Happy trails

As the election campaign enters a hiatus, a look at where the leaders have been and why.

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.

Author: William Bowe

William Bowe is a Perth-based election analyst and occasional teacher of political science. His blog, The Poll Bludger, has existed in one form or another since 2004, and is one of the most heavily trafficked websites on Australian politics.

720 comments on “Happy trails”

Comments Page 8 of 15
1 7 8 9 15
  1. Turnbull said he was going to New York for the duration of the campaign. He never said that he would be silent about the campaign. Hope we can look forward to many more tweets like this before election day.

    (posted by Charles)

    Malcolm Turnbull
    @TurnbullMalcolm

    I see @David_Speers is referring to the National Energy Guarantee as “Malcolm Turnbull’s NEG”. In fact the NEG had the support of the entire Cabinet, including and especially the current PM and Treasurer. It was approved by the Party Room on several occasions.

  2. The bit I am unclear about with watergate. Did they pay for water that existed or may exist in future due to flooding. In other words, did they pay for speculative water? 80 million would seem a lot for speculation

  3. Alice WorkmanVerified account @workmanalice
    25m25 minutes ago

    George Christensen’s press sec has told journalists he’s blocked their numbers and they should never contact him again. #AusVotes19

    :large

  4. Vic:

    As I understand it it was for existing water. But either way, the govt paid the highest price ever paid for water licenses.

  5. Cta

    And you have no right to get on Pegasus’ high horse back and call me ‘Alt Right’ or a ‘Labor troll’.

    Are you implying I have applied these labels to you.

    I have never called or implied anyone on PB or in real life is either of those things.

  6. Firefox

    ‘If you keep defending Santos and using First Australians as pawns…’

    1. I have not defended Santos. LOL. You are a funny one.
    2. I HAVE pointed out that there will never be drilling rigs in EITHER of the locations claimed by the Greens. Both these are therefore deliberate Greens lies.
    3. I have demonstrated that your claim of 75km as being ‘pretty close’ shows the usual Greens respect for the truth. You should try the drive down to the SA border from Uluru some time. It will give you a whole other idea of ‘pretty close’. But do make sure you have the appropriate permits before you do so.
    4. It is the Greens who are defiling Indigenous values by drawing a drilling rig on Uluru.

    This may be a difficult concept to get across, but you cannot protect Indigenous values by ignoring them as the video does.

    Your Greens bwana act has been sprung.

    I must admit that, apart from the lies and the disrespect shown to Uluru and to its traditional owners, some of this argy bargy is giving me quite a hearty chuckle.

    Having routinely copped a pizzling for being a Down South Commo, and now getting a pizzling for being a far right Liberal troll must mean that someone is getting the balance right. Interestingly enough, on both occasions I received the hate for standing up for Indigenous rights against whitefellas who wanted to co-opt Indigenous rights and Indigenous IP.

    Anyhoo, the Greens have failed to hold the Coalition to account for casually throwing out the Call from the Heart. IMO, and I followed the process and the outcomes closely, this was a magnificent effort by Australia’s Indigenous peoples. Turnbull/Morrison have thrown it back into their faces. My biggest disappointment was that Wyatt did not resign in protest. No ticker, no heart and no vision, IMO. Appointing Abbott envoy thereafter was salt in the wound. Parachuting Mundine into Gilmore was more of the same.

    If we want Indigenous people to be listened to in a serious way, then Vote 1 Labor and, incidentally, thereby getting Australia’s first ever Indigenous Minister for Indigenous Affairs.

  7. Victoria @ #352 Saturday, April 20th, 2019 – 4:00 pm

    The bit I am unclear about with watergate. Did they pay for water that existed or may exist in future due to flooding. In other words, did they pay for speculative water? 80 million would seem a lot for speculation

    They paid as if it was river water, permanently bought back for the benefit of the river and no longer taken by irrigators. Instead it was flood water that only ever appears…when there is a flood. Money for just about nothing.

  8. Confessions @ #358 Saturday, April 20th, 2019 – 4:12 pm

    Vic:

    As I understand it it was for existing water. But either way, the govt paid the highest price ever paid for water licenses.

    No, I think it’s for flood run-off, not water drawn from a river. That’s the big problem. It might never appear! And what is to stop Eastern Agriculture trapping it when it does by recommissioning its dams, etc etc (if they were ever decommissioned).

