We’re halfway through the election campaign and I’ve only had to push my brain back into my skull through my ear holes a total of nine times – that’s right, it’s politics time baby!!!
Today marks day 18, with tomorrow officially taking us into election month. The slow start has definitely picked up and politicians are now focusing on policy and making sure they correctly enunciate their positions. Just kidding: it’s as poisonous and dumb as ever.
Today started off with Pauline Hanson‘s One Nation losing its former Queensland leader Steve Dickson. Ol’ Stevey was running for the senate again this year, but has instead resigned after ‘A Current Affair’ aired leaked footage of him at a strip club (not bad) saying awful things to and about women (very bad).
The footage came from that Al Jazeera sting operation that also placed Dickson and Hanson’s chief of staff James Ashby in the US seeking money from the NRA.
While both Ashby and Dickson managed to dodge that bullet, apparently yelling about how much better white women are in bed than Asian women is a big One Nation no-no.
Deputy prime minister and Nationals leader Michael McCormack also had a big day, which by his standards probably involved accidentally putting an extra spoonful of sugar in his morning coffee. The SMH had McCormack talking up a preference deal between the Nats and One Nation, saying “it just makes sense” because the parties policies so closely align. Think on that.
There was also a lot of talk about the first leader’s debate, which aired last night. Apparently, over 500,000 people tuned in. I don’t know any of them. The live audience present at the time gave the debate to Shorten, while Alan Jones and a body language expert gave it to ScoMo. FWIW, it gave me severe head pains.
Leaders’ debate audience vote: Bill Shorten 25; Scott Morrison 12; undecided 11 #auspol #ausvotes19 @FinancialReview
— Tom McIlroy (@TomMcIlroy) April 29, 2019
Bill Shorten and Labor faced more questions about how much its climate policy was going to cost. It’s been an easy and strong attack point for both journalists and the Coalition since Shorten struggled to answer questions at a presser earlier this month. At a press conference in Perth, Labor climate spokesman Mark Butler said it was impossible to cost the policy because it is a pollution limit based thing, not a carbon price.
Butler said a Labor government wouldn’t put fwd a carbon price directly to businesses. “If businesses are able to stick to their limit, then they won’t hear from the government any more,” he said, “…there is no price impact at all.”
Andrew “Tasty” Hastie, former SAS solder and WA Coalition MP, was forced to defend Scott Morrison’s reign as PM – despite the fact that he campaigned for Peter Dutton to win his ill-fated leadership challenge against Malcolm Turnbull. Hastie’s excuse? That all happened in August and it’s now… not August. I am still working on the math on this but my first guess would be that he is correct.
Also in WA, Michaelia Cash spoke at the saddest event in the campaign so far.
What a great turnout at the Mackellar small business forum hosted by @JasonFalinskiMP. The Mackellar electorate has some amazing small businesses and it was great to meet some of them today and talk about the Morrison Government’s support for them. #Backingsmallbusiness pic.twitter.com/yZrPDS9Y5J
— Senator the Hon. Michaelia Cash (@SenatorCash) April 30, 2019
Scott Morrison, who is having a lot of fun not talking much about policy and instead just telling people they’ll get Bill Shorten if they have a go and get a go to Get Bill Shorten played with some dogs. Cool.
https://twitter.com/richjamesuk/status/1123057256872853505
And the Australian Electoral Commission said more than 100,000 people had already pre-polled, almost doubling the figures from the last election.
A total of 122,771 votes were cast yesterday. This compares to 66,894 on the first day of early voting at the 2016 federal election. #ausvotes
— AEC ✏️ (@AusElectoralCom) April 29, 2019
