As the Easter/Anzac Day suspension of hostilities begins, it may be instructive to look at where the leaders have travelled during the campaign’s preliminary phase. Featured over the fold is a display listing the electorates that have been targeted, as best as I can tell, and a very brief summary of what they were up to while they were there. Certain entries are in italics where it is seems clear that the area was not targeted for its electoral sensitivity, such as Bill Shorten’s visit to Melbourne’s West Gate Tunnel project to get some good vision presenting him as a champion of infrastructure, which happened to place him in the unloseable Labor seat of Gellibrand. There are also a few entries that clearly targeted more than one electorate, in which case the margin for the secondary elected is listed on a second line.
What stands out is that Scott Morrison has hit a number of Labor-held seats, consistent with the optimistic impression the Liberals are presenting about their prospects – an assessment which, on this evidence, does not look to be fully shared by Labor. The only activity of Shorten’s that had Labor territory as its primary target was his visit to the Northern Territory on Thursday. Of equal interest to Shorten’s pattern of travel is the clarity of Labor’s early campaign theme of health policy, in contrast of the grab bag of messages promoted by Scott Morrison.
Ven
Agreed. Abbott the spearhead in particular and Hartcher does point this out.
Thus my point about putting the blame where it belongs with the LNP.
The hard right prevented us having similar policies but different as the UK. The difference being transition away from coal mining
Firefox= reality
Yeah right…….. we’re all as dumb as and luckily you’ve come along to save our souls
Hallelujah brother
The Greens will form government and will ask if Labor will support them as they save the world.
“Whenever the Right start crying tears for the poor, they are lying.”
Same goes when they express concern for workers. And when they blather about the dignity of work, they mean the dignity of serfdom.
Should a Commonwealth department be responding on behalf of a caretaker government re this buy back issue ?
They are wrong to believe that federal government surpluses are good, and politicians should stop telling them that federal government surpluses are good.
Most of the world’s advanced nations run current account deficits with regard to the rest of the world (major exceptions are Germany, Japan, and Norway). Australia’s domestic private sector runs a current account deficit relative to the rest of the world.
That means that if the federal government ran a surplus, the domestic private sector would have to be in deficit. This puts households under financial strain and is not sustainable for long.
The normal and typical fiscal balance for the Australian Government is to run a deficit that is larger than the current account deficit, so that the domestic private sector can run a surplus.
The fiscal balance by itself doesn’t tell you how healthy the economy is. What matters is things like how the federal government is targeting its spending, whether the deficit is the right size to support full employment with stable prices, how well the financial sector is regulated, whether economic activity is restoring or damaging ecosystems, how equal the distribution of wealth and income is in your society, how productive your society is overall, whether your national government is doing appropriate fiscal transfers from high productivity regions and sectors to lower productivity regions and sectors, to name just a few economic indicators that actually matter.
The Australian Government’s fiscal balance should be a footnote in discussion about the economy. It should not receive prominent media coverage. It should not be a target of policy.
Ven
That’s why Labor should work with the Greens not oppose them.
The two parties are natural allies and restoring the Gillard policies are essential.
With adjustment for time wasted.
The LNP can continue to fight against itself in opposition.
I truly believe Abbott’s take over of the Party was the start of the end of the Coalition as we know it.
Its no time for progressives to cater to climate deniers
“guytaur@12:37pm
The blame should be sheeted to LNP Period.”
Yeah nah.
Firefox
I was specifically talking about the Repeal of the Gillard legislation.
It was not Labor or the Greens that undid that. In fact both Labor and the Greens voted against its repeal.
Both Labor and the Coalition deserve blame for allowing Adani to continue and indeed encouraging it. Above we have the Qld LABOR Premier and Mr. Adani. Below we have Mr. Adani and you know who.
Neither the Coalition or Labor have covered themselves in glory when it comes to Adani. I would expect this kind of thing from the Coalition though. I expect better from Labor.
@Firefox
Yeah
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-04-11/adani-damning-assessment-turned-into-approval/10990288
Ven
Whoops. My bad. That should be a quarter of a billion Indian citizens are without electricity.
