While Coalition sources are still making semi-confident noises in their briefings to the press gallery, Scott Morrison seems to have spent most of past week-and-a-bit sandbagging second-tier seats rather than carving out a pathway to victory, while Bill Shorten has remained on the offensive. In the first three weeks of the campaign, Morrison spent roughly as much time in Labor as in Coalition-held electorates, but going back to last weekend, the only prime ministerial visit that seemed in any way targeted at a Labor-held seat was in the New South Wales Central Coast seat of Dobell last Sunday – and that might equally have been pitched at its marginal Liberal-held neighbour, Robertson.
Morrison’s efforts yesterday were devoted to the Melbourne seat of Deakin, which the Liberals believed they had nailed down in more optimistic times earlier in the campaign. Similarly, Friday brought him to Capricornia, one of a number of regional Queensland seats the Coalition was supposedly feeling relaxed about due to the Adani issue. The visit was to Rockhampton, but the announcement of a new CQUniversity mines and manufacturing school equally applied to Gladstone, located in the similarly placed neighbouring seat of Flynn.
Morrison has also spent a lot of time on seats where the Liberals are under pressure from independents. Tuesday was spent straddling the Murray, where Cathy McGowan’s support group hopes to bequeath Indi to Helen Haines on the Victorian side, and Albury mayor Kevin Mack is taking on Liberal member Sussan Ley in the New South Wales seat of Farrer. On Thursday he went to Cowper, which it is feared the Nationals will lose to Rob Oakeshott.
Most remarkably, Morrison also spent the entirety of a trip to Melbourne last Friday in Kooyong, where he made pronouncements on themes not normally considered staples of the Liberal campaign, namely recycling and protection of threatened species (insert Josh Frydenberg joke). The danger there is that the seat will lose the blue-ribbon seat to ex-Liberal independent Oliver Yates. Still more striking is the fact that Bill Shorten felt the seat worth a visit yesterday, if only to be photographed with puppies at Guide Dogs Victoria.
You can find my accounting of the leaders’ movements in spreadsheet form here.
In other news, the last Sunday newspapers of the campaign are typically the first to bring editorial endorsements, although both the Fairfax titles have squibbed it today, as has Perth’s Sunday Times. The four News Corp papers that have taken a stand have all gone as you would expect. The online headline in the Sunday Telegraph says it is “time to end the worst period of political instability and cynicism since federation” – which you should do, naturally, by returning the government. Granted that this makes more sense if you read the whole thing, though very few will of course. In Victoria, the Coalition gets the endorsement of the Sunday Herald Sun, as it did before the state election in November, for all the good it did them. The Brisbane Sunday Mail’s effort is headlined “Australians can’t afford a reckless pursuit of utopia”; the Adelaide Sunday Mail says it’s “time for a steady hand”, i.e. not Bill Shorten’s.
Also today: the latest episode of Seat du jour, tackling the Perth seat of Hasluck.
A bit more on the low numbers the Liberal Party Launch – my rusted on friend, a humble member in Flinders, did get an invite to attend. So not just the selected few.
He didn’t go cause he thought ‘it wouldn’t be much fun’, and watched it on TV instead. He thought the Scotty performance was ‘cringeworthy’.
Also, people need to get over the fact that a pretty large proportion use the term “AFL” to refer to the sport rather than just the league.
It’s not technically correct, but it’s just how it is.
The only thing I might criticise is that Jason wasn’t really the *first* Australian rules footballer to come out of the closet. He’s the first one who’s had a media profile, but I’m pretty sure there was a suburban footballer maybe in the early 2000s who came out of the closet as he was HIV positive – there was debate around safety of HIV players in contact sport… the early days of send-off “blood rule” etc. Can’t remember his name. And obviously there would have been many others.
Bushfire Bill @ #391 Sunday, May 12th, 2019 – 10:09 am
In other words, “Let’s get young people shackled to a mortgage just as property values are plummeting.
That’ll make sure the buggers don’t go on strike, or foment revolution, and ensure they’ll do whatever their corporate asters tell them to do.”
