Hello, good morning, happy Monday, and welcome to the beginning of this week’s election coverage. There is less than a fortnight to go.
Yesterday saw the Labor party officially launch its campaign and the Liberals will follow on next week, which might be confusing if you’ve been following it all since 9 May.
Congratulations Australia, you’ve now survived this campaign for 42 days, a number which Douglas Adams said was the answer to life, the universe and everything, if only we could work out what the question was.
Adams also scribed a long conversation between a robot and a mattress, and there’s a tortured analogy about the election in those references, I’m sure, but maybe it’ll come to me after the second cup of coffee.
As Katharine Murphy noted yesterday, Labor’s policy announcement phase of the campaign is largely over now, after about $3.1bn in promises. We can expect more community events and meeting of the people in the final two weeks as Bill Shorten hits the pitch for a sprint through the final innings (please choose your preferred sports metaphor).
The latest Newspoll shows the two parties remain deadlocked at 50-50, with just a one percentage point bump for each leader as preferred PM, to 46% and 31% respectively.
The big picture
The Labor launch was the news of the weekend. The event saw three of the last four Labor prime ministers (not Kevin Rudd) come out to support Shorten. The announcements focused on health, employment, transport and tax breaks for small business.
Shorten went so far as to declare the election a “referendum on Medicare”.
The launch speech was aimed directly at dragging Malcolm Turnbull into a final-weeks contest on health, education and job creation, writes Lenore Taylor, and to stop him coasting to victory with a small-target strategy of reassuring voters there’s no need to risk change.
It didn’t impress Peter Hartcher at Fairfax, who writes that Shorten has completed a transformation from “faceless man” to “everyman”, but it did seem to force something of a backdown from the Coalition on one policy.
After Shorten continued to target the Coalition proposal to outsource the Medicare payments system as effectively privatisating Medicare, Turnbull ditched the idea.
Turnbull pledged – as he’s pledged before – that Medicare “will never ever be privatised”.
“What Bill Shorten is doing is peddling an extraordinary lie, so audacious, it defies belief,” he said.
Turnbull will on Monday morning announce the Coalition’s smart cities policy. According to the PM our cities are at the front line of action on climate change, I guess because so many of them are on the coast.
The policy promise includes a funding pool for clean energy, renewable energy and energy efficiency technology projects with an annual investment target of up to $100m and $50m for a “competitive smart cities program” to encourage local governments to collaborate with businesses to improve services and address urban problems through technology-based approaches.
Labor is expected to continue its “Save Medicare” push, but will likely spend quite a bit of time mopping up the resignation of candidate Christian Kunde, who was standing for Labor against the health minister, Sussan Ley, in the NSW seat of Farrer.
The Daily Telegraph reports on its front page on Monday Kunde had ties to the senior spokesman for extremist Islamic group Hizb ut-Tahrir, Uthman Badar. According to the Tele, Kunde supported Badar after his 2014 Festival of Dangerous Ideas talk – titled by organisers as “why honour killings are morally justified” was cancelled.
On the campaign trail
In Sydney, where Turnbull will spend most of Monday, he has teamed up with the NSW premier, Mike Baird, to announce “a city deal for western Sydney”, centred around the proposed second airport and a connected passenger rail network.
It’s expected the new airport will create more than 39,000 jobs over the next 20 years, which is quite a bit more than the 20,000 by 2060 spruiked on the airport project’s official website.
Turnbull will head north later on Monday ahead of a Brisbane edition of Q&A, where hopefully the warmer weather will help his flu.
From western Sydney to Western Australia, Shorten is in Perth where he will focus on education, infrastructure and Medicare.
The Greens are using Monday to renew their push for a $61.2m royal commission into children in immigration detention.
The campaign you should be watching
Which of the marginal seats shall we look at today? Let’s take another look at the battle of New England, where Barnaby Joyce has seen off a mouthy celebrity and looks to do the same with his chief political challenge, the Return of Tony Windsor.
Newspoll shows Windsor’s support has fallen by eight points since March, leaving Joyce with a not entirely comfortable lead at 51% to Windsor’s 49%.
Will it be enough to claw back the 13.5% swing against him in the rural seat?
And another thing
Labor weren’t the only ones to launch a campaign over the weekend. Outgoing MP Clive Palmer also officially kicked off his bid for the Senate. The event was as odd as it was short, much like Palmer’s appearances in parliamentary sittings over the last term of government.
Australian Associated Press were there, and a more delightful writeup of the day you will not find. It reminded me of some of the best advice I ever received at university: if the material’s hilarious, just write it straight. It doesn’t need your help.
You will not read a more glorious five pars today. from AAP. https://t.co/CWMXFC6KE1 pic.twitter.com/Xjqlvo1AYg
— Helen Davidson (@heldavidson) June 18, 2016
Follow the day’s developments live
• Sign up here to receive your Campaign catchup in your inbox every afternoon
