Meanwhile, Anthony Albanese is also going viral on Tik Tok for calling Peter Dutton and the Coalition “dululu with no solulu” in question time yesterday (we were busy watching a dead fish in the senate)

Here is the origins of that particular villain story:

The ABC’s Sydney radio host asks if he he knew what he was saying and Albanese says:

Yes I did and I do think that Peter Dutton is delusional if he speaks about fiscal policy and deficits given that he left deficits of $78 billion that we turned into a surplus. Another deficit of above $50 billion that we turned into a second surplus of $15 billion and then we’ve halved the deficit that we inherited this year. But this morning Angus Taylor’s made the rather extraordinary statement, declaration, that they will repeal our tax cuts. That is, they will introduce legislation for higher taxes. So, under Peter Dutton people will earn less and they’ll be taxed more.

New media, podcasters and content creators will all be part of Labor’s election strategy – it started well over a year ago when Labor invited social media influencers and new media for a budget briefing, which is something they repeated this year. But since the Democrats loss and Donald Trump’s ownership of the manosphere through new media and podcasts, Labor has ramped it up. There are journalists already grumbling about new media and content creators being on the election campaign, but politicians aren’t doing it for cred – they are doing it because THAT IS WHERE THE AUDIENCE THEY WANT TO REACH IS. People under 35 are not turning to legacy media for their news. There’s a gap, it is being filled, and politicians want in. The Coalition, Greens and independents will all be doing it too. If legacy media want those audiences, they have to give them what they want, and so far the data is saying that is not happening.

Talking to Hobart radio Triple M, Anthony Albanese got to listen to some Cold Chisel which he enjoyed.

He might then enjoy knowing that Jimmy Barnes is among the signatures urging the government to protect sacred Indigenous rock art by not extending the North West Shelf gas project.

He’s asked about when he will call the election and says:

It’ll be called pretty imminently, I can assure you of that as well, I think,” he said.

Well duh.

At the moment, the hottest take is that he will do Insiders on Sunday and then drive from the studio to Government House, calling the election.

But it will be called in the next 72 hours, so the when doesn’t really matter. It’s all about theatre at this point.

The Australian Federal Government rarely runs budget surpluses. If we look at the last 100 years, going all the way back to 1926-27, the government has run 20 surpluses and 80 deficits. But over the same time our living standards have boomed and despite what some politicians and commentators might say the government has never looked like going broke.

Australia is not unusual in mainly running deficits. Looking at 33 developed countries, only 5 are running surpluses. All the rest are running deficits. The last time the United Kingdom ran a surplus, Tony Blair was Prime Minister. The last time the United States ran a surplus, Bill Clinton was President.

One country that bucks this trend and consistently runs budget surpluses is Norway. This is because Norway has a sovereign wealth fund worth almost $3 trillion. This is invested overseas, and the fund pays into Norway’s budget.

The money in the fund has come from taxing its oil and gas industry. Imagine that? If only Australia could do the same.

In the meantime, the budget showed that revenue from the Petroleum Resource Rent Tax continues to fall. The PRRT is supposed to ensure that the federal government gets a fair share of the gas that all Australians own.

PRRT revenue is smaller than excise on beer, even after the government paused the beer excise.

It is smaller than tax on tobacco, even after the government massively revised down tobacco excise.

The PRRT is even smaller than the money the government collects on visa application charges.

Budgets are about choices. Norway chooses to properly tax its oil and gas industry. We give it away in the form of massive profits to foreign owned companies.

We have spent a lot of time this last week criticising Labor’s policy decisions – which is entirely valid – they are the goverment, they have power and the decisions they are making are not in the best interest of the environment, the future, or Australia has a whole. The budget did leave behind people living in poverty, there is no structural reforms of the tax system on the horizon and nothing in the budget will address the housing affordability crisis or growing inequity across our communities.

Add in Labor’s position in refusing to sanction Israel, as international law dictates, or stand up to vested interests like fossil fuel companies (and even News Corp most of the time) and it’s not exactly inspiring.

But that doesn’t mean we are also not taking a critical look at what the Coalition is offering. It not only supported Labor’s gutting of environmental protections this week, it is heading to an election having opposed energy bill relief, is promising domestic gas reserves by opening up more fossil fuel projects (rather than redirecting what we export – and let’s not forget that in opposing energy bill rebates, they also opposed the gas reservation policy that was part of it), forcing people back into the office, even though it will make the life of people with care responsibilities (mostly women) harder, sack 41,000 people (at the minimum), repeal tax cuts and offer a temporary fossil fuel subsidy in its place, approve a fossil fuel project that will be like adding the emissions from 12 coal fired power stations into the atmosphere every year, increase housing costs even further by giving people access to their super, which then makes them poorer again when they retire, cut migration without thought to the labour market, further criminalise protests (if those protests are against genocide or for climate action), add it’s definition of anti-Semitism to visa forms, deport people who are critical of Israel, and potentially cut from basic public services imposing austerity on the nation.

Not much of a choice, is it?

Here is a little more on Angus Taylor explaining the fuel cut excise.

On the face of it, I would say these figures need a bit closer examination:

Sabra Lane: How much does this equate to a week? Tax cuts that the government’s just legislated $5 a week, roughly. Yours?

Angus Taylor: Well, typically, over the course of a year, it’ll be, if it’s a tank, a family, it’d be $750. If it’s two tanks, it’s $1,500. So that’s a family.

Lane: So that’s roughly …

Taylor: So that’s a family …

Lane: $14 a week or something?

Taylor:

Yeah, something like that. $14 a week. $28 a week for a week for a two-tank family and I mean, that’s a significant help at a time which is really troubling for those sorts of families and I say, this is the group who are also suffering the greatest mortgage stress, who have the least capacity to deal with the pressures that they’re under, and any shock they might have on those pressures, whether there’s a big health bill or something else like that coming along.

This is a policy aimed at the Coalition’s ute’s drivers – the same ones they defended against the EV subsidy. Hybrids are becoming increasingly popular, which this policy doesn’t seem to take into account (deliberately so, one would imagine)

So the sell the Coalition is offering is that it will lower the price of fuel (assuming there are no global supply chain shocks that negate the temporary cut – as happened with the previous fuel excise cut the Coalition temporarily introduced) for one year, in place of ongoing tax cuts. The party of lower taxes wants to repeal tax cuts to own Labor.

That’s where we are.

Senate estimates is about to get underway – there will be two days of insanity before the election campaign gets officially underway.

Today we have Finance and Public Administration Committee

Legal and Constitutional Affairs

Environment and Communications

Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport

The fallback position is that this legislation, which takes away the environment minister’s reconsideration powers, and limits communities accessing the research and advice from third party civil society groups (like the Australia Institute) is that it protects jobs.

If a toxic sludge company was pouring toxic sludge into waterways every single day, but employed 60 people, would you stop trying to close down the toxic sludge company? Because that would be jobs too, right?

There is a narrative in the media that the salmon industry is SO important to Tasmania, because it is one of the only jobs available, which is bupkis. The industry is responsible for less than 1% of jobs in Tasmania. And in Macquarie Harbour itself? It’s 60 jobs. SIXTY. It would be cheaper to help those workers transition into other jobs than continue to prop up a foreign owned industry that pays no tax in Australia and sends its profits off-shore. But everyone is convinced it’s about ‘jobs’.

Hanson-Young says:

That’s one of the crazy things about this is that the impact on the environment and the clean, green image of Tasmanian food and the environment is all at risk because of this. These companies don’t pay any tax. They’re trashing our waterways, pushing animals to extinction and what they’ve got now because of the Labor Party and the Liberal Party’s lack of courage, bowing to the pressures of the corporations, is a law that gives them a carve-out from environmental protection. Who is next? If you can do it for the rotten salmon industry it will be the gas industry or coal industry or big polluters next.

Sarah Hanson-Young said it was worth bringing a dead (plastic wrapped) fish into the senate chamber, even if she didn’t convince the Coalition to vote against Labor’s laws and the Greens will now use it as an election issue (the environment, not the dead senate fish):

Yes, it absolutely wasn’t the reason being, of course, this terrible law that has now passed the Parliament under 4 hours from the moment it was introduced was being done under the cover of the Federal Budget. The Federal Government, the Labor Party, didn’t want people to know they were doing this. They wanted it rammed through while everybody was distracted on their budget night announcements. So, you know, we have at least put the spotlight on what’s happened. This is really bad. This is a bad law that is now going to mean that, you know, when there are activities underway that are trashing the environment, that are pushing animals to extinction, that the Environment Minister no longer has the power to step in and say, “Hang on a minute, we got to have a look at this and we have to make sure we can look after the environment and stop or modify the dangerous and damaging activity.” This is a gut to Australia’s environment protections, and what it means is that Australia’s environment laws are now worse than they were when the Labor Party came to office and that is absolutely shameful. It’s going to be an election issue. The environment is a major concern to Australians and we’re going to take this fight all the way to the ballot-box.

Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young has also been doing the media rounds this morning and said the government spending $37m re-oxygenating Macquarie Harbour to help improve water quality and save the Maugean Skate (the salmon farms are leading to a decrease in oxygen in the natural waterway, which is one of the issues impacting the skate) shows that there is a massive problem with having salmon farms in the area:

That says everything – and they got these foreign-owned salmon corporations that don’t pay any tax that are trashing and polluting the waterways, pushing our native species to the brink of extinction, and the taxpayer is funding millions and millions of dollars to put oxygen into the water, to oxygenate the water to look after the skate because these companies want to keep making rotten, stinking profits off this rotten stinking salmon industry.

Let’s take a look at the Coalition’s temporary fuel excise cut.

Because that is what it is. Temporary.

So it will come through faster than Labor’s tax cut top up, but won’t be part of the system. That is how they are costing it at $6bn – because if they were to extend it over three years, then it would be $1bn more than Labor’s tax cut plan (which is $17bn over three years)

The messaging will work well with the Coalition’s base – white men with giant utes – but probably won’t do a lot to convince the undecideds.

Greg Jericho tells me this will be the first Coalition since 1972 to not have a tax cut policy.

Taylor’s line is that it comes through immediately, unlike the tax cuts that won’t flow through for another 15 months. Labor has already put through tax cuts, which people are seeing reflected in their pays, and is hoping that will be enough of a reminder that it is helping people with cost of living, along with the temporary extension of the energy rebates.

The Coalition is hoping that it will seem like it is being ‘more economically responsible’. Because they don’t need the tax cuts to pay for the fuel excise – the excise will be finished before the tax cuts flow through.

It’s more tinkering – the Coalition isn’t offering anything in terms of structural reforms, and it will appeal best to those already voting for them. But this election isn’t going to be fought on policy, just vibes. And the Coalition is hoping some of those vibes will go their way.