Abbott/Liberal Govt Watch

[am Bays]

Libs now in front in Macquarie by 23 votes, according to the ABC election website.

Sarah Richards was behind by over 300 votes this morning. 85.8 % of the vote has been counted.

LNP could end up with 78 seats if as expected as Bass and Chisholm fall their way too (they are leading by over 400 votes in both of them).

Amazing result really

[Sheik Yerbouti]

'' Bob Brown’s anti-Adani convoy rolled through the Sunshine State, demanding voters shun coal, he hammered a nail in Bill Shorten’s electoral coffin.''

Anyone else thinks that this makes sense?
Queensland was the big swing & don't think a Bob Brown led mob of artists, professional protesters & champagne socialists would have gone down that well.

My missus clued onto this & cleared a grand on the libs win.

[tigerpie]

Why are the people getting so upset?

They do realise Bill was promising the world and would have delivered a 2nd hand atlas.

And its only 3yrs. Labor will win next election.

I think a lot of people wanted meaningful action on the climate crisis, which won't happen with the re election of a party deeply embedded within the coal industry

I get the feeling that people in Australia think, what's the point of us doing too much if the rest of the world is sitting on their hands. Global warming is an international issue that needs all countries on board.

100% correct.

But someone has to lead the charge, someone has to be first.
Why not us?

[mighty_tiger_79]

We can't afford it.

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[Q.]

We can't afford it.

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The election is over, you can stop repeating Morrison's lies.

http://www.tai.org.au/sites/default/fil ... B%255d.pdf

[mighty_tiger_79]

We can't afford it.

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The election is over, you can stop repeating Morrison's lies.

http://www.tai.org.au/sites/default/fil ... B%255d.pdf

Nice read.


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[Q.]

'' Bob Brown’s anti-Adani convoy rolled through the Sunshine State, demanding voters shun coal, he hammered a nail in Bill Shorten’s electoral coffin.''

Anyone else thinks that this makes sense?
Queensland was the big swing & don't think a Bob Brown led mob of artists, professional protesters & champagne socialists would have gone down that well.

My missus clued onto this & cleared a grand on the libs win.

The Murdoch media concentration is greatest in QLD, which is a contributing factor (ie. years and years of rhetoric that Labor are poor economic managers), but much of the above is true in a sense.

I think many fail to understand how dire the situation is in rural QLD. Livestock are being put down from lack of feed & water and business are failing because of lack of cash flow. People are scared and just want to be able to put food on the dinner table, so they hunker down and stick with what they know. Having a bunch of urbanites roll in to tell you how things are going to be from now on has the opposite of the intended effect.

Farmers in Australia have reduced annual emissions by over 60% over the past few decades without compensation and have done more for the climate than any other sector. Asking regional Australia to continue to carry the burden of offsets is a shit deal.

[Also, let's factor in that the QLD Labor environmental policy - ie. land clearing legislation - has been disastrous for farmers]

[Q.]

FYI, the Adani coalmine is going to be a disaster, but the communication to the region that it will be so has also been a disaster.

[tigerpie]

We can't afford it.

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The election is over, you can stop repeating Morrison's lies.

http://www.tai.org.au/sites/default/fil ... B%255d.pdf

Nice read.


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Ozone layer says hi.
Didn't break us when cfc's were banned.

[Jimmy_041]

I am not a climate change denier.

What I do not support is the destruction of Australian industry / jobs when we can make eff-all difference and those that can; do nothing.
It's like saying Little Johnny's vote in Hobart will decide the election result.

We make up about 1% of the problem. And where will all of that industry go when it is too expensive to operate here? China, India, Indonesia etc etc etc - the worst polluters doing eff-all about it.

And coal is not the only source of the problem. Let's kill all the cows whilst we're there. That'll please the tree huggers and the vegans all in one.
We should also drain the oceans and concrete in the volcanos



Funny how the lefties are totally against nuclear



Their way or the highway

I have an alternative strategy - lets plant millions of extra trees. That should please everyone.

It's like saying, don't bother voting because it doesn't make a difference.

Fossil fuels are literally the source of the problem. The role of livestock in contributing to global warming is way overplayed by vegan activists.

The nuclear analysis has been done to death. Nuclear is high cost and the pay off occurs over a long time period. Ie. would drive the cost of electricity higher in Aus and is no longer an economically viable option given the advancement of other technology.

"Their way or the highway"

[Jimmy_041]

Would you suggest having a healthy debate with an anti-vaxxer on whether vaccines cause autism and hold off getting your own kids vaccinated until you've assessed whether their feelpinion has merit, or do you just trust the science and get your kids vaccinated? Yeah, you trust the science and take action.

The vaccine debate:
Huge positive (ie: not getting diseased) with a substantial likelihood (ie: 99% confidence of success). vs Mildly bad outcome (autism) with a very low likelihood (almost zero).

By contrast, the proposed climate policies are essentially higher taxes (wealth redistribution) FALSE TRUE and unreliable power supply FALSE. Actually this is true. Very reliable. No power when the wind stops or the sun goes down. These are what I would consider to be bigger negatives, and considerably more likely than the draw backs of vaccination. As for the positives? Some would say at 400ppm we have already gone too far and are doomed so it doesn't even matter...FALSE

[Q.]

Would you suggest having a healthy debate with an anti-vaxxer on whether vaccines cause autism and hold off getting your own kids vaccinated until you've assessed whether their feelpinion has merit, or do you just trust the science and get your kids vaccinated? Yeah, you trust the science and take action.

The vaccine debate:
Huge positive (ie: not getting diseased) with a substantial likelihood (ie: 99% confidence of success). vs Mildly bad outcome (autism) with a very low likelihood (almost zero).

By contrast, the proposed climate policies are essentially higher taxes (wealth redistribution) FALSE TRUE and unreliable power supply FALSE. Actually this is true. Very reliable. No power when the wind stops or the sun goes down. These are what I would consider to be bigger negatives, and considerably more likely than the draw backs of vaccination. As for the positives? Some would say at 400ppm we have already gone too far and are doomed so it doesn't even matter...FALSE

Thanks Chris Uhlmann. Contrary to what you think, climate policy is not part of some globalist socialist agenda looking to redistribute wealth.

And the "unrelaible power" is a cheap lie:

Over the last summer, with 50 per cent wind and solar, South Australia can lay claim to having the most reliable grid in the country. Unlike the previous summer, with severe weather events and mis-steps by the market operator, there were no major outages.

It reminds us that the overwhelming majority of outages in Australia – more than 97 per cent – are caused by faults in the local network, such as transformers failing or trees falling on wires. They have nothing to do with renewables.

What’s really exciting about South Australia’s grid is the introduction of Australia’s first, and the world’s biggest, utility scale lithium-ion battery at Hornsdale, which has demonstrated speed and versatility unseen before in the grid.

https://reneweconomy.com.au/five-myths- ... rgy-59004/

[Jimmy_041]

Yes I read Renew Energy

Ahhhhh, the Tesla battery.
One bloke boasts, in Parliament, how HE created the national power management system
Two blokes determined to destroy our own power generation turn down a cheap option for political reasons with NO plan to replace the generation.
It all backfires causing mayhem.
Two blokes sitting at a pub see a government in trouble............. Have a bet and one gets to make a profit out of the dilemma.
Another hundred day bet and it starts to ensure a win for the bettor.

The original two blokes then blow $550m (to keep their jobs) on "SA's state-owned backup power station" run by, wait for it: diesel..............
and the rest is history
**** me. Wonder why old people like me are disengaged?

[MW]

You guys sound so grown up

[nuggety goodness]

You guys sound so grown up

Kinda like politicians...

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[Jimmy_041]

You guys sound so grown up

Kinda like politicians...

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Yep; that’s how good our political class are.
All quoted persons have never had a real job

[Jimmy_041]

Just watched Albo on an ABC advertorial
Both are in denial

[Jimmy_041]

Just had this sent to me by a mate...

The attachment IMG_2662.jpg is no longer available

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Sorry NG your post highights one of the problem with society at the minute people can post sh!t on Bookface and people re-circulate it and opinions get taken as fact. yes it's supposed to be a p!sstake I get that.

I watched the ABC all night and that is not how it went. they were quite balanced. Yes some of the pundits allowed their views to come through for both sides of the political divide but at no stage did anyone on the ABC coverage say the "voters are dumb", "lets have a re-election", "it's Newscorps fault".

The political bullsh!t on Facebook is astounding and not funny. It gives that 1% of the population on either side of the political divide the opportunity espouse hatetred, bullsh!t and down-right lies.

It was fun watching Wong at her sanctimonious best. She really doesn’t realise that pi$$es a lot of middle Australia off. Then again, I don’t think she cares. Far superior to the rest of us deplorables

[Jimmy_041]

Inside the team that lost it for Labor

http://www.afr.com/news/politics/nation ... 51p8x?btis

At a stark airport hotel in Essendon, a shell-shocked Bill Shorten stared into a stunned, sometimes-weeping crowd and a bristling wall of cameras to announce that he had failed. His was an inspirational concession, showing the best side of himself. But he would not be prime minister and Labor had not won government. They had launched a thousand policies. They had flown close to the sun. And they had fallen.

Shorten had watched the votes come through in the hours before, in a room at the Hyatt in Melbourne together with his family and closest advisers: chief of staff Ryan Liddell, speechwriter James Newton and advisers Sharon McCrohan and Peter Barron (a veteran of the great Hawke days). They were shattered. If there was a moment when the water turned to ice, it was now.

Shorten had made it clear that very afternoon that he hoped to form government. He had showed a breezy confidence. But every seat they thought was lineball had gone against them. When the truth could no longer be held back, Shorten phoned Scott Morrison to concede, then took a car to the airport venue where tired Labor supporters waited. He would consign his imagined prime ministership – and Labor’s hopes for power – to the dustbin of eternity.

Labor’s campaign director and national secretary Noah Carroll, his two assistant secretaries Paul Erickson and Sebastian Zwalf, communications director Gerard Richardson and a group from the target seats had set up their computers in a back room at the same airport hotel located in a property development known as Essendon Fields. It was a short walk along a corridor from the party machine’s “count room” to the stage where Shorten would later arrive to declare himself defeated and resign. Yet Carroll had told his staff at campaign headquarters that day that while he had never put the election "in the bag", he was cautiously optimistic.

The night before, however, Carroll had been subdued, according to some he spoke to. His mood had changed markedly two weeks before, after an upbeat tone in earlier weeks. If that reflected doubt, then CHQ had not signalled that the campaign was in trouble.


Hard road ... Chief of staff Ryan Liddell on the Labor campaign trail. Pamela Williams
Now, the reality unfolded before them on small computer screens in an ordinary room on a flight path near the airport. From the moment the early numbers came in, it was trouble. At first they put it down to small booths. Then the bigger booths came in.

And so it rolled in. As the hours clicked by, they still thought seats like Boothby looked good and they waited for the count in Western Australia. They gave up around 10.30. The ABC’s election analyst Antony Green had called a win for the Coalition just after 9.30pm.

Nothing explained the gulf between the 37 per cent primary vote they anticipated and the sub-34 they landed at. The last Galaxy poll had Labor at 38 on the primary and Newspoll said 37. As Shorten put it later, they didn’t get enough votes.


Speech writer James Newton and senior press secretary Fiona Sugden on April 11 in the Darling Street Espresso cafe near Bill Shorten's home in Moonee Ponds, back on the day the campaign started. Supplied
Shorten had come through a radical union past and survived a royal commission many thought was called to destroy him. He had weathered the fallout of his role in the coups that tore down two Labor prime ministers between 2010 and 2013, and he had held the leadership of his party for 5½ long years. He had outlasted two Liberal prime ministers taken down by their own side, but he had not beaten the third, Scott Morrison in this, the last race.

The devastating results had flowed in from mountain townships, across streams, from the hot Far North, around the suburban freeway belts and in through the cities. Shorten had tried to seize the day, the night and the future. But he came up empty handed on Saturday. By morning, his old foe in Labor, Anthony Albanese, had already declared his hand for the leadership.

The agenda had been too big and Shorten’s own popularity too low. These two factors tied together, then injected with a hyper-boost of Clive Palmer and Pauline Hanson, had turned it all toxic.