  9. Boerwar @ #358 Saturday, April 20th, 2019 – 4:14 pm

    Firefox

    ‘If you keep defending Santos and using First Australians as pawns…’

    1. I have not defended Santos. LOL. You are a funny one.
    2. I HAVE pointed out that there will never be drilling rigs in EITHER of the locations claimed by the Greens. Both these are therefore deliberate Greens lies.
    3. I have demonstrated that your claim of 75km as being ‘pretty close’ shows the usual Greens respect for the truth. You should try the drive down to the SA border from Uluru some time. It will give you a whole other idea of ‘pretty close’. But do make sure you have the appropriate permits before you do so.
    4. It is the Greens who are defiling Indigenous values by drawing a drilling rig on Uluru.

    This may be a difficult concept to get across, but you cannot protect Indigenous values by ignoring them as the video does.

    Your Greens bwana act has been sprung.

    I must admit that, apart from the lies and the disrespect shown to Uluru and to its traditional owners, some of this argy bargy is giving me quite a hearty chuckle.

    Having routinely copped a pizzling for being a Down South Commo, and now getting a pizzling for being a far right Liberal troll must mean that someone is getting the balance right. Interestingly enough, on both occasions I received the hate for standing up for Indigenous rights against whitefellas who wanted to co-opt Indigenous rights and Indigenous IP.

    Anyhoo, the Greens have failed to hold the Coalition to account for casually throwing out the Call from the Heart. IMO, and I followed the process and the outcomes closely, this was a magnificent effort by Australia’s Indigenous peoples. Turnbull/Morrison have thrown it back into their faces. My biggest disappointment was that Wyatt did not resign in protest. No ticker, no heart and no vision, IMO. Appointing Abbott envoy thereafter was salt in the wound. Parachuting Mundine into Gilmore was more of the same.

    If we want Indigenous people to be listened to in a serious way, then Vote 1 Labor and, incidentally, thereby getting Australia’s first ever Indigenous Minister for Indigenous Affairs.

    still negging…

  10. Pegasus @ #358 Saturday, April 20th, 2019 – 4:12 pm

    Cta

    And you have no right to get on Pegasus’ high horse back and call me ‘Alt Right’ or a ‘Labor troll’.

    Are you implying I have applied these labels to you.

    I have never called or implied anyone on PB or in real life is either of those things.

    No. It was a reference to the fact that your avatar is a horse and that you, yourself get on your own high horse and call us Labor supporters various things when it suits you. But not those things. Yet. 🙂

  11. Now Malcolm having a pot shot at the SmearStralian… tell them what you really think!

    “I see the @australian has already described the tweets above as attacking the Coalition. That’s rubbish. I am simply stating the truth: the NEG was designed & demonstrated to reduce electricity prices. So dumping it means prices will be higher than if it had been retained. QED”

  12. The wording on the buy back needs to be exact.
    It was the highest price ever up until that time – $2700.
    The current price per (high security river channel meg) is trending around $4000.
    The particular issue with the price appears to be three fold.
    1. There is a persistent claim that the original asking price by the vendors was $2200 and that this was increased to $2700 by the buyer. If true, this needs to be explained.
    2. Why was this lot of water worth more than any comparable amount of water in the MDB? This needs to be explained.
    3. There are, broadly speaking, three sorts of water: flood plain harvested water, high security river channel water and low security river channel water.
    It is high security river channel water that is the most valuable of the three on the market. Why they paid more than high security river channel water for flood plain harvested water needs to be explained.
    There are other things that need to be explained but those are the issues with respect to water pricing and THE price.
    Of course, there are times in our lives when anyone might get extraordinary lucky and maybe that explains what happened.

  13. The Government’s been buying up water at record prices, leading to millions of dollars flowing to offshore tax havens. But now, two of our top pollies are facing questions over just who is making a fortune off our water.@HamishNews and @MichaelWestBiz bring you this report pic.twitter.com/5UTH1NHJzR— The Project (@theprojecttv) April 18, 2019

    This is why an anti-corruption commission should’ve been in place years ago. The Greens will work hard in the Senate to make sure the commission has retrospective powers, so that no matter when corruption occurs, justice will be served. https://t.co/HQshWGBaxo— Richard Di Natale (@RichardDiNatale) April 20, 2019

  14. C@t/antonbruckner

    If that’s the case, it really does need further investigating. Why pay so much for something that may not exist. Ie speculative

  15. The NEG is a beautiful, beautiful reverse steek-filled wedge.
    The Greens are opposed to it. Of course. Labor is for it.
    The Coalition is opposed to it. But they WERE for it.
    Labor is, once again, in the sensible Centre-Left position.
    The fact that we have Turnbull reminding everyone how the entire Coalition Cabinet supported the NEG gets to the heart of Liberal instability and Liberal insanity on energy and electricity prices.
    Industry is going to come out and support Shorten on this one because they KNOW the market needs some sanity and the NEG is sane.
    Great stuff.
    Tomorrow is Resurrection Day!

