Fri 2 May
This blog, much like the election campaign, is now closed.
The ABS will release its retail trade data a little bit later this morning, which is basically an insight into how we are all feeling about spending.
Economists think we are still all a bit scarred with predictions low – an increase of only 0.4% or so seems to be the consensus.
For those who don’t know, Farmers Union Iced Coffee is an absolute ICON of South Australia and Albanese took advantage of it yesterday to push his fee free TAFE policy.
Albanese told a radio station about three years ago that he quite likes a sip of milk in between pieces of salami. He called it a “taste cleanser” in between different varieties of salami. (Anyone who is terminally online may remember ‘a cat can have a little piece of salami has a treat’ from a few years ago, which is all I can think of right now’.
Anyway, this image may have won him some votes in SA. It is nice to see a politician drink something that isn’t a beer on an election campaign (Albanese is off the beers apparently, which is probably the only way you get through an election campaign. Or it would be if you are smart. Which I am not)
Jane Hume finishes with:
Democracy sausages are my favourite meal. If I was on death row and they asked me what my last meal would be? A sausage in bread with onion and tomato sauce.
Would Jane Hume support Angus Taylor as leader?
It is too early to have those conversations. You don’t read the entrails til you’ve gutted the chicken. We will be working for every vote up until 6:00 on election day. We cannot afford three more years of Labor.
Haruspicy is the reading of entrails of sacrificed animals. Big in ancient Rome. The Babylonians loved themselves some entrails reading. Crops dying? What does the sheep’s liver have to say about it all? Not sure who the chicken is in this situation, but maybe Peter Dutton should sleep with one eye open.
Jane Hume is asked if she can be positive about Anthony Albanese and says:
I will be honest with you, I don’t really know Anthony Albanese. We are in different houses and I have never worked in a portfolio that he has. I don’t really speak to him in the corridors, that friendly image is not something that I have seen. I will give a compliment to Richard Marles who is a very good friend and a good fellow. He is a fellow Victorian, I have a lot to do with him. He and I are co-conveners of the Parliamentary Friendship Group of AFL and we have footy in common. I will compliment him.
If Peter Dutton loses tomorrow, he also effectively loses his career, so does Richard Marles have anything nice to say about him?
(Why is everyone so obsessed with making politicians be nice to each other? Keep the hits on the policy and the direction and not the personal and it shouldn’t matter!)
Marles isn’t falling for it:
I have been asked this question before and what will happen here is the Liberal Party will chop this up and it will be broadcast everywhere over the next 24 hours. You will forgive me for not going into it fulsomely. What I would say is there is a lot more friendships and fraternity across the aisle than what people perhaps expect.
We all experience politics together. I genuinely do think the vast bulk of people who enter parliament, irrespective of their party do so with a sincerity about the national interest and that is the fundamental thing we all have in common and it is possible to build relationships and to build friendships across the aisle.
I personally value that and I think it is important for the Australian people to know that their elected officials, even though they come from different parties, have those relationships and that is important in terms of critical moments, national security being an obvious one, where we are able to work together to maintain confidences and to act very much with the sincerity of pursuing the national interest. That’s how I feel. I know that is how Peter feels too.
Does Richard Marles agree that there needs to be rules put in place that costings are released much earlier in the campaign?
Marles:
I think people can make their own judgement about the confidence of the Coalition in respect of their costings, that they left it until a moment when five million Australians are already voted. One in four Australians had already voted. That says everything about how they saw their own costings. What we got, ultimately, was a complete joke.
There is barely any detail. They are talking – despite the fact that they have made clear their intent to engage in wholesale cuts to front line public services, to health, to pensions and the like, that is what they will need to do. They haven’t been able to explain how they are going to pay for things like the tax breaks for business lunches.
They haven’t been able to explain where their $350 billion of cuts are coming from before you get to a point of explaining the $600 billion that they will need to provide for in order to do a nuclear-powered scheme.
None of that is there and, despite all of that, the one thing they did tell us is for two of the three years of the next term in government, they will be worse off in terms of the Budget bottom line than Labor. It is a joke and it is not surprising that they left it so late.
Does Richard Marles think that this Labor government could be the first to be re-elected with a majority since Paul Keating? He tells ABC News Breakfast:
I think – that is in the interests of the Australian people, having majority government really contributes to having much more stable government going forward and so that is certainly what we have sought to achieve in this campaign. If you look at the seats we have been targeting and how we have been going about this campaign, we are seeking majority government, we are seeking to hold all the seats that we currently hold and win more seats off the Coalition.
I am very mindful that this is ultimately a matter for the Australian people and I have gone into elections before where I thought there was going to be one outcome and there ends up being another, so I won’t give any predictions about it.
Media outlets will begin rolling out their editorials on who they believe should win the election – gotta say, this one came as a huge shock.
Greens leader Adam Bandt is breaking from tradition and will cast his ballot today, as part of the early vote, to make his points that a) people want this election over with and b) Gen Z and millennials are voting on the climate and rental crises and can’t keep being overlooked.
Bandt:
There are seven million renters across the country who are tired of being overlooked by Labor and the Liberals. They know that we can’t keep voting for the same two parties and expecting a different result.
Young people face a future of being worse off than previous generations after years of Labor and the Liberals tinkering around the edges of the housing, rental, cost of living and climate crises.
With Gen Z and millennial voters outnumbering baby boomers for the first time, they are incredibly powerful this election and are raring to make their voice heard.
Young people know that voting Greens is iconic behaviour (No. Stop this) and they can use their numbers to outvote the wealthy property investors and climate deniers.
With a minority Parliament on the cards, a vote for the Greens this election will keep Dutton out and get Labor to act by putting dental into Medicare, capping rents, helping first home buyers by winding back tax handouts to wealthy property investors and stopping new coal and gas.”
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