Ok, so yesterday they said there would be no voluntary redundancies and there was no costings for VRs, so that is yet another change to this mess of a policy.

And then this morning, in the Canberra Times, Angus Taylor, in his latest audition for Dutton’s job as the ‘dry Howard Liberal’ turns back to an old Coalition idea that has already failed – moving public service positions OUT of Canberra.

(I am old enough to remember when Barnaby Joyce made this idea his whole personality and public servants were forced to work out of Maccas’ and other cafes for the free wifi, because the infrastructure had not been set up for them to do their job)

But it wasn’t just Joyce’s APVMA obsession. The 2019 estimates also revealed that the decentralisation policy was a complete failure, for reasons including:

• Overall, 1,700 had been moved from inner Sydney, inner Melbourne and Canberra but the majority happened before the decentralisation agenda was announced. Only 430 roles from 13 agencies have been moved. The list of the 13 agencies is on notice.
• The phrasing is ‘new and relocated’ jobs.
• The Department of Infrastructure was not keeping track on whether decentralisation is actually happening.
• No overarching review of decentralisation occurred.
• Could not answer if any other decentralisation “opportunities” were being considered.
• Questions were asked about the impact of the ASL cap and efficiency dividend on regional APS jobs.

The senate estimates included this exchange, where Nationals senator Bridget McKenzie tried to pretend Parramatta was regional to prove the policy was working:

Senator STERLE: …So they can move from Tuggeranong to Queanbeyan and that can be decentralisation?

APS: They could. That would be possible, yes.

Senator McKenzie: 

I think Senator Watt raises a really interesting point. A lot of people ask how shifting jobs to Parramatta, for instance, is decentralisation. If you are working in somewhere like Parramatta, you can actually be further west of Sydney than—

Senator WATT: It’s not really regions at the ready, though, is it, Parramatta? Regions.

Senator McKenzie: 

Well, you can catch a train from a whole raft of regional communities to work in Parramatta. So that’s where you’re living, raising your family, contributing to community in regional New South Wales. You would work in Parramatta at the same time. To answer Senator Sterle’s question, the relocation of 10 positions from Canberra to Darwin in the Office of the Registrar of Indigenous Corporations is underway. The relocation of the indigenous affairs group’s regional network, moving seven positions from Melbourne to Shepparton, is underway. And 25 positions from Sydney CBD office to Parramatta have been completed. I hope a lot of them have taken the opportunity, given they’ve changed their workplace to set up camp out in regional New South Wales. In the office of the National Rural Health Commissioner, four new positions were to be located in Adelaide. That’s actually completed

Joshua Black and Bill Browne

Earlier this year, the two major parties joined forces to “stitch-up” Australia’s federal electoral laws. These included donations caps, spending caps and a lower threshold for disclosing donations to the AEC. In practice, those caps will be much more restrictive for independents and minor parties than for the major parties. The supposedly large campaigns run by community independents have been used to justify the Albanese Government’s rushed changes to electoral laws.

But a story in the AFR this morning reminds us how hollow these claims were. WA political correspondent Tom Rabe says that independent MP and candidate for Curtin, Kate Chaney, and her opponents in the Liberal Party, have spent $1 million each in their fight for the seat.

There’s nothing shocking about this. We’ve seen million-dollar campaigns from both of the major parties in recent years. Former Senator Kim Carr claimed that Labor spent $1 million on the 2018 Batman by-election campaign in the hope of preventing a once-safe seat from falling to the Greens. In the same year, the Liberal Party reportedly spent $1 million on its Wentworth by-election campaign, which was won by independent Dr Kerryn Phelps.

AEC returns show that her campaign cost $145,265. During the most recent parliamentary term, the Labor Party spent $1 million on its campaign for the competitive Dunkley by-election in March 2024, and national secretary Paul Erikson predicted the Coalition had ‘easily matched this’. In fact, at the last election the Australia Institute estimates that Labor and the Coalition spent on average $112,000 and $189,000 respectively more per candidate than the community independents.

