It’s Wednesday and everyone’s cancelled. At least, that’s what it seems like.
Day 19 of the federal election campaign was littered with dirt, as party media teams slowly began to drop out the endless garbage dumps of research they’ve collected on political foes.
Liberal candidate for Isaacs, Jeremy Hearn, was dumped by the Victorian Liberal Party after a big ol’ rant he posted on the comment section of Quadrant magazine’s website became public. The conspiracy-filled post accuses Muslim Australians of plotting to kill and enslave other Australians. Hearn has apologised for the post, and his premature dismissal has all but guaranteed the seat for Labor’s Mark Dreyfus.
Another Victorian Liberal candidate was also brought into the headlines: candidate for the seat of Wills, Peter Killin.
Killin wrote in the comments section of a Christian blogger’s site, asking others to work together to prevent gay people becoming Liberal members of Parliament, specifically calling out current Liberal MP Tim Wilson. He has since resigned for his comments.
What is it with these fuckwits and comment sections?
Making three-strikes-you’re-out, Liberal candidate for the NSW seat of Paterson Sachin Joshi was caught out on Linkedin, arguing women don’t get pay rises because they’re not interested in “money matters and other business-related stuff.” About this time it’s important to remember that these guy’s don’t just believe what they’re saying, but that they also feel confidence enough in their beliefs that they post it all online.
And on the Labor side of things, Labor candidate in the seat of Melbourne Luke Creasey had to apologise for some old social media posts he made several years ago. He posted a rape joke in the format of the Overly Attached Girlfriend meme in 2012, and also posted some fairly classist things about Centrelink receivers.
No weird-ass political fuckup day would be complete without a feature from One Nation. Queensland candidate Ross Macdonald posted images of himself with topless women on Facebook and tagged a photo of a woman’s cleavage with “mmm YUMMY!!!” Totally normal stuff, folks. This is politics, after all.
How can Morrison stand by while his party – @LNPQLD – does preference deals with sexist, racist One Nation candidates like this creep? pic.twitter.com/n3AasTl4LA
— Senator Murray Watt (@MurrayWatt) April 30, 2019
Oh yeah by the way Pauline Hanson went on ‘A Current Affair’ last night and had a (literal) cry about her party being full of racists. If only there was something she could do.
In more official circumstances, Deputy Prime Minister Michael McCormack (just picture a generic white dude from Guess Who), told media that he was SICK and TIRED of these damn kids who 1) didn’t know how to vote, and 2) probably wouldn’