s death, the positive principles she lived by would be adopted and lived by.
The group stood in a circle by candlelight and listened to readings, including sections of her maiden speech. After that, attendees shared their thoughts and feelings about Cox’s life and death.
The organiser of the Sydney event, Neva Frecheville, said she had felt the need to bring together people who knew Cox or who were moved by her.
“When it happened it was just something that I feel like has the potential to make us all feel really isolated and full of despair and without hope,” she said. “But actually there’s an opportunity for us to come together around everything that Jo stood for in her life, and the values that she lived her life by. I think it’s time for more of us to start living those as well.”
One of the people who attended the event was Nic Seton. He said he knew Cox from when he lived on a boat in east London in 2010, right next door to the boat Cox lived on.
“We just by chance happened to pull up next door to their home – their boat,” he said. “We’d invite them over, and we went over to their place. We had a lot of barbecues and a really good time.”
Like Frecheville, Seton wanted to see the good that could come out of what he said was a devastating tragedy. “I feel like the silver lining really is that people have recognised that the values that she had and are really seeking to fulfil it themselves,” he said.
Jane McAdam, a law professor at the University of New South Wales, said she knew Cox’s husband, Brendan Cox, and attended partly because of that connection. “But I think more broadly it was what Jo devoted her life to in upholding the principles that she thought were so important in trying to create a society that was connected and not divided,” she said.
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