Or, “Let’s get 1,000s of young people hooked up to this policy so that us Boomers will see the value of our properties start to go up again.”
Gippslander
The Aboriginals I know are quite happy to be referred to as a Koori, but when referring to themselves quite often they will say “us blackfellas”.
Nothing I’ve seen or heard from the Liberal Party launch makes me doubt my 53/47 Newspoll prediction, an election day 54/46, and final count 53.2/46.8.
I think the Coalition knows they are toast, and they are not just in sand-bag mode but are in full on “save the furniture” mode.
6 days!
DR
@Bushfire Bill
I’d rate it less silly than the 6 or so pages worth of comments about penises last week.
@Wayne is a laugh
Just Quietly @ #571 Sunday, May 12th, 2019 – 2:39 pm
Cheers. You’re on the list. (I think of myself as a newbie too.)
“people need to get over the fact that a pretty large proportion use the term “AFL” to refer to the sport rather than just the league.”
I don’t think anyone was being serious – I certainly wasn’t with the Daily Telegraph comment.
@DR
I wonder why type of concession speech they will make.
Dan G:
The Sky crew hadn’t even finished the vision from the launch and gone back to the talking heads before David Speers had unpicked the worst of the announcement: it leaves taxpayers exposed to the risk in the event someone defaults on their mortgage.
Kroger was then left to explain why it was good. He was obviously coming up with stuff on the run: the govt will have to have tripartite agreement between home buyer, bank and govt to protect taxpayers (!!), we haven’t seen the full details yet etc etc.
Edi_Mahin says:
Sunday, May 12, 2019 at 2:49 pm
Tell that to our distant and not so distant ancestors, they used and shaped stone into weapons. David v Goliath for example.
Just because something is superseded, it doesn’t change what it ultimately is and can be. Even now in parts of the World rocks are the weapon of choice because they don’t have wide access to things like guns.
As for knives, it would be interesting to look at the statistics relating to knives designed as a weapon and the humble kitchen knife. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if they said kitchen knives were more deadly.
Your absolutes seem to be showing signs of erosion and you didn’t go near abortion and army. 🙂
I see the libs couldn’t even get the desicated coconut to their launch. Perhaps they have remembered the little tool lost his seat and never got a majority TPP vote from Victoria in his whole time as PM.
when is turnbull going to tip a bucket on them? I’m getting impatient.
Expat, it would not so bad if there was not a real AFL player called Jason Ball. If you say Jason Ball AFL player to most people they will think of the real AFL player not the greens candidate. There is a very real chance of confusion and for people to even vote thinking they are voting for a completely different person. To call this fake AFL player, Jason Ball, an AFL player is just a lie. Fake AFL player Jason Ball is lying, the Greens are lying, anyone who writes he is an AFL player is lying. Fake AFL player Jason Ball is not the kind of person who should be in parliament.
We Want Paul (previous thread):
As far as I know it originates from the character of LORD DARLINGTON in Wilde’s Lay Windermere’s Fan; His LORDSHIP defined a cynic as:
Bushfire:
War over welcome to country? Not sure what you’ve been reading, but all I’ve seen are a minority of commenters who don’t understand what one is, or its significance to Aboriginal people, and who have now had the opportunity to become better informed.
Hardly a ‘war’.
Environment Minister, Melissa Price has been spotted at the Liberal Party launch:
Barney, you cannot be serious with such a stupid comparison. You are just stringing me along and I am finished talking to you. Goodbye
Cringeworthy…
“Scott Morrison didn’t so much launch the Liberal campaign as launch his own personal mission to tell Australia about him.
The sparse campaign launch was in Melbourne, a troubled city for the Liberals after an internal war between conservative factions.
Just two of Morrison’s cabinet ministers featured – Treasurer Josh Frydenberg cracked jokes and Nationals leader Michael McCormack gave a stump speech.
Instead the prime minister featured heavily on his own and with his wife Jenny.
She has featured more and more in the campaign as the coalition bids to show voters the softer, human side of the nation’s leader.