“Firefox
I was specifically talking about the Repeal of the Gillard legislation.
It was not Labor or the Greens that undid that. In fact both Labor and the Greens voted against its repeal.”
This is true. They did. But I wasn’t responding to that. I’m talking about who’s responsible for Adani, which is both the major parties.
Senator Murray Watt
Verified account @MurrayWatt
1h1 hour ago
Just how many Qld LNP candidates will do preference deals with One Nation candidates like this?
:large
‘Steve777 says:
Saturday, April 20, 2019 at 12:48 pm
“Whenever the Right start crying tears for the poor, they are lying.”
Same goes when they express concern for workers. And when they blather about the dignity of work, they mean the dignity of serfdom.’
Treasury and the ATO have both publicly responded to Coalition lies during this campaign.
I don’t have a problem with a Department releasing a fact sheet with all the facts. The problem with the Department’s release is, IMO, that it is very, very selective with the facts it chose to present.
I assume that someone in Canberra had better start looking at their contingency plans should Labor win the election.
Maybe they could get a job being a numbers runner in the Caymans?
….
Has Warren Mundine resign from his business Nyungga Black Group yet? ,which could see him under section 44 cloud
So the first issue here, is Labor doesn’t / can’t / won’t oppose the greens, because the greens will not be the Government, they will, at best be the third biggest block in the Parliament. So they are not leading anything, they are of the same relevance to the exercise of power as One Nation etc.
The Gillard / Greens alliance was a political disaster that set action on climate change back 6 years. Specifically the Greens overplaying their hand to make the carbon scheme look like a carbon tax, something Ludlum is still very proud of if his idiotic twitter is any indication, is a particularly egregious example of the dangers and stupidity of the greens.
We need both a much stronger response than the Gillard / Greens doomed response, and it needs to last more than 5 minutes. The best way to get a good response that lasts might not be the greens ‘everything perfect in one step or we will stuff up action on climate change for a zero / three strike rate over the last 12 or so years’ Abbott’s most effective ally stance.
In other news for the SDA haters from the left and the right, the SDA was at my local shops this morning campaigning for penalty rates. What were you doing?
Finally for the pollbludger nuclear club, there was a bloke on renew economy pod this week who outlined the following:
* current generation nuclear projects will produce power at a cost of greater than 100 euro per MWh
* nuclear has a negative learning curve in that each subsequent generation costs more not less than the one before (China may well be different but we aren’t China)
* there is no region in the world that couldn’t move to 100% renewables with appropriate storage at a cost less than 100 euros per MWh.
I don’t want to here any more ‘you must support nuclear’ idiocy here ever again.
Have a nice Saturday.
Zoidlord, yeah the Coalition fully support Adani. It’s disgraceful how they rammed that through right before going into caretaker mode.
Labor sits on the fence. When they’re in Qld they support it, in Vic they oppose it, and they’re all over the shop everywhere else. It’s a sign of the immense pressure they are under. On one hand they know full well that they can’t claim to support real action on climate change if they allow new coal mines like Adani to go ahead. On the other hand, they have the CFMEU standing behind them cracking the whip and ordering them to protect the M in CFMEU – mining. They are also just playing pure politics in the regional Qld seats.
So, we have ratbags putting Hitler taches on images of Jewish candidates, and Muslim gear on Shorten.
Grubby Wackoes to the Right of us
Grubby Wackoes to Left of us
Leaders influence and lead punters, they don’t follow them.
‘Scott says:
Saturday, April 20, 2019 at 1:10 pm
Has Warren Mundine resign from his business Nyungga Black Group yet? ,which could see him under section 44 cloud’
Indeed. But to get into a real Section 44 cloud you need to get yourself elected first.
Here’s not a surprise!
