Good morning everyone. We are another day closer to the end of this campaign, the political equivalent of Lambchop. It doesn’t feel like it’s going to stop, but eventually the credits do roll.
The big picture
The Coalition released its costing yesterday, two days after Labor and three days before the last-minute effort by Tony Abbott’s opposition in 2013. The key takeaway is a Coalition classic. A crackdown on welfare and pensioners, saving $2.3bn.
Lenore Taylor took a look at exactly how the old, infirm and unemployed will help pay for all the football stadiums and CCTV cameras promised over the last eight weeks.
Fairfax’s Peter Martin called it a “get out of jail free card”.
“If it looks as though you’ll be in the red, you simply add in a figure for general unspecified savings and, magically, your problem’s solved,” he writes.
The Australian Financial Review’s Laura Tingle labelled the welfare crackdown “the one you keep in your back pocket just in case”, and was incredulous about the “detail” of the savings which will apparently come from it.
Here are said details pic.twitter.com/lvp61Uk98G
— Laura Tingle (@latingle) June 28, 2016
Appearing on ABC’s 7.30 last night, the treasurer, Scott Morrison, spruiked the announcement and hit Labor for forecasting a bigger deficit.
He also refused to say if he would vote in favour of same-sex marriage if a plebiscite calls for it.
He repeatedly said he would “respect the will of the plebiscite” but when pushed wouldn’t exactly clarify whether respect equalled voting in line with its result.
What does this mean?
Let’s work off the presumption a plebiscite will match current opinion polls and the people will vote yes. Morrison can’t at this moment say he would vote against one of Turnbull’s key election commitments without completely undermining it. To say he would vote with it is a pretty uncontroversial move, and a number of Coalition MPs have said as much already.
So will he “respectfully” vote against a yes result? Will be abstain? What does this kind of waffle do to either side’s claims about the benefits or uselessness of holding a plebiscite?
The end of that @ScottMorrisonMP interview with @leighsales reads like a Clarke and Dawe sketch. #ausvotes #abc730 pic.twitter.com/mtkyW67KMT
— Declan Fay (@declanf) June 28, 2016
Labor has said it wouldn’t hold a plebiscite, wouldn’t do a “deal” with the Coalition, and would instead put a marriage bill before parliament as its first act of government. At the Labor campaign launch last week, Bill Shorten described a plebiscite as a “taxpayer-funded platform for homophobia”.
That view is in contrast to what he expressed at the time of the 2013 election, the Australian has reported this morning. The paper has resurfaced a video of Shorten addressing an Australian Christian Lobby conference in his electorate during the last federal campaign. He reportedly told the crowd he would prefer a parliamentary vote but didn’t think it would vote yes for some time.
“Personally speaking, I’m completely relaxed about having some form of plebiscite,’’ he reportedly said, adding that he was, however, not comfortable with a referendum. “I would rather the people of Australia could make their view clear on this than leaving this issue to 150 people.”
Still on Shorten for a moment, he addressed a town hall meeting yesterday and when asked about Indigenous inequality gave more credit to the former prime minister Tony Abbott than Turnbull.
“I thought he was more interested in it than Malcolm Turnbull ... Of course I’m not sure Tony got all the issues but he was certainly interested. Certainly if we were elected we would reach out to the electorate and say ‘let’s get on with it’.”
It’s a view likely shared by the professor of governance at Darwin’s Charles Darwin University, Don Fuller, who wrote to Turnbull asking the federal government to step in and look at the issue of people ripping off Indigenous communities and misusing taxpayer funds. Fuller received no reply for for three months, and so wrote to Abbott instead, who got back to him within a week.
There hasn’t been a great deal said about Indigenous issues this election. Neither candidate has visited Durack, the largest electorate in the country which also encompasses a large Indigenous population. The Kimberley region is currently experiencing a despairing suicide crisis. The rate among Indigenous people in the area is seven times that of other Australians, and there are calls for a royal commission, Calla Wahlquist reports.
On the campaign trail
The PM is in the Sydney electorate of Barton (held by Labor with 4.4% but radically different after electoral redistribution) this morning. He’ll be catching up with Alan Jones for an interview just after 7am, before heading to Canberra for a National Press Club appearance tomorrow.
Shorten will be just nearby for the morning, in the marginal Liberal seat of Banks (held by David Coleman on 2.6%). He’ll be pushing on the rising costs of medication and seeing a doctor.
The campaign you should be watching
Someone has taken it upon themselves to conduct what appears to be robocalling residents in the Cowper electorate, urging them to vote for hopeful returnee senator Rob Oakeshott. It’s not him.
Automated phone messages saying "Protect Medicare-vote Oakeshott" r now happening.I might agree, but it is not me.Whoever it is,please stop.
— Rob Oakeshott (@RobOakeshott1) June 28, 2016
Oakeshott is looking increasingly threatening as a challenger, illustrated by none other than Turnbull cold-calling a local radio station to support incumbent Luke Hartsuyker, the Sydney Morning Herald reports.
Cowper was considered a safe Nationals seat, won by Hartsuyker with a 13.2% margin. But Oakeshott, whose home of Port Macquarie was moved from the seat of Lyne to Cowper in a redistribution, is closing in. A Seven News ReachTel poll earlier this month found a 50-50 split on two-party preferred.
And another thing
I’ve focused a bit on Brexit lately, but it is hard to look away. Let’s go over the pond today, where Donald Trump has found the whole thing rather inspiring.
Our friends in Britain recently voted to take back control of their economy, politics and borders.
I was on the right side of that issue – with the people – while Hillary, as always, stood with the elites, and both she and president Obama predicted that one wrong.
Now it’s time for the American people to take back their future.
So far so Trump, but just for something extra, he’s made the remarks standing in front of a wall of crushed aluminium. It’s supposed to be some sort of statement about manufacturing but it’s ... not great.
This is the most passive-aggressive work of campaign advance I have ever seen. pic.twitter.com/tqfJGCKxTm
— Garance Franke-Ruta (@thegarance) June 28, 2016
exclusive look at the crew putting together the wall for this speech pic.twitter.com/BWQW44CdPX
— Mark Berman (@markberman) June 28, 2016
This seems like an appropriate moment for today’s Douglas Adams appearance.
“Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made president should on no account be allowed to do the job.”
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