It is the major parties who most successfully bring big money to bear, and will be least restricted by the changes to election laws.

Let’s see if we can have a parliament with some courage, huh?

There is also a habit of journalists framing questions along the lines of ‘how bad would a hung parliament be’.

Now, the whole ‘chaos and confusion’ thing in 2010-13 was a Tony Abbott creation, that was picked up and run with by mainstream media, which assumes that negotiation on legislation and power sharing in a parliament is automatically a bad thing.

But it is also not born out by the facts. Minority governments are very common in the states/territories. NSW has a minority government right now. But also, governments rarely have control of the upper chamber and so, there is constant negotiation and power sharing with legislation occurring in the chambers of review.

You know, the pesky little thing known as the senate? You need that to pass federal law in Australia. And you never hear the same narrative as you do in the house of reps when it comes to negotiations.

Australia could be entering a new era in its politics. Which means that the major parties can’t count on automatically winning a majority. That is not something to be treated as ‘bad’. It’s something to be respected and studied and understood. Because it seems to me that if the major parties aren’t offering voters what they want, they will go looking somewhere else.

We just couldn’t bring ourselves to watch another press conference before 8am, so here are some questions from Anthony Albanese’s Brisbane presser this morning:

Q: Multiple Intergenerational Reports have warned about the growing fiscal gap. Given the implications on future generations of workers, why isn’t structural budget reform on your agenda?

Albanese doesn’t answer the question:

What we’ve done is to produce two budget surpluses and I find it rather strange that people have questioned Josh Frydenberg’s budget speech of 2022 in March, just before the election was called, where he outlined what their plan was, which was a $78 billion deficit. We turned that into a surplus. We turned the next year’s deficit into a surplus, into a surplus. And we’ve halved, and we’ve halved this year’s deficit.

Simon has had a little bit to say this morning:

Some companies have revenues bigger than states … and some states outsource the activity … https://michaelwest.com.au/whos-paying-to-undermine-australian-democracy-scam-of-the-week/

The advertising material i got (Bradfield) from the libs had how to vote and a flyer from one of the local real estate agencies … in what world does this not scream “conflict of interests!!!

My decoding of the free-marketeers is in line with: Taxing addictive substances is great for company profits. If you also make health care more expensive its a win-win. For example, realise that curing diabetes would cause GDP to fall because it wipes out the treatment industry.

On Adam Bandt voting early and his line about “iconic behaviour” Jay said:

Lordy lou that’s a cringe line “iconic behaviour”

Adam Bandt is probably also voting today to try and get more coverage and maybe even get his photo in the paper tomorrow…(although it seems like the Greens media strategy has been focused elsewhere, just like the voters they are trying to attract)

Oliver notes the PM may have been trying to appeal to one particular voter in Tasmania with his ice coffee photo op:

The PM seen here campaigning to that one particular voter in Launceston TAS shown on ABC’s ‘The Weekly with Charlie Pickering’ for whom the cost of an iced coffee was the main issue this Federal Election.

And Robert asks:

Hi Amy. Dutton is still going on about some kind of “miracle” tomorrow which might enable the Coalition to win, despite all the polls showing Labor on track to form government. Maybe he is just trying to reassure his supporters despite the mounting evidence that he will fail.

Remembering what happened in 2019, is there any rational reason to believe that the Coalition could win, helped by One Nation preferencing them in certain seats? Or is it just delusional to believe in “the silent millions” coming to his rescue?

It’s a good question. And nothing should ever be ruled out. It is unlikely that the polls will be as wrong as Peter Dutton is claiming. One Nation doesn’t run in enough seats to flip the election result alone, and the Coalition doesn’t appear to be on track to win back those inner city seats it would need for a feasible pathway. And the idea that ‘quiet Australians’ or silent Australians will be turning out in their millions also relies on the fact that they are apparently so quiet, they are never picked up by pollsters. So, it is very unlikely that Dutton will achieve his ‘miracle’.

(And Hattie – it is indeed the great Dolly Parton I am invoking when I say ‘Oh Dolly’, and I will not hear a word against her)

So we’re at the last day and wow, haven’t we just been overloaded with policies aimed at assisting women…

Sigh. Other than some (much needed) policies and small funding on domestic and family violence, policies which treated women as anything other than those who will benefit from things that the man in the household will get were few and far between.

Gender inequality remains a major problem across the Australian economy and society. The most famous measure of this inequality, the gender pay gap remains significant, though there has been slow progress.

The gender pay gap measured by average (mean) weekly cash earnings, ie how big your weekly payslip is, is 26.5%. – That means the average earnings of men is 26.5% more than women.

As soon as this is uttered people (men) will jump up and say that much of this is driven by part-time work; women are far more likely to be in part-time work than men, predominantly due to caring responsibilities such as for children and aged relatives.

And great. Well done on grasping the numbers but missing the point.

Firstly of course much more work done by women – regardless of employment situation – that is essential for society to function, it is unpaid.

Even in situation where both the man and the woman in a household work full-time, women will do more unpaid work. Heck even in situations where the woman is the main breadwinner, women are still more likely to do more unpaid work!

And all this time doing essential, but unpaid work, has a big impact on earnings.

Due to caring responsibilities, women are more likely to experience periods out of the formal workforce, where they receive low or no wages at all. There is also a significant and persistent ‘motherhood penalty’, research from the Australian Treasury showed that “women’s earnings fall by an average of 55 per cent in the first 5 years after entry into parenthood, while men’s are unchanged”.

Another commonly cited measure of the gender pay gap just looks at full-time adult earnings (excluding overtime and bonuses), under this measure the gap is 11.9%.

This gap is generated by various factors including that women tend to be paid less in most occupations and female-dominated industries are generally paid less. Australia Institute research shows that in 2021-22, men had a higher average salary in 96% of all occupations – including midwives!

The figures also show that higher-paid occupations are more likely to be male-dominated. Among the 77 highest-paid occupations, where the average salary was above $100,000, only 2 were jobs where women make up more than 60% of the workforce.

By contrast 40 of the 70 lowest-paid occupations, where the average salary was less than $45,000, were jobs where women make up more than 60% of the workforce. Importantly, many female-dominated industries are in the public sector or largely government funded, meaning that the government could easily boost these wages if it chose to.

These differences add up over time, contributing to substantial wealth differences between men and women. Additionally, as Australia’s superannuation system ties retirement with lifetime wage earnings we see the gender wage gap mirrored in retirement. The average super balance for 60 to 64-year-olds in June 2021 was $402,838 for men and $318,203 for women – a gap of 21.0%.

So was any of this a focus in the election? No. Not really. The closest we got was the fight over work from home, which has been one of the few policies of the past decade that has truly helped women stay in work while also caring for children or elderly/sick relatives.

But much more needs to be done – including at the societal level to make unpaid care work much less of a women-dominated responsibility.

Over the course of the election campaign, there’s been a lot of fear-mongering around the prospect of a “hung parliament” or “minority government”.

Some would have us believe that if Australian voters do not give one party a majority tomorrow, the nation faces a period of instability, even chaos.

But history tells us there is nothing to be afraid of. 

In fact, power-sharing parliaments can be effective and successful. 

New research from The Australia Institute analyses 25 Australian elections where no one party won a majority.

What would the negotiations to form government look like? Who would be in the cabinet? Who would be speaker? Who would introduce legislation? How would it be scrutinised?

The report, Forming Power Sharing Government, (attached) examines all these issues and many more. 

Key findings:

The paper identifies five things to expect from power-sharing negotiations:

• Negotiations may take time
• Negotiations usually draw on many years of parliamentary experience
• Agreements take a variety of forms
• Agreements may be with the unsuccessful major party, too
• Crossbenchers do not have to go with the party that wins more seats

Across power-sharing parliaments, crossbenchers have negotiated for:

• Reforms to parliamentary process and procedure: These include dedicated time for private members’ bills to be debated and voted upon; more productive Question Times; greater committee scrutiny of the government; fixed parliamentary terms; and Parliamentary Library expansions.
• Staff: In a power-sharing parliament, crossbenchers are a potential deciding vote on every motion and every piece of legislation. Crossbench negotiations often include new staffing arrangements, either on an ad hoc basis or by setting consistent rules.
• Policy reforms: Policy reform areas include elections, integrity, civil rights, support for the regions and environmental and climate policy, among many others.
• Positions: Speaker or ministerial positions are often allocated to crossbenchers.

And what can be expected of the power-sharing parliament that results?

• The parliament is likely to see out the full term
• Power-sharing parliaments help enforce ministerial responsibility
• Opportunities for crossbencher bills and amendments
• Negotiations may continue through the Parliament
• Power-sharing governments are competitive at the next election

“With about one in three Australians voting for a minor party or independent, it is a live possibility that Australians will elect a power-sharing parliament tomorrow,” said Bill Browne, Director of the Australia Institute’s Democracy & Accountability Program.

“The Australia Institute has looked at 25 previous power-sharing parliaments, elected federally and in states and territories, to see what we might expect from negotiations with minor parties and independents.

“There is no strict rule for how power-sharing parliaments must conduct themselves, but it is common for crossbenchers to negotiate parliamentary reforms, policy commitments, more staff and resources and for crossbenchers to hold ministries or the speakership.

“It is under power sharing parliaments that the ACT adopted truth in political advertising laws, whistleblower protections were achieved in NSW, the Royalties for Regions package distributed mining and petroleum royalties to WA regional communities, the ACT achieved 100% renewable energy and Tasmania passed one of the most progressive freedom of information acts in the country.

“At the federal level, the 2010–2013 power sharing parliament and Gillard Labor Government passed legislation at a higher rate than any other, including ambitious legislation like the NDIS, Clean Energy Future Package, cigarette plain packaging and expanding Medicare to dental for children.”

Childcare has barely rated a mention from the two major parties this election campaign. That’s a shame because childcare doesn’t just improve children’s educational and development outcomes, it can also grow the economy.

Australia Institute research shows that affordable access to high quality early childhood education and care could increase the size of the economy by $168 billion and allow the government to collect an additional $48 billion in revenue.

But the Australian childcare system needs more than just extra funding. We also need to change how it is delivered. Currently more than half of Australia’s childcare is delivered by for profit providers.

Parents have seen government subsidies, that are designed to make childcare more affordable, gobbled up by increased fees. And the higher prices don’t translate to better care.

For-profit providers on average do worse than not-for-profit and state-owned providers when it comes to metrics like educational practice, children’s health and safety and staffing arrangements.

But these problems can be solved. We already have a ready-made solution: treat early childhood education in the same way we treat public schools.

Imagine if government run childcare centres were as common as primary schools. Any parent, if they wanted to, could send their child to the local childcare centre. These centres, where practical, could be co-located with primary schools.

Australia deserves a better childcare system and it’s a shame that the major parties have largely ignored the issue this campaign.

5,679,443 Australians cast their ballot at a pre-poll booth by the end of Thursday, around 100,000 more than the total last election- and we still have one more day of pre-poll to go.

Those five and a half million votes amount to over 31% of people on the electoral roll. By the end of the Thursday before polling day in 2022 only it was only 27%.

Notable, however, is the last-minute surge in pre-poll votes that we saw in 2022 hasn’t happened. Last election over 100,000 more votes were cast on the Thursday before election than the Monday; this time there’s been 5,000 fewer votes cast on Thursday than on Monday. 

While 2022 may retain the crown of the most pre-poll votes cast in a single day (922,000 on 20/05/2022, the day before the election), 2025 is galloping to the highest rate of pre-polling ever overall.

Wondering how pre-polling has evolved over time, and what the implications are of so many early votes? You can read more about that here.