Ewin Hannan
Verified account
@EwinHannan
4h4 hours ago
More
Clive Palmer has now delayed his promised redundancy payments to sacked Queensland Nickel workers until after the federal election. The workers have been owed the entitlements for more than three years. @australian
And todays ‘Trying to jam a complex and difficult question into a simplistic binary frame” award goes to
GG
The surprise is that he announced it. He must be beginning to think he will not scrape in his Senate seat.
A couple of thoughts:
I know I do not have to cconvince many here of the unreliability of single seat polls, but I would read very little in to that Geelong Advertiser/Reachtel poll, it looks wrong to me in a number of ways. The Greens only on 8 percent, when they have pulled 11 percent there in the last two elections looks too low, but worse than that, nearly 6 percent for UAP in a Victorian seat seems crazy. We will need to wait for national polls to see if things are genuinely tightening.
A lot of talk about watergate on here and while I don’t downplay the questions raised, I don’t expect it to get a whole lot of traction. It is certainly starting to get a little msm attention, but I expect that won’t last long, and the issues are not going to be understood by the average voter.
Heard Shorten’s presser on wages and penalty rates. This is where Shorten is at his best by far and I hope to see far more focus on this from here on. People are doing it tough and I want to see Labor hammer this, not just relying on the unions. The Liberals have no scare to counter it, other than scaring about higher wages causing job losses; they tried that in 2007 with little impact.
Veni, vidi, non viridis!
XVIII here we come!
It amazes me how Labor disown the Gillard government. I get that they probably want to forget the whole Rudd vs Gillard saga but good things came out of both those governments, even the first Rudd one which was Labor only (I’m thinking mainly of the NBN which was a fantastic policy until the Coalition screwed it up).
Let’s just clear this up shall we?
“The Gillard / Greens alliance was a political disaster that set action on climate change back 6 years. Specifically the Greens overplaying their hand to make the carbon scheme look like a carbon tax, something Ludlum is still very proud of if his idiotic twitter is any indication, is a particularly egregious example of the dangers and stupidity of the greens.”
Gillard herself, to her great credit, has taken responsibility for the fixed price period of the ETS being called a tax. Some nutty Labor supporters like you may want to blame the Greens but Julia is big enough to accept responsibility for her mistakes. Full credit to her. You get none for trying to shift the blame.
Quote (Gillard):
I erred by not contesting the label “tax” for the fixed price period of the emissions trading scheme I introduced. I feared the media would end up playing constant silly word games with me, trying to get me to say the word “tax”. I wanted to be on the substance of the policy, not playing “gotcha”. But I made the wrong choice and, politically, it hurt me terribly.
Hindsight can give you insights about what went wrong. But only faith, reason and bravery can propel you forward.
Labor should not in opposition abandon our carbon pricing scheme. Climate change is real. Carbon should be priced. Community concern about carbon pricing did abate after its introduction. Tony Abbott does not have a viable alternative.
While it will be uncomfortable in the short term to be seen to be denying the mandate of the people, the higher cost would be appearing as, indeed becoming, a party unable to defend its own policy and legislation: a party without belief, fortitude or purpose.
Labor is on the right side of history on carbon pricing and must hold its course. Kevin Rudd was both right and brave to say this in the dying days of the campaign.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/13/julia-gillard-labor-purpose-future
WWP
I see you are doing the Greens and Labor working together was a political disaster denial stuff.
The reality was that the political disaster was the Labor Party.
And Abbott taking the LNP to the hard right.
That combination was the political killer in that campaign.
Not the Greens working with Labor.
That’s the reality Labor people have to accept if they don’t want to repeat history
That includes realising you cannot appease climate deniers.
Turnbull was winning so he was rolled.
Sounds familiar.
Face that cold stark reality. The hard right coal hugging coal deniers were primarily to blame. Aided by a compliant media and a Labor Party unable to recover from self inflicted damage
Yes, Dad
Firefox
Go through all the visuals in that vid, and in the upper left hand side of one of the takes there is clearly a drilling rig drawn onto the top of Uluru.
When you have seen that you could try a new experience for yourself, and for us all: admit that you were wrong.