The couple talked in a video about how they met, Morrison’s”unromantic” marriage proposal, and their 14-year struggle to have children.”
https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/6119282/morrisons-liberal-launch-mostly-about-him/?cs=14231&utm_source=website&utm_medium=home&utm_campaign=latestnews
C@tmomma
And greed. They always back the horse called Self Interest.
I think Ben Chifley called it “the hip pocket nerve’. He also deplored the increase in home ownership, thinking it’d breed a generation of little capitalists. I wonder what he’d think of the baby boomers.
Indigenous power did not disappear completely with the conquest of the continent, the total genocide of some tribal groupings, ethnic cleansing over most of the continent, the application of concentration camps, the imposition of quasi-slavery, massive resource theft, and what one prominent commentator referred to as ‘The Rape of the Soul so Profound’ – the ongoing attempt to destroy Indigenous cultures.
We have only just started on the road out of, beyond, and above all of the above.
The end of the road will be a Treaty, the Restitution, and a place in the Constitution.
Whether we choose to regard this as an insult to our culture, a threat, or an opportunity, these issues will not go away because Indigenous peoples will not go away and Indigenous cultures will not die.
Until the Troika happens there can be no Capital R Reconciliation.
There can, however, be small steps of lower ‘c’ reconciliation that can help our polity move towards a Capital R Reconciliation. ‘Welcome to country’ ceremonies are small steps in the mutual journey. But they are not the destination.
Indigenous peoples offered the people of Australia a wonderful opportunity to take a long step to the future with the ‘Call from the Heart’.
Sadly, the Call was rejected by both Turnbull and Morrison. IMO, Turnbull rejected it despite his better instincts but he was hostage to the rabid right inside the Liberal Party. IMO, Morrison rejected it because Morrison’s gut feelings on these and related issues is persistently racist. His appointing Abbott as the Bwana at large to the Benighted Indigenous Peoples is illustrative. It combined insult with injury.
Labor’s response to the Call from the Heart is good but, unless such a response is bipartisan, it is doomed to failure.
nath (previous thread):
Have you been playing with your voodoo doll to that effect?
I’m feeling a lot more optimistic now than I was three weeks ago. If the mood of Lib-loyal voters is anything to go by, Labor will win relatively comfortably. Lib-loyal voters are back in the dumps again, just as they were 3-4-5 months ago. They seem resigned to defeat even with the last quarter still to be played. They’re playing as if they’re already beaten.
Labor will win….and probably by 12 goals…..kicking away in the final term.
sprocket_
Morrison did not launch the Liberals campaign because it started weeks ago and is almost over. Both parties delay their “launch” yet lie about it being their campaign launch. Either hold a launch at the start of the campaign or do not hold one at all, don’t lie about an event weeks into the campaign being the campaign launch. This alone makes the Labor and Liberal partiess unworthy of governing without even going into their pro-death policies.
Oh god this is madness! They should at least wait to see how it is received before commiting to it.
Labor will match the home deposit policy. Labor doing bipartisanship. Happy to recognise a good idea. Unlike the government labor will not simply reject help for the younger buyers etc etc etc.
Not good policy but good politics. I can live with that. As a hypocrite I can still sleep well.
Interesting now when labor calls for the detailed costings etc.
Confessions @ #478 Sunday, May 12th, 2019 – 11:02 am
There aren’t any telephone booths anymore perhaps?
Zoidlord @ #609 Sunday, May 12th, 2019 – 3:11 pm
My prediction is the same as last year’s post-Wentworth speech, but more tears from Frydenberg and more shouting from Morrison.
I think Labor should’ve waited to see how it was received before committing to this. I’ve got a feeling it’s going to unravel – it has all the hallmarks of his announcement to move the Australian embassy in Israel, another Scotty election campaign promise that backfired.
Confessions,
It is politics pure and simple. Morrison made the announcement to cloud the last week.
Labor has just defused the bomb.
It is what it is.
Labor just needs to call on the government to release its modelling.
I’m getting 2013 vibes from this last week so far.
