Fremantle community independent Kate Hulett has announced she will be running in the federal election against Labor’s Josh Wilson.

Hulett came within 400 votes of winning the state seat from Simone McGurk, a WA Labor minister who saw a 26% swing against her. That took the formally safe seat to a 1% margin – which is a stark reminder that there are NO SAFE SEATS.

The Fremantle Shipping News reported Hulett as saying:

I have had literally hundreds of people contact me in recent days asking me to maintain this extraordinary momentum to keep challenging the major parties and provide proper representation for Fremantle in government,” Ms Hulett said.

What the community is telling me is no surprise. They feel that both major parties are completely ineffective and out of step with them on the important issues impacting us all – like AUKUS, gas exports, housing, the cost of living, taking care of our city – and as a community, we are demanding an alternative.”

Wilson holds the seat with a 16.9% margin (2PP) and is considered one of the most popular Labor MPs in WA, but an independent challenger who already has some name recognition because of the state election will be interesting.

There is talk that the Liberals are looking to do a preference deal with Labor, in that they preference Labor in Fremantle, so Labor preferences them in Curtin (where the Liberals are trying to win back the seat from independent Kate Chaney) and while preference deals are just suggestions of how a political party would like you to vote, rusted on major party supporters are more likely to follow how to vote cards, than not.

So keep an eye on WA.

Tomorrow, the Queensland LNP will announce where the Brisbane Olympic venues will be built. There has been a lot of political brouhaha over the location of the 2032 Olympics, which bamboozled the former Labor government and now is the LNP’s headache (although to be fair, the LNP did their fair share in making it a headache).

There is also the issue of funding and how that is all going to work.

David Crisafulli said he and the prime minister have worked some things over…cannolis. As you do:

Crisafulli: “I reckon we’ve spoken a lot about it, but we’ve negotiated well together. I think that’s fair. We’ve worked together well and that’s always my style. I’m on Team Queensland. Of course, there’s been some strong negotiations. Two people of Italian descent, you’d expect that. But there’s nothing that can’t be solved over a bit of common sense and a cannoli. Two cannolis, and I bought both of them.”
 
PM:: And I can confirm that the Premier has, on two occasions, given me cannolis and I haven’t declared them. So, I declare them now just in case I get into some trouble.
 
Crisafulli: They were good cannolis.
 
PM: We regard that as a cultural thing rather than anything else. And they’re fine cannolis, I’ve got to say.

Crisafulli is of the north Queensland Italians, where coffee and cannolis are basically life.

Today the Financial Review is reporting that major private health insurance funds including Bupa, Medibank, HCF and NIB are hiking premiums by 7% to 9.4% on their “gold” and “silver” policies. That is well above the average increase of 3.7% allowed by the Minister, Mark Butler, on 26 February.

Customers have also been faced with phoenix practices whereby insurers scrap existing products and replace them with near identical products with a new name and higher premiums.

The chief executive of the Australian Private Hospitals Association,  Brett Heffernan, is reported as saying “If 8-9 per cent is the reality from the big end of town, it’s a massive gouge no one, including the minister, should be tolerating”.

The private health insurers do not need to rip off Australian customers anymore. Our earlier analysis showed the large for-profit companies, especially Bupa, Medibank and NIB are hugely profitable with pre-tax profits of $1.7 billion in 2023-24. 

Apart from plain rip offs, there is also the suggestion that insurers are making the best cover unaffordable so that customers are forced away from policies that cover expensive care such as “obstetrics, psychiatry, joint replacement surgery, and weight loss surgery”.

If people cannot afford cover for the most expensive health contingencies it raises legitimate questions about the very role of private health insurance including its discrimination against women and those most in need of health care.  

Katy Gallagher was also asked about the independent’s push for a bigger domestic gas reserve (gas prices are linked to the international market which is why they are so expensive) and said:

We’ve been clear that gas is an essential fuel to manage the transition to a renewable energy future. So, Madeleine King and our colleagues when we first came to government, we had to make sure very quickly as gas prices were going up that we had enough supply and that we
were managing some of the pressures in that area. That will continue. It is an
essential component of this energy transition. We need gas.

Many Independents have kind of tried to demonise gas and other fossil fuels in the
transition to renewable energy future. We’ve been clear from the beginning that we need gas. We need to make sure there’s enough supply for Australians to support that energy transition, and you’ll see that continue

Which is not an answer.