There was some sort of miner’s request relating to land owned by some of the traditional owners then living in Uluru. I was tasked with taking them to the Ranger Uranium mine so that they could do a site inspection, listen to company representatives and employees tell their various stories, and also to listen to the traditional owners of the land upon which Ranger sits. Northern and Southern Land Council reps attended throughout. The travellers could ask any questions they wanted to. When the trip was finished they would then tell the stories of their journey and lead discussions back in the Centre.
My job was to expedite and not to interfere, which job I stuck to. But nothing could stop me from watching and listening carefully.
It was quite obvious to me that the miners lost the game completely when one of the employees boasted that they reduced the size of the charges laid to try and make sure that the vibrations did not cause (visible) sacred sites (on cliffs) to collapse.
THAT.WAS.IT.
FINITO.
There will never be a fracking drill on top of Uluru. To represent one on Uluru is a visual lie.
I can’t speak for anyone myself but I don’t in anyway disown the Rudd / Gillard or Rudd governments. But I don’t live in a dishonest fantasy land that fails to notice Australia did. Forcefully. To a guy who ran on deliberately dismantling the entire RGR government putting it back the way it was before under Howard. How could you miss this repudiation of everything you stand for, or at least not pause for something resembling thought, if not deep reflection.
This is a noble stance indeed, it is like she was the PM and has the integrity and strength to stand by what she did, oh wait.
I don’t know about nutty Labor supporters but for me however this is but one factor in a much broader analysis which is a bit more complex than your ‘she said’ insight. Which reminds me of the level and depth of integrity of the ABC when I lodged a complaint about them calling the carbon scheme a carbon tax. ‘She said we could’was the ABC answer. Like yours it was a pathetic superficial lazy response devoid of thought process.
I don’t think Labor are disowning previous Governments, they are focusing on the now – not in the past.
Thank you, did you tidy your room and take out the recycling like I asked.
I also picked up on something else Gillard wrote in her long article for the Guardian after the 2013 election.
Again, Julia is prepared to tell it like it is, even if she is having a thinly veiled crack at Rudd at the same time.
Quote (Gillard):
[…] in a political task that will require bravery, Labor must continue to stand behind the significant policies which are right but are currently outside the national political consensus. Clearly, carbon pricing is the political giant of this class.
Without doubt, Tony Abbott won this public opinion war and dominated this political conversation. The times suited him. For most Australians the last long drought was perceived to be the result of climate change, and when the drought broke their concerns about climate change receded. The circus in Copenhagen and “climategate” fed scepticism. Then, at the worst time, the structure of the Australian electricity market delivered huge rises to the electricity bills of families. While cost of living pressures were easing in other parts of the family budget, the pain of these big lumpy bills was acute and remembered.
Labor’s failure to embrace Malcolm Turnbull’s bipartisanship when it was on offer, to campaign vigorously and go to an election early on carbon pricing in late 2009 or early 2010, and the twists and turns of Labor policy since have all fuelled this fire of opposition.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/13/julia-gillard-labor-purpose-future
I’ll requote that last bit…
“Labor’s failure to embrace Malcolm Turnbull’s bipartisanship when it was on offer, to campaign vigorously and go to an election early on carbon pricing in late 2009 or early 2010, and the twists and turns of Labor policy since have all fuelled this fire of opposition.”
“Labor’s failure” NOT the Greens’ failure. A former Labor prime minister is able to be honest about what happened with the CPRS in 2009. Why is it so difficult for Labor supporters to admit it too? Just easier to try and blame the Greens I guess.
The Spectator Index
@spectatorindex
2m2 minutes ago
UNITED STATES: Judge says the US government can be sued for Flint water crisis
I know how surpluses work. I don’t get all excited about surpluses.
The point I was making is that regular everyday people think surpluses are like money in the bank.
A big bag of cash.
Eg. the bloke in the Brisbane vox pop who thought Labor just wants to get their hands on the surplus so they can spend it….
They think – and are told – that Pete Costello and his supluses was pure genius the like of which we won’t see again….blah blah
Try explaining a structural deficit to someone who thinks Costello was great.