At Labor HQ in Parramatta, Sydney on May 9: from left, director of target seats Paul Erickson, campaign director Noah Carroll, communications director Gerard Richardson and campaign HQ chief of staff Yvette Nash. Ryan Stuart
By Sunday midday, the knives were being drawn in Labor dens. Some criticised Shorten (small thanks for his work holding the party together for nearly six years), others attacked Carroll, who was close to Shorten and a former Victorian state director who had pulled off the Dan Andrews victory in 2014.

“Our research was shit,” said one central figure bluntly. Another, brutally, asked, “Where was Noah?”

If the research had been right and Labor was in for a hiding, this was kept tight. Some Labor insiders claimed on Monday that Shorten knew he would struggle to win outright, others said he was floored by the result. How had the party research been so wrong? And if the party research was right, why hadn’t they been told?


Setting the dial ... Noah Carroll, (in suit), Sharon McCrohan and Darren Moss. Ryan Stuart
In the second-last week, Shorten’s group was told by campaign headquarters that WA was looking at a state-wide swing to Labor of 3 per cent. In Tassie, Bass was running 54-46 in their favour. By Saturday night it was too close to call. Carroll, however, had been voicing concerns about Braddon – now in the Liberals’ column. But Labor research had suggested the primary vote for the Coalition had softened in the last few days of the campaign. If that was true, it had roared off again.

On Sunday, hats were already off to the other side. “Hirsty (Andrew Hirst, the Liberals’ federal director and campaign boss) killed us in their targeted campaign,” one beaten Labor strategist moaned.

Noah Carroll had sidelined the ALP’s traditional pollster John Utting. This time, he had brought in Galaxy YouGov for the quantitative polling – the track polls. Utting had been Labor’s inside choice since the campaign fought by Keating against Howard in 1996. He was still on the 2019 campaign, travelling Australia constantly throughout the election, but now he ran only qualitative work – the focus groups. Stephen Mills, a former partner of Utting, now owned their old company UMR. Mills wason the Labor campaign too, doing both qualitative and quantitative research.


Eyes on the boss ... Shorten media advisers, from left, Sarah Michael, Fiona Sugden and Jinane Bou-Assi. Pamela Williams
But if Labor’s research was off, so were the public polls which by Saturday morning were indicating – with all the usual caveats – a firm Labor victory or even a big win.

This was one of Australia’s greatest political defeats. Shorten had unified his party, but as the frontrunner, and coming from opposition, he had also run the loudest, riskiest federal election campaign in 25 years. But Australians had not wanted a new vision. They had rejected Labor’s world of free teeth for the elderly, free cancer scans, vastly pumped-up domestic violence policies, childcare benefits unimagined, and a whopping budget surplus.

They had rejected the downside of the redistribution calculation that would pay for this – ending negative gearing and franking credits, doubling capital gains tax. Much of this lay in the future, but the future was where aspiration lay: for retirees supporting themselves, property investors, investors of any kind; baby boomers; wishful young people; tradies on the way up; and Queenslanders, a breed unto themselves.


Waiting for Bill ... the Darling Street Espresso cafe in Moonee Ponds, not far from Shorten's home. Pamela Williams
Shorten had taken them all on. They had said no and slammed the door loudly to make sure Labor got the message. And if climate change was a youth vote, the nation’s youth had not turned out for Labor.

Like a boulder

Bill Shorten’s long run would be remembered in the history books not for its transformation of Australia, but for the moment it came face-to-face with the national psyche.

John Howard had earned the ridicule of the elites in 1996 when he declared in an interview on the ABC’s Four Corners with the late Liz Jackson that Australians wanted to be relaxed and comfortable. Shorten in 2019 would discover that Howard had been right, both then and now. Howard, a foe to be reckoned with, wasted no niceties on Shorten on Sunday, calling Labor’s campaign a bid to divide the nation.


Hot seat ... chief of staff Ryan Liddell, left, with Bill Shorten on the "Bill bus". Andrew Meares
Like a boulder rolling noisily down a slope all the way from the 1996 Mundingburra byelection in Queensland that swept the Goss Labor government from office, the message from the north smashed into the Shorten campaign on Saturday night.