  16. And this is the SmearStralian piece Lucien Eye took umbrage at

    “Malcolm Turnbull has made his first election intervention today by attacking the Coalition he once led over the national energy guarantee #auspol 

  17. “I am not surprised at your comments. You deny the narrative put out by your own party President and ex Worlds Best Treasurer That Neoliberalism trickle down economics is dead”

    You don’t even comprehend what you are saying.

    I’ve known Wayne Swan for over 25 years. Ive working with Wayne Swan. Wayne Swan is my friend. You are no Wayne Swan.

  18. ‘Socrates says:
    Saturday, April 20, 2019 at 4:16 pm

    Kudos to ACT government for opening their light rail project today. In marked contrast to the travails of Sydney SE light rail, Canberra was completed on time and UNDER BUDGET.’

    Actually it was completed late. They had an original finish date some time ago. Then for a while they gave up on stating a finish date and then they announced the final finish date and so the final finish date was met. But it is fake news, I am afraid.
    We are not privy to the actual sums but if they were calculated using the same sophistry as meeting the end date we are entitled to a measure of scepticism.

  19. Boerwar @ #372 Saturday, April 20th, 2019 – 4:23 pm

    The NEG is a beautiful, beautiful reverse steek-filled wedge.
    The Greens are opposed to it. Of course. Labor is for it.
    The Coalition is opposed to it. But they WERE for it.
    Labor is, once again, in the sensible Centre-Left position.
    The fact that we have Turnbull reminding everyone how the entire Coalition Cabinet supported the NEG gets to the heart of Liberal instability and Liberal insanity on energy and electricity prices.
    Industry is going to come out and support Shorten on this one because they KNOW the market needs some sanity and the NEG is sane.
    Great stuff.
    Tomorrow is Resurrection Day!

    Labor and the L/NP want to continue propping up coal.

    It’s environmental vandalism.

    The future generations won’t forgive them and their boosters.

  20. RD

    The Greens will work hard in the Senate to make sure the commission has retrospective powers, so that no matter when corruption occurs, justice will be served

    If the Greens put up a motion for a RC to cover the MDB plan since its inception, what do you reckon would be the likelihood the two major parties would vote against it?

  21. “Gillard did not need to negotiate with the Greens to form a Govt. Bandt was pledged to support Labor.”

    Whether she needed to or not is irrelevant, she did. The Greens did it much quicker than the independents too (I’m sure you all remember the weeks of negotiations followed by Oakeshott’s epic monologue). Bob Brown actually stated at the time that they wanted to get the deal done quickly in order to give Labor a better chance of convincing the independents to join in. After Labor did everything they could to throw government away by knifing a first term PM in extraordinary circumstances, the Greens did everything they could to keep them in government. And they did.

  22. Pegasus @ #377 Saturday, April 20th, 2019 – 4:30 pm

    RD

    The Greens will work hard in the Senate to make sure the commission has retrospective powers, so that no matter when corruption occurs, justice will be served

    If the Greens put up a motion for a RC to cover the MDB plan since its inception, what do you reckon would be the likelihood the two major parties would vote against it?

    Not very likely Peg. 🙁

  23. Eddy Jokovich

    Morrison has blamed QLD Labor for $80 million water buy-back scandal. No one had ever heard of this, so it takes flummoxed journalists a while to realise it’s not true. The story of Morrison’s campaign. Tell so many lies, the truth never has a chance to catch up. #AusVotes2019

  24. AE

    Yet here you are every day arguing the opposite of Wayne Swans public comments.

    Some of which I have posted on this site in the past.

    I will take those public comments by Mr Swan over what you say.

  25. “Labor is for it.
    The Coalition is opposed to it. But they WERE for it.
    Labor is, once again, in the sensible Centre-Left position.”

    Haha. What nonsense. Labor are just taking the easy way out by adopting right wing Coalition “climate” policy.

  26. Yeah. Nah Guytaur. I’m just not parsing them to fit in with my ‘vibe’ of the cosmos like you are. I actually understand the points he is making.