My general point is the piece of video in question shoots itself in the foot by reinforcing the idea that surpluses are a thing and at the same time accepting what Frydenberg et al were saying was true when it isn’t. I’m talking about the politics.
I see the ALP/Greens feud is continuing unabated. Sigh.
Any policy we could discuss instead?
A good summary for those who don’t want to read through the whole 400+ pages.
https://www.lawfareblog.com/what-mueller-found-russia-and-obstruction-first-analysis
TALAOLP
@Talaolp
·
1h
Replying to
@MichaelWestBiz
Did you see thisMichael?
Quote Tweet
Suzie Gold
@GoldSuzie
· 4h
Media statement on Eastern Australian Agriculture water purchase – Department of Agriculture and Water Resources (link: http://www.agriculture.gov.au/about/media-centre/on-the-record/eastern-aus-ag-water-purchase) agriculture.gov.au/about/media-ce…
Michael West
@MichaelWestBiz
·
30m
Yes I see we the beleaguered taxpayers are paying somebody time and a half to defend the indefensible
Or you could teach us how to write.
I’d like to start by developing a complete religion based on a goddess and the moon but from there I’m flexible.
You don’t find that lawfare and in particular Benjamin Wittes doesn’t seem a little captured by the right. He supported both Kavanagh and Barr, for no good reason I can see.
I really like Preet and Anne’s Mueller analysis.
To impeach or not impeach? Despite what Max Boot writes, even if Congress doesn’t impeach him, Trump will forever be remembered as the most corrupt, incompetent dictator-loving, Russian-owned president in the country’s history.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/04/19/impeach-or-not-impeach-that-is-now-question/?utm_term=.d3c7e91d2de2
The reason I want to see Canada style truth in media laws is the media role in giving credibility to the Abbott Carbon Tax lie instead of calling it out
If we had the alternative reality where that happened Gillard would not have suffered as badly in the polls giving Rudd his return to being Prime Minister.
At least then we would not have this blame the Greens stuff we get now.
WWP:
The Lawfareblog post was written by 9 other people in addition to Wittes. To be honest I’ve never looked at Wittes through an ideological prism.
I also enjoy Laurence Tribe’s work too.
https://twitter.com/tribelaw
Murdoch spent 3 full years of the hung parliament 2010-2013 to try to get rid of Labor because they had such a slim majority.The public were conned into voting a nong (Abbott). Now he is doing exactly the same this time round to get another nong into power for his own interests,no one elses. The voters need to see it and think for themselves. I’m still unconvinced that the voters have learnt anything yet.
“This is a noble stance indeed, it is like she was the PM and has the integrity and strength to stand by what she did, oh wait.”
Of course! Gillard actually negotiated well with the Greens and treated us with respect, unlike many in Labor. In return we supported her government all the way to the bitter end. The ETS was a Greens’ policy that we took to the election and got Labor to support. An ETS with a fixed price period. There was no carbon “tax”. That was pure right wing spin.
You’re right, Australia did disown the Rudd/Gillard government in 2013. Don’t even try to blame that all on the ETS, carbon price/tax, or whatever you want to call it. Labor’s own leadership civil war was unquestionably the most damaging thing to their chances of re-election. After three long years of fighting themselves what did Labor expect? Despite this, the Greens remained loyal to their agreement to be part of the minority government and made sure it survived until the end. It was a very productive government too.
What “she said” matters. She was the Labor leader at the time.
Gerry Adams slips up
Bethany Black Acceptance Month
@BeffernieBlack
Hate it when you forget to swap accounts before telling yourself you have a good point.
Bethany Black Acceptance Month
@BeffernieBlack
Hate it when you forget to swap accounts before telling yourself you have a good point.
https://publish.twitter.com/?query=https%3A%2F%2Ftwitter.com%2FBeffernieBlack%2Fstatus%2F1119249535556100098&widget=Tweet
Josh
@historyhomo
12m12 minutes ago
Morrison refusing to answer questions on #watergate #auspol #ausvotes