It has been a quieter week 2 of the Federal campaign with both major parties taking a truce of no campaigning on Good Friday, Easter Sunday and Anzac Day. That being said there were still stories to come from the week of campaigning with the Water Buyback scandal particularly playing a big part of the campaign. More on that later in the blog but this blog will focus on the chronological order of events from this weeks campaign as well as talk about the limited polling to come from the campaign trail this last week.
So both sides of Politics laid down arms on Good Friday with a break from campaigning for the Holy day. Saturday saw both sides reengage in campaigning with Scott Morrison starting in Melbourne and Bill Shorten starting in Sydney. The Coalition pledged more money for health spending per (1) for rural and remote regions a push to try and connect to alienated country voters who have been angry at the perceived lack of action from this government in the country. They also pledged money towards a Cystic Fibrosis unit in a Sydney hospital. Bill Shorten and Labor, on the other hand, focused on penalty rates and the amount of money regular Australians would lose under the cuts to penalty rates on Public Holidays. Now Labor blames the Coalition for this which is a misnomer because it was the independent Fair Work Commission who decided to cut penalty rates. I would also say that the importance of public holidays has lessened over the years as the public demand for 24/7 access to goods and services has lessened the importance of public holidays. Labor obviously plan to reverse the penalty rate cuts in government but that will open a Pandora’s box because it sets a precedent that people can just ignore the sanctity of the independence of the FWC.
Easter Sunday saw another break in campaigning by both major sides of Parliament but it also saw the real pickup of the water buyback scandal under Barnaby Joyce. (2) has a good explanation of the Water Buyback scandal. Barnaby Joyce approved a water deal that totalled $80 million of which the company cashed in a $52 million profit that they then off sourced to a company in the tax-free haven of the Cayman Islands. The other player in this deal is Angus Taylor the Energy Minister who co-founded the company that the government purchased the water from. Angus Taylor to his credit ceased association with this company before he became an MP. Rex Patrick the Centre Alliance senator from South Australia has called for a royal commission into water buybacks from the Murray Darling Basin as have the Greens. At first, the Coalition and Labor disagreed with this motion although as I will talk about later the Labor Party have softened their opposition to this. Easter Sunday also saw the Sri Lankan terrorist attacks and both sides of Parliament offered statesmen like statements condemning the attacks and offering their sympathies to the families of the victims.
Monday saw the resumption of the election campaign with Bill Shorten in Cairns and Scott Morrison in Melbourne again looking to play defence on avoiding the loss of Victorian seats of which there are a number of seats at play. Bill Shorten was in Cairns to play defence himself looking to keep hold of the seat of Herbert. Labor focussed on the Water Buyback system again as well as Penalty rates again. The Liberal Party tried rather unsuccessfully to deflect attacks on them about water buybacks by focussing on buybacks that the Labor Party made while they were in government. Barnaby Joyce had a disastrous interview with Patricia Karvales where he tried to defend his position on the water buybacks scandal. He tried to say he was at arm’s length of the deal and claim it was government officials who made the decision on Water. The government also wanted to talk about aged care and allowing multicultural companies to provide health care to the elderly.
Day 13 of the campaign started with Scott Morrison moving to Adelaide where he was targeting the seat of Mayo which is held by Centre Alliance candidate Rebekah Sharkie while on the defence trying to hang onto Boothby where Nicole Flint is on the nose having supported Peter Dutton in the leadership spill last year. Bill Shorten meanwhile stayed in Queensland where he was on the offence trying to take the seats of Flynn and Dawson. Dawson is particularly of note as that is where George Christiansen has been under fire for all of his time spent in Manila with his now fiancé. Watergate continued to trend throughout the day with Labor saying the government should hold an inquiry into the issue. Highlights of the day are highlighted in (3). Apart from Watergate, the Labor Party promised an inquiry into the scope of the inland rail project. The Farmers Federation are in favour with them hoping it will shed light on the route selection for the project and financing of the project. Labor is also planning on using the Northern Infrastructure Fund to fund gas projects across the country which is not popular in all quarters. Labor also announced a move to ban gay conversion therapy which would nationalise a decision already taken by Victoria, the government response was that this therapy was rubbish but the decision to ban gay conversion therapy should be a state decision. The government, on the other hand, to try and boost its LGBTI credentials announced money towards funding mental health assistance for LGBTI people. The government also announced a death tax advertisement despite Labor ruling it out as official policy.
Day 14 of the campaign saw Scott Morrison head up north to the Northern Territory where he was on the attack looking to link the Territories poor performance economically to the poor Economic credentials of the Labor Federal Party. I doubt Solomon and Lingiari are in play despite the high profile candidate of Jacinta Price for the seat of Lingiari. Bill Shorten meanwhile was back in Queensland trying to play defence in the seat of Herbert. The Labor Party stopped short of announcing a royal commission into Watergate but did announce a Commission of Inquiry into the purchases of water made by Barnaby Joyce. Now, these Commission of Inquiries are rare with the last one being held into the conduct of Lionel Murphy a Labor Attorney General who apparently bribed a police officer. Details of that Commission can be found in (4). Labor also announced a policy allowing casual worker of more than 12 months to be allowed to go to FWA to try and become a permanent staff member. That would help to stop the casualisation of the workforce where workers can be hired and fired a lot easier than if they are on a more permanent contract. The Coalition announced policies to make life easier for Veteran Australians as Anzac Day closed in. On the Economic front, The Australian Bureau of Statistics announced inflation was zero percent which more than likely will lead to a rates cut next month for Interest Rates.
Anzac Day was a quiet day on the campaign trail as both sides of the political spectrum agreed to suspend campaigning for the day. The big news out of the day was a formal preference deal between the Coalition and the Clive Palmer led United Australian Party. This is important as Clive Palmer has spent a bucketload of money on campaigning across the country and polling suggests he will be a not insignificant part of the polling night possible polling north of 10% in some seats. The controversy of this preference deal is that Clive Palmer failed to pay the workers of Queensland Nickel when that company went bust so it’s not a great look for the PM to do a deal with Clive Palmer in that light. In fairness to the Liberal Party, the Labor Party were trying to do the same thing. Also of interest is that last time Clive Palmer ran in 2013 despite the preference deal with the Liberal Party the voters did not necessarily follow those preferences with only 53% of preferences going to the Liberal Party on a 2PP basis.
It’s been a quiet fortnight so far in terms of polling released with only 2 official polls released this week. One was a Roy Morgan poll which had the Labor Party ahead 51-49 on LNP 39% short of that magical 40% it would at least need to win the election. Labor were 35.5%, Greens 9.5%, One Nation 4.5% and Clive Palmer UAP 2%. (5) has a summary of the voting intentions. Newspoll meanwhile had seat polling out for 4 pivotal seats across the country. Now the margin of error for these polls was around 4% but they still offer a picture of where the race is in marginal seats. In Lindsay Labor is credited a 51-49 % vote, Herbert and Pearce are credited at 50-50 while the LNP is ahead 51-49 % in Deakin. United Australia Party is the real winners in this polling with their vote at anywhere between 8 to 14 %.
Thank you for reading my blog post, stay tuned next week for my summary of the third week of the campaign.
References
(1): https://www.sbs.com.au/news/day-10-of-the-federal-election-campaign_1
(4):https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-09-11/the-lionel-murphy-files-to-be-released/8731632
Political Musings from the Man Down Under 