AAP has reported on Canada’s snap election which has been called for April 28 (their election was not due until October, but they will now vote before we do) and the story includes some interesting observations from one pollster:

Mark Carney, a former two-time central banker with no previous political or election campaign experience, captured the Liberal leadership two weeks ago by persuading party members he was the best person to tackle Trump.

Now he has five weeks to win over Canadians. On Sunday, Carney proposed cutting the lowest income tax bracket by one percentage point.

Polls suggest the Liberals, who have been in power since 2015 and badly trailed the official opposition Conservatives at the start of the year, are now slightly ahead of their rivals.

“We moved from an election where people wanted change to an election that’s really much more about leadership,” said Darrell Bricker, CEO of Ipsos Public Affairs.

“The ability of the Conservatives to attack the Liberals has been greatly diminished, because people are focused on the here and now and the near-term future, not on what happened over the last 10 years,” he said by phone.

It is interesting because we are starting to see the same theme emerge here – and populist nationalists, like Pauline Hanson and Peter Dutton are struggling to respond to it. Not that Labor has taken the line that the Canadian Liberals have under Carney, but it will be very interesting seeing how Australian politicians respond to the very real threat Trump presents to the world.

Greens senator Penny Allman-Payne has responded to the Queensland education funding deal – and she is not happy. From her release:

More public school funding is always a good thing, but this agreement leaves public schools underfunded for another decade.

Labor’s plan ensures that it will be a quarter of a century before Gonski is delivered and every Australian public school receives its bare minimum funding. That means kids currently in school are going to finish year 12 never having experienced the fully resourced education they deserve. That means not enough teachers, not enough in-class supports, inadequate facilities, and parents and teachers dipping into their own pockets to make up the shortfall.

Budgets are about priorities, and if public schools were a priority for this Government they would fully fund public schools this year.”

Still on the gas industry, executive director of the Australia Institute Richard Denniss is in Newcastle today for an event with the founder of Punter’s Politics Konrad Benjamin, where he will be talking all things gas – mostly how YOU will have paid more tax than the gas exporters:

If you’ve paid any tax at all in the last decade, you’ve paid more than the global gas giants exporting eastern Australia’s gas have ever paid in company tax.

These corporations export two thirds of the gas produced in eastern Australia, selling it for tens of billions of dollars annually. They use more gas just running their export terminals than we use electricity, yet apparently NSW now has to import gas!

Gas exports have led to a tripling of wholesale gas and electricity prices since LNG exports began in 2015. LNG companies deliberately exposed Australians to global prices, which is driving up YOUR energy bills.

You may have noticed this campaign from the Australia Institute start to take hold – we’ll bring you more on the research behind the message a little later today, but it is worth remembering as both major parties push gas as the answer to rising energy costs.

The Coalition is going particularly hard on it, pretending it is the answer to lowering energy prices, despite the fact that gas is exposed to the international market and therefore is a more expensive form of energy. But hey! This is Auspol! Why let facts get in the way of pretend policy answers?

Parliament doesn’t sit today – the last sitting will begin tomorrow when the budget is handed down – but that doesn’t mean that there is no politics.

This week, Labor is attempting to ram through laws which will further weaken Australia’s environmental laws. It is under the guise of protecting the foreign-owned salmon industry in Tasmania, by essentially creating carve outs where it wouldn’t have existing environmental laws apply to it.

But it looks like the government wants to go even further and cut out the ability for third party civil society groups – like the Australia Institute and Environmental Defenders Office – from being able to assist community groups in their challenges of nature-destroying projects. The legislation the government wants to pass this week – with the Coalition – would mean third party civil society groups could not provide research or expert opinion to the groups, leaving them at the mercy of fighting challenges against multi-million dollar consultants hired by industry.

“Weakening environmental laws doesn’t help the Australian community or the Australian economy. It simply boosts the profits of salmon corporations, coal companies and other corporate interests,” said Rod Campbell, Research Director of The Australia Institute.

“Any change that makes it harder for community groups to use Australia’s environment laws is, by definition, anti-democratic.”

So keep an eye on that this week.

The Greens senator Nick McKim will hold a press conference on the issue later today.

It’s that time of the election campaign where political parties start pushing merch on people.

This from Labor has gone over like a lead balloon.

The text on the shirt says:

‘This is Australia. We eat meat. We drink beer. And we love Medicare.’

It’s a rift on a conservative US slogan (since co-opted by the far right):

“This is America. We eat meat, we drink beer, we own guns, we speak English. If you don’t like it, leave.”

The Labor version is being slammed online and for good reason.