So the deposit guarantee will be on the back of borrowed money, and is limited to 10,000 loans each year.
https://www.theage.com.au/federal-election-2019/morrison-targets-first-home-buyers-in-new-scheme-to-lower-deposit-requirement-20190512-p51mha.html
doyley:
If as I expect happens and this announcement is exposed for the sham that it is, then Labor hasn’t really defused the bomb, but embraced it.
Gippslander @ #555 Sunday, May 12th, 2019 – 2:21 pm
Koori is the word for ‘man’ in Awakabal, the language of aboriginal persons in the general area of Newcastle in NSW. Indigenous people should be referred to as ‘indigenous people’.
doyley says:
Sunday, May 12, 2019 at 3:20 pm
Actually, it’s good policy and politics.
By taking negative gearing speculators out of the existing property market this is actually giving first buyers a real boost in the market.
NE Qld @ #567 Sunday, May 12th, 2019 – 12:34 pm
First Australians is better still.
I will say 50/50 only because it’s news poll
Instead the prime minister featured heavily on his own and with his wife Jenny.
She has featured more and more in the campaign as the coalition bids to show voters the softer, human side of the nation’s leader.
The couple talked in a video about how they met, Morrison’s”unromantic” marriage proposal, and their 14-year struggle to have children.”
And if she was anything more than a stay-at-home mum to the patriarch of the family I might have more respect for her position in the Liberal pantheon. Instead she is everything that is wrong with the 21st century Liberal Party. A bigger bunch of old fuddy duddies you will never meet, and that rot, again, started with John and Jeanette Howard and their lives, projected onto Australia, of the nuclear family living behind the white picket fence. Of course, it was super-charged, in a perverse way because his own family did not exemplify it, by Tony Abbott.
Malcolm Turnbull, also perversely for him, was hamstrung by the social troglodytes in the Liberal Party, to the point where they rebelled against even a modicum of social libertarianism expressed by him in not agreeing with their anti-SSM construct so as to kick it into the long grass again after the plebiscite vote. So they rolled him and the nation was given the choice between Ultra Conservative, Peter Dutton or mildly less Conservative, and better disguised, Scott Morrison.
So we are where we are today, with Labor having a 21st century political party, and the Coalition going back to the future.
Generic person:
In fact it is the CGT discount that is starving the economy to death, because it shifts investment away from productive corporations and towards speculation in unproductive land values. About $2 Trillion and counting…
Confessions,
You are correct.
No cost to the budget as it will be a investment not expenditure.
Labor wants to talk about other things this coming week.
Politics. It is what it is.
For labor, another positive is the show of bipartisanship to mend the broken political system and move on from years of argument and chaos.
Labor is prepared to listen.
Sounds good anyway.
I’m going to say 53/47 for tonight’s Newspoll because… why the hell not? xD
I’m also going to say Shorten will close the gap on Morrison for preferred PM by 8 points.
I think Wayne has a brother, Jordan, and I like him. 😆
Confessions,
Perhaps you are right. I do not think it is good policy. Too much scope for first home buyers to take on too much debt.
Saying that, this announcement was all about the headlines and how great Scott is for helping younger Australians. It was never about the detail.
Labor did not need the distraction.
Whatever it takes.
Confessions @ #625 Sunday, May 12th, 2019 – 3:19 pm
Yes, it does look a bit desperate. Perhaps the internal polling is closer than everyone thinks …?
Doyley
Labor has the argument they are reducing house prices via abolishing negative gearing so it a real subsidy for the First Home buyer not the developer. Either way it does increase supply.
Sorry, I’m a bit mystified as to why Jason Ball is considered unfit to hold office because there happens to be someone else of the same name?
doyley
I think you are right – Labor doesn’t need the distraction. All they need to do is plant the seed in the media – what will it cost? does it make the government liable for defaults?
After all it is not in Labor’s funded plans. And clearly not yet in the Coalition’s.
C@tmomma,
The Coal-alition’s Back to the Future policies were “transfixingly” exposed when Morrison bragged about the surplus that they brought in next year. 🙂
doyley:
This brings back memories of Rudd Labor adopting Howard’s and Costello’s tax cuts, which they committed to even after winning govt which increased the structural deficit to the budget.