  27. simon holmes à court
    ‏@simonahac
    simon holmes à court Retweeted Ronni-WhoKnewAboutTheContracts?-Salt

    if you’re following #watergate make sure you understand this:

    ➡️ the “water” sold for $80m was not saleable water.

  28. Chris Dorey is now the editor of the SmearStralian, having been promoted from the kennelmate Daily ToiletPaper. He is meant to follow the campaigning genius of Paul ‘The Ratbag’ Whittaker, who took the same path to now head upSkyFoxNews. Dorey has now made 2 mistakes:

    1. Campaigning with huge numbers on Labor’s Climate Change Policy – which is leading to the obvious retort that Labor wants to spend on Climate Change action…. Rupert May need to remind him that LaoTzu said a few thousand years ago ‘avoid fighting on the ground of your enemies’

    2. Suggesting to the biggest ego in the room, Malcolm Turnbull, that the former PM knifed by Scotty, Dutton, the Lyin’ Hunt and crew, was somehow not helpful with Lucien’s intervention on the NEG – saying it was ‘attacking the Coalition’… Rupert may need to kick Dorey up the backside for bringing up disunity, and lighting the firecracker

  29. No water allocation in the MDB is 100% guaranteed. It can’t be because the MDB does boom and bust like most of the rest of Australia.
    We have high security river channel water rights in a normally reliable subcatchment of the MDB.
    Even so, it is not uncommon to have our annual allocation cut because there is not enough water in the system.
    The market values water rights according to the likelihood that the annual allocation will be 100%.
    In most dry years low reliability (usually called low ‘security) river channel water rights holders get little or no allocation. Think of it as zero per cent income on your capital.
    I don’t know how reliable the floodplain harvested water sold to the Government is.
    One of the issues that arises is how close to the principals was the chap who did the calculations, how reliable was the data, how valid were the calculations, what time frame was used and how rigorously the Government did due diligence on all of the above. If the answer comes to $2700 for flood plain harvested water back when the sale was done then, IMO, someone was asking the wrong questions and/or someone was doing some interesting calculations.

    The sleeper in ALL water rights calculations is Global Warming. It is already becoming very apparent that the original calculations for ‘useable’ water have not stood the test of Global Warming. I anticipate that water rights holders will either have their rights trimmed back or have to get used to a permanent regime of receiving a smaller percentage allocation. IMO, there should be no compensation for this but if the Coalition is in power when this happens no doubt a spot of old rural socialism will rear its ugly head.

  30. AE

    Nah. You are just denying the fact he has said Neo Liberalism Trickle Down economics is dead.

    That’s those policies of Thatcher and Reagan.
    Otherwise known as Voodoo economics.

    The same ones Robert Reich argues against.

    I understand full well that’s what is being referred to.

  31. if you’re following #watergate make sure you understand this:

    ➡️ the “water” sold for $80m was not saleable water.
    —–
    Was it sub-prime water then?

  32. “Neo liberalism” is a post facto pop left construct to label things it doesn’t like and/or doesn’t understand. You are an exemplar of this stupid groupthink Guytaur.

    As Gandalf would say “fool of a Took!”

  33. Lizzie

    And another question that needs answering. If Angus Taylor nor his family have any interest in company, who actually does?

  34. Australian Conservation Foundation

    The climate election
    What is each party’s track record on climate action?
    We’ve independently analysed the major parties’ performance on climate action from the 2016 federal election until 1 February 2019.

    https://www.acf.org.au/track_record

    Tired of climate inaction and disappointed by the parties’ performance? Add your name to demonstrate how many climate voters there are and push the parties to step up.

    We are currently analysing the new policy commitments the major parties’ are taking to the federal election. Stay tuned – we’ll release our independent scorecard two weeks before election day.

    Find out more about how you can help make this the climate election.

  35. a few months late and significantly under budget is a good achievement. When you compare it to the dogs breakfast of other Australian infrastructure projects it looks even better.

    And when Bill gets the keys to the lodge, we can get some impartial consideration of the benefits to the parliamentary triangle of having proper public transport and get stage 2 approved and under construction

  36. ‘BK says:
    Saturday, April 20, 2019 at 4:40 pm

    if you’re following #watergate make sure you understand this:

    ➡️ the “water” sold for $80m was not saleable water.
    —–
    Was it sub-prime water then?’

    Haha.

    Maybe it was special Bottom of the Harbour magic water.

Comments Page 8 of 15
1 7 8 9 15

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *