There was a joke I could have made there, and I didn’t. You’re welcome.

We are going to have a small break and come back on Tuesday bright and early, because let’s be blunt – we all need a bit of a break from this. That won’t mean that there won’t be campaigning, but it will be campaigning without the national focus. For the most part.

But please keep sending through your questions! And your thoughts! Our brilliant site designer is working on comment functionability for you, so we should be able to get a bit of a conversation going as well. This blog has been alive for about 25 days all up and you are the reason it is all happening at all.

So thank you.

We will keep an eye on things, but will bring you all you need to know from Tuesday. You can catch me in The New Daily on Monday morning this week, and if you have any burning questions – email me or find me on the socials.

Eat some sweets, feel some sunshine, find some small delights, switch off your brains.

We’ll see you Tuesday. Until then, do good and take care of you. Ax

Why are we suddenly talking about nuclear power?

We have had a few people ask about this – Matt Grudnoff has answered you with a bit of history, here:

The Coalition’s proposal on nuclear power started out as a troll that has spectacularly backfired.

In the early debates on climate change, some on the right who were virulently against even the idea that the earth might be getting warmer, thought that all those who were concerned about climate change were crazy environmental lefties.

The troll was that such people were against nuclear power but if Australia’s power generation was switched from fossil fuel to nuclear then carbon emissions would go down. By suggesting nuclear they could show what hypocrites those environmentalists were.

For some reason, elements from within the coalition believed their own trolling. It was decided that it would be a brilliant political and strategic move if they went to the election with a proposal to build seven nuclear reactors. When the coalition announced the policy, the glee within the Labor party was obvious.

Given the policy offering we have seen so far from the coalition, this was the policy that they put the most work into. It is also a policy that is (unsurprisingly) deeply unpopular with the pubic. So unpopular that the coalition has largely stopped talking about it during the campaign.

Compounding these problems, the coalition was largely preparing for a debate around the safety of nuclear power. They were expecting a fight about Blinky the Simpson’s three eyed fish.

You could see Dutton’s frustration when during the debate he said, “When the Prime Minister sneakily says to an audience when he thinks he’s not being watched nuclear is unsafe,” but the PM and Labor haven’t been talking about nuclear safety. Rather they’ve been talking about its economics.

This is because nuclear power is the most expensive form of power. Adding nuclear will push up power prices and/or cost the budget a fortune. It will also be decades before we get any power from the first reactor. This means running old and increasingly unreliable coal fired power stations for longer and this will come at significant cost. Either that or having to build lots of new gas fired power stations, also very costly.

What started out as trolling people who were concerned about climate change has ended up as stone weighing the coalition’s campaign down.

Former Morrison spinner turned Minerals Council spinner Andrew Carswell has been building a nice media career for himself as a commentator this election, based on his PMO experience.

He is mostly impossible to listen to (hi Andrew *waves) but he did make an interesting point on the ABC yesterday, which points to a lot of the issues that the Coalition is having with Peter Dutton at the helm.

Dutton has been criticised for being focused on big dumb utes (The ABC’s Annabel Crabb recently coined it ‘Ute Man, our homo electus’) and men in general, with the campaign centered around men – manly men – and women get the benefit that all families get (like the housing policy)

But Carswell said that one of the issues for Dutton was everytime the party tried to soften his image, he lost support – from men. And we can assume that it doesn’t win over enough women to make up for the shortfall.

So unlike his hero John Howard who somehow managed to appeal to everyone, and Scott Morrison who appealed to Bunnings’ regulars, Dutton can only appeal to one group – men who are attracted to the strong man costume.

Peter Dutton is also claiming again that he would get on better with the Trump administration. Is anyone seeing this as a potential positive at this point?

I will work with whoever is in the Oval Office and I demonstrated my capacity to work with the Obama administration, we worked closely with the Biden administration, could achieve good outcomes, a lot of work in online child safety with the Obama administration and the Trump Administration and also with the Biden administration, a lot we have done in the defence and security space as I did as Defence Minister when negotiating the AUKUS deal underpinning the security for the next century and we will work with the Trump Administration.

The captain’s call the Prime Minister made in appointing Mr Rudd, Mr Rudd is persona non grata with the Trump Administration (this is not true) , cannot get a phone call or meeting with the President and how could you hope to solve the issues that exist, how can you hope to exempt Australia from tariffs if the Prime Minister cannot get a phone call or meeting with Mr Trump?

I suspect in that relationship there is very little trust and a Coalition government will always manage the economy more effectively, manage national domestic security effectively and manage our international relations including with the United States more effectively.

Let’s revisit what Peter Dutton had to say about climate change in his press conference a little earlier, after he said in the debate he could not be sure the worsening weather we were seeing was the result of climate change because he is “not a scientist”.

Which has been a fallback line for some time in the LNP, both at a state and federal level.

Q: You are not a dentist or engineer but I suspect you take their advice on the subject of expertise but last night when you asked about climate scientists is that you accept it is happening but you couldn’t bring yourself to say you trusted planet scientists.

Dutton:

It is not what I said last night, I believe in climate change and that is a reality, it is widely adopted our position in relation to net zero by 2050. (Which has no detail attached to it, other than the target. There is no plan)

If people are concerned and interested in the topic of climate change and what real action, but for the collision because wheeled on the party our energy policy that is capable of delivering low-cost lectures in an gas, reliable energy. It’s been a threefold increase in the number of manufacturing businesses closed in our country over the last three years. They have gone to Malaysia or to Wyoming or somewhere else in the world, we lost those jobs and the economic multiplier, Labor wants to close down mining here in the Hunter. We are a party that wants to deliver reliable power a cheaper power and meet our emission reductions. And that is demonstrated in our policy around nuclear

Uh huh.

Warringah independent Zali Steggall wants to know how Peter Dutton can say he will be able to lead Australia through unseen risks, when he can’t even say what those risks are. Which is a good point.

Steggall:

Peter Dutton still can’t say with conviction that climate change is getting worse — yet somehow believes he can lead a country facing escalating climate risks.

He says he’ll turn to the science, but the science is already unequivocal: it’s getting worse, and Australians are living with the consequences – and it’s costing us.

That’s not leadership. You can’t claim to want to keep Australians safe or prosperous if you won’t accept the reality of growing climate risks — let alone act on them.

While ignoring the growing risks might be politically convenient, both scientists and national security experts warn that climate change is the greatest threat to our safety and stability.

Australia needs a multipartisan commitment to cut emissions, and help communities adapt to the climate impacts already underway.

Readers of this blog would be aware of this given how much I bang on about it (and also write about in The New Daily) but a Redbridge poll published by News Corp shows that yup, Calare and Cowper are likely to go independent at this election, with Monash also a big independent possibility.

There is also Wannon to keep an eye on while we are on this line of thought.

Labor needs to keep an eye on Franklin – a big chance that goes independent, and Labor is also facing challenges in Dunkley, McEwen, the Greens are very confident in Wills, Macnamara is difficult and Gilmore is lineball.

It’s not just the nation polls – it is the vibe. There are going to be some upsets on 3 May. We’ll keep telling you what we learn.

What we learned from the leaders’ debate – housing policy

In the leaders’ debate both sides spruiked their housing policies, almost all of which will increase demand and push up housing prices. When challenged on this they then both denied that their policies would push up demand and increase housing prices. This is despite all the experts saying they will.

Housing is one of the issues that people across Australia are genuinely concerned about. Yet both major parties continue to put up policies that will at best make no real difference and at worse make housing less affordable.

In the long term this is going to be bad for both major parties. If people don’t think that either side has a credible plan, and if they keep seeing housing affordability get worse, they are going to look elsewhere (and perhaps already are).

When asked about changes to negative gearing and the capital gains tax (CGT) discount, Dutton claims that these changes reduce the number of rental properties and push up rents. This is false.

The reason reforms to negative gearing and the CGT discount work is because they push out investors. But these investors are replaced by first home buyers, who currently rent. So, it is true that these reforms will reduce the number of investor properties, but they will also reduce the number of renters. It will turn renters into homeowners.

Homeownership rates have been falling for the last 25 years. At the same time rates of renting have increased. Changes the negative gearing and the CGT discount are designed to reverse this. That is how you make housing more affordable. That is how you give people hope that they will be able to afford their own home.

If you’re a bit confused by that because you thought unemployment in February was 4.1% then you are right.

Last month when the ABS released the unemployment figures it said that in February the unemployment rate was 4.1% (or 4.05% to be precise)

This month, the formula they use to get the “seasonally adjusted” figure which slightly changes everything as a new month gets counted now has the ABS estimating that there were 2,000 fewer people unemployed in February than they previously thought. So now the February unemployment figures is 4.0% (or 4.04% to be precise). It really is just a rounding error. No need to worry – essentially unemployment is flat.

In this instance the trend is your friend, and the trend rate of unemployment suggests 4.0% or 4.1% of the labour force has been unemployed for the past 13 straight months – ie no real change at all

Returning to ACT politics and the Liberals Senate candidate Jacob Vadakkedathu also appears to be struggling.

He spoke to the ABC’s Greg Jennett and had a bet each way on public service cuts.

Mr Vadakkedathu – who survived a vote to be disendorsed following allegations of branch stacking only a matter of weeks ago – talked up his record as a 15-year public servant in Finance.

But then went on to suggest that more than 13,000 public service jobs in Canberra needed to go, which would decimate the very community he seeks to represent.

While it is broadly accepted the Liberals have next-to-no chance of knocking off Alicia Payne (12.2%) in Canberra, Andrew Leigh (15.7%) in Fenner or David Smith (12.9%) in Bean, it was expected/hoped they’d wheel out a decent Senate candidate to try to win back the spot they lost in 2022.

After all, the Libs had a Senate seat in the capital from the time the ACT was awarded two seats in 1975, right up until the last election when David Pocock knocked off Zed Seselja.

Labor’s Katy Gallagher won 33% of the primary vote in 2022, but pundits are suggesting the popular former Wallaby, Senator Pocock, might be the first to reach a quota this year.