It would remain a mystery that Labor had ever persuaded itself that a stack of cuts to negative gearing, franking credits and capital gains tax, all bound up with a big climate change push, could lure Queensland (home to the retiree in the sun and the sugar cane farmer with his take-no-prisoners conservatism) over to their side.

There were also wage increases and penalty rate rises and promised surpluses, but somehow all of these messages had not been united. Instead there seemed to be on one side a mass of cuts to financial instruments the community relied upon for personal wealth creation – attractive to the span from retirees to tradies – and on the other side, wages rises, childcare, cancer support and teeth. Shorten called it cutting perks from the big end of town to give everyone else a fair go. This was the arc of defeat. As Wayne Goss immortally noted of the Keating government’s chances in 1996: “Queenslanders are sitting on their verandas with baseball bats, just waiting … they don’t care how long they have to wait …”

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Five weeks before it had all seemed so hopeful.

On Thursday April 11, the weather in Melbourne was 12 degrees and partly sunny with a few light clouds – a classic autumn day, with winter tingling its intent but still around the corner.

Two men and a woman leaned over a table spread with laptops, newspapers and coffee in the Darling Street Espresso in Moonee Ponds. It was the same cafe where they always waited for the boss, Bill Shorten. But this morning the earth had turned an extra revolution. The federal election was on – the unlosable election. And all they had to do now was win.

Shorten stepped out into the crisp air, leaving his home, taking the first steps of the real campaign. After all the years of preparation this was a walk towards his dream – and a destiny he hoped would place him in a long line of Labor heroes going back 118 years.

Ryan Liddell, James Newton and senior press secretary Fiona Sugden packed up their laptops in the cafe and drove Shorten and his wife Chloe to a nearby park where they shot some video to keep in the can about why he wanted to become prime minister.

Then they all got into the people-mover to drive out to the Liberal-held seat of Deakin, with Shorten’s federal police detachment, for his first official campaign speech. It was the seat held by a leading Liberal warrior, Michael Sukkar, a player in the campaign against Malcolm Turnbull eight months before.

Morrison might “own” the flags and the pomp of office, but Shorten was going to telegraph his confidence with a press conference in a suburban yard in a marginal Liberal electorate – Sukkar’s seat – a seat that could signal recent leadership chaos on the other side.

Nine hundred kilometres away in the western Sydney suburb of Parramatta, more than 140 Labor campaign staff poured in through the glass foyer doors of the nondescript high rise, Gough Whitlam Plaza, on Wentworth Street. Many had picked up their first coffee at Circa Espresso across the road.

The campaign director and ALP national secretary Noah Carroll had started rolling his operations into two floors of Whitlam Plaza the week before. If Shorten and his travelling plane of shadow frontbenchers and staff were the head and heart of the campaign, Carroll’s war room was the muscle. The motors inside the campaign for the prime ministership were roaring on both sides and they would not stop until May 18.

Carroll was a creature of Labor, with a reputation honed in research, who masterminded the successful campaign to install Dan Andrews as Premier in Victoria. He became national secretary and successor to George Wright – who fought Labor’s 2016 near-victory against Turnbull – after Wright quit for the corporate world. Carroll was from Shorten’s factional Right base in Victoria.

He gathered his teams together – top party officials, his ad men, his research people, the marginal seats experts, the tactics set, the policy group, the media strategists, the digital groups, and the intel people who would spend their days trying to detect what was happening on the other side – all the campaign brains that fit together to run the motor.

Their opponents, Carroll warned, did not even believe they had a right to be there. Labor would have to muscle up – to own the campaign. By the end, they should all know that they had done everything they could, that they had left nothing in the locker.

Sharon McCrohan was based in Parramatta CHQ for the duration. Occasionally she would join Shorten on the road – switching between CHQ and the plane and the "Bill bus" with Liddell. She was a consultant and top adviser to Shorten. Some described her as Shorten’s Sally Cray – a nod to Malcolm Turnbull’s forthright principal private secretary.

McCrohan came with her own links to the Victorian Right; she had been director of communications and strategy for two Victorian premiers – John Brumby and Steve Bracks. Later she left for a consulting career in political strategy. She joined Shorten in February last year, but she was employed by the Labor Party. She came for sitting weeks and attended campaign meetings, but she had stayed beneath the media radar.

Week one brought the brutal reality home sharply. This was a very different campaign to 2016; back then, with no expectation Shorten could possibly win, he was rarely asked for deep policy details. Now the expectation was alive that Shorten would romp home.

Now the media wanted details and they wanted to pick holes in the details. Shorten had a massive suite of policies, growing by the day, with big new announcements. The noise from journalists had gone from three out of 10 to nine out of 10. And the difference between the media on the campaign trail and Parliament was just as stark. Toughness had given way to brutality. Everyone was in this race.

Noah Carroll had expected Morrison to call on the Governor-General on the Friday after the April 2 budget. Given the flaunting by Treasurer Josh Frydenberg and Morrison of a surplus, calling an election straight away would have knocked Labor. The surplus had not yet materialised, but like a pavlova going into the oven, it offered a tantalising promise.

The days ticked by with Shorten’s team and CHQ electric with anticipation. Finally, some of Carroll’s operatives with a glass to the wall of the Liberals had some intelligence on Wednesday April 10 from sources on the other side that Morrison would go the next day.

This intel was sharply and weirdly confirmed when the political editor of The Daily Telegraph, Sharri Markson, told Sky News on the Wednesday night that Morrison planned to fly to Canberra that night under cover of “darkness” then drive straight to Yarralumla – without alerting media. He would then, Markson said, fly off again to Tasmania where the Liberals hoped to win three seats from Labor. He would “pop up” in the morning to announce the election was on for May 18.

“That’s what he was intending to do – unless we’ve spoiled his plans,” Markson laughed.

Markson’s solid sources on the right of the Liberal Party had often been evident, and especially so during the paroxysms that accompanied the fall of Turnbull last year. What she declared now – displaying considerable confidence – about a Prime Minister paying a secret late-night visit to the Governor-General in the dark, then ducking off to Tasmania for “an announce” the next day, sounded like something from a political novel.

But Markson had solid history when it came to insider Liberal stories, particularly around Peter Dutton and Scott Morrison.

The Telegraph front page buzzed up on mobile phones and devices later on the Wednesday night, displaying the big headline for the next day’s print edition: “It’s On – PM to visit GG this morning for May 18 election.” It was clear the paper was, at the very least, in a sweet spot in terms of deep-throats in Morrison’s inner circle. They might be keeping Morrison’s plans a secret from the rest of the media, but the Telegraph had broken the important news of a federal election before 9pm the night before – in time to make page one on mobiles.

It hinted at a symbiotic relationship with the Tele and extraordinary leaks on Morrison’s side – leaks so deep that news of not just the election date, but also an alleged secret plan (apparently abandoned) to fly into Yarralumla in the dead of night then flit off to Tassie to address the nation, had been published and broadcast. Many in the media had already plumped for the view that Morrison would have the strong hands of the Murdoch media empire backing his campaign.

Carroll’s team had heard the same bizarre story that Morrison was going to the Governor-General in the dark on Wednesday. They had tipped off journalists to ensure cameras were staking it out. But Morrison, flying from Melbourne, did not land until late. Carroll’s people could be watching for the plane on a website tracker.

Morrison’s own advisers later dismissed the conspiracy theory of the Prime Minister planning to visit Sir Peter Cosgrove when the lights were out. An even wilder tale did the rounds that the Governor-General had been in his pyjamas when the PM’s office phoned and told them it was too late and to come back tomorrow. Such was the mischief that kept bored journalists and campaign strategists revved up in the witching hours between expectation and reality.

Morrison, wearing a dark suit and a light-blue tie, drove through the gates of Yarralumla early on Thursday, April 11. A handful of Adani protesters had made it in time for the waiting cameras. This was one of the spectacles of Australia’s politics: the pomp and ceremony, a Prime Minister calling on the Queen’s man, an election in his hands. The big white car emblazoned with the number plate C1, the C in red and the 1 in black, and the coat of arms: the kangaroo, the emu and the wattle. And the biggest gamble, the throw of the dice.

While Morrison headed for Yarralumla, his most trusted staff and advisers waited in his office at Parliament House. They included West Australian MP Ben Morton, who would travel with Morrison throughout the campaign; chief of staff John Kunkel (a former deputy CEO at the Minerals Council and head of government affairs for Rio Tinto), who had a party lineage going back to the Howard days; Yaron Finkelstein, another Howard government veteran and former managing director at Liberal pollsters Crosby Textor’s Australian division who would also travel with Morrison; Andrew Carswell, head of media and formerly a reporter and chief of staff at the Telegraph, media adviser Kate Williams, previously a long-time Sky News journalist; and senior media adviser Nick Creevey, who joined the government in 2015 after working in PR then briefly in media for the Commonwealth Bank.

In his press conference afterwards in the Prime Minister’s courtyard at Parliament House at 8am, Morrison made an extraordinary statement that hinted at his hopes for the future. Amid a string of messages emanating from Liberal focus group research – a fair go for a fair day’s work, a strong economy, a budget surplus and increased funding for services – the Prime Minister was asked the inevitable question about leadership instability.

His answer showed where his head was at. No one was going to remove Morrison as they had Abbott and Turnbull. “After I became Prime Minister, we changed the rules in the Liberal Party,” he said. “... those rules say that at the next election on May 18, if the Liberal National government is returned, if I’m re-elected as Prime Minister, then I will serve as your Prime Minister because the rules have changed to prevent the things that have happened in the past.”

Morrison described it as the biggest change to the party’s rules since Menzies founded the parliamentary party. It was not a policy change he had urged Turnbull to make, to stay safe from Abbott – but he would be secure himself.

At Labor CHQ, Noah Carroll soon heard that the Liberals were putting out a roadblock – a big ad buy to flood the territory. A single client was booking a huge amount of ads in print.

In that first week, Labor’s ad buyers estimated the Liberals had spent about a million trying for a massive blow to Labor’s psyche. Carroll had spent half a million. It was shock and awe from the other side – to knock Labor off any momentum. The Labor camp became increasingly nervous. Their own fundraising had been exceptional and they had a solid comfort zone. But the Coalition was spending so much. How had this happened? There was no Turnbull to provide a cushy $1.7 million lifeline when the cash ran out – not this time. They started to wonder if Andrew Hirst had crazily spent all of his money in his first weeks. It seemed out of character for Hirst.

Carroll had started his track polls four days before the election was called. Economic management was the top item for voters, with health second and climate change third. After that came education and tax.

As the week went on, health moved to the top and economic management slid as the other side sledged Labor on tax. But the big money item was climate change, which went from 16 or 17 per cent of the reason people might change their vote to 23 per cent in the top 20 marginal seats Labor was chasing – even in outer suburban and rural seats.

The two big issues for the week were the so-called Water-gate scandal, with its allegations that Energy Minister Angus Taylor was involved in water buybacks; and pressure on Shorten over costings for his climate policy – the type of pressure he had not had before. Shorten had wanted to spend the week selling his cancer benefits scheme.

Morrison had cruised into a steady start in the campaign but some serious early stumbles for Shorten were not far away and they would affect the media message for the first fortnight of the campaign. Some were small in significance but they ricocheted as the media vied for first scalps.

Shorten answered a press question by saying he had no plans to increase taxes on superannuation – notwithstanding he had a raft of policies (already announced) to raise $30 billion over a decade. It was an honest stumble as Shorten meant additional taxes, but in campaign terms it was an error. The party corrected the record and a day later Shorten corrected it too. But they had lost time in the quagmire.

Morrison had pounced, calling Shorten sneaky or clueless. Shorten struggled next over his climate policy in a heated debate with Ten Network reporter Jonathan Lea over Labor’s emissions reduction costings. Lea, a dogged reporter, continued to push at a stand-up press conference, shouting “Answer the question” as Shorten stonewalled. The journalist later posted on social media that Shorten had refused to answer five times.

Out of the blue, Shorten’s confidence was worse than shaky and something clearly popped behind the scenes. They were being attacked by sometimes-feral media travelling with Shorten and out-spun by Morrison’s camp. They had underestimated the mood in the media. Shorten was no longer just along for the ride in an election campaign the other side was bound to win. He was now a big target.

A senior press secretary, Fiona Sugden, suddenly materialised on the Shorten media bus and plane, travelling with the journalists. Her occasional disappearances from the press bus were answered when she was spotted climbing onto Shorten’s staff bus sometimes. A new tight media management strategy was evidently in play. Sugden was an experienced pro, known for her years with Kevin Rudd, and her arrival on the bus was met with admiration by the travelling posse when they discovered that she had confidential answers to their questions, but she also had five small children, including a baby.

Tomorrow, Part Two. Dirty tricks and wearing down the other side.

Multi-Walkley award-winning journalist Pamela Williams is rejoining The Australian Financial Review as writer-at-large.

[Jimmy_041]

https://www.afr.com/news/politics/natio ... 519-p51oyy

'Demonised' retirees ditched Labor, results show
Edmund Tadros

May 20, 2019 — 12.26pm

Retirees with investments likely to be hit by Labor's policy to abolish franking credits shored up Coalition votes in electorates with the highest proportion of older voters.
The average swing against Labor in the 30 seats with the highest proportion of voters aged 65 and older was 2.4 per cent as of Monday morning, almost a percentage point higher than the 30 seats with the lowest proportion of older voters.
Of the seats with the higher proportion of older voters, the swing towards the Coalition was particularly notable in Barker and Grey in South Australia.
In these two seats, where voters 65 and older make up almost 30 per cent of the electorates, Liberal Party candidates won handily with swings of more than 10 per cent towards the Coalition.
Across the country, voters 65+ make up about 23 per cent, or 3.8 million, of the 16.4 million registered voters.
While the swing was more notable in seats with a higher proportion of older voters, Labor is likely to lose seats in electorates with both a much higher than average percentage of 65+ voters, including Braddon in Tasmania, as well as seats with a much lower proportion of older voters, such as Lindsay in NSW and Herbert in Queensland.
Liberal National Party candidate Terry Young has won the Queensland seat of Longman with a swing of almost 4 per cent. He said older voters in the seat, where a slightly above average of one in four voters are aged 65 and over, had a much broader set of concerns than just franking credits.
"There were two major issues for older people. The main thing they were afraid of was that their cost of living was going to increase because they thought Labor's [overall] plan would cost a lot and their tax would go up. That was across the board," Mr Young said.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Liberal National Party candidate for Longman Terry Young during the election campaign. Dominic Lorrimer
"Most of the older people were also unhappy with the Labor Party's emphasis on climate change. They felt they were being forced into using renewable energy, that it was going to cost them a lot more. That was more of a concern than franking credits."
Mr Young said older voters who used franking credits for income were all very aware of the hit they faced if Labor won.
"They had done their maths and they figured they were going to be worse off."
Retiree-heavy Bribie Island had many pensioners who were more concerned about their cost of living than franking credits, he said.
"There are self-funded retirees on Bribie Island but there are also a lot of pensioners there as well who were worried about cost of living."
In the Tasmanian seat of Bass, which is still undecided but where Labor member Ross Hart suffered a 6 per cent swing against him, older voters were very worried about more than just franking credits, according to Liberal Party candidate Bridget Archer.
"Since my endorsement became evident in January, February, older people have been contacting me really concerned about the franking credits but more broadly about a suite of [Labor Party policies including] franking credits, negative gearing and capital gains," she said.
"Older people were contacting me and saying 'we know about these policies' and that they felt it was going to impact them.
Retired voters with share portfolios felt demonised by Labor's campaign, she said.
"They were distressed that they were being demonised as the big end of town, as wealthy, whinging from the back deck of their yacht. One lady said 'I'm not wealthy, I've never been wealthy. Every time I had a bit of extra money I would buy some shares'.
"That's what I thought was interesting throughout the campaign. Even though [highlighting issues with Labor's economic policies] was a key message for us, I was not having to sell that message. It was being sold to me, if you like."

Edmund Tadros writes about accounting and consulting firms from our Sydney newsroom. Connect with Edmund on Twitter. Email Edmund at ed.tadros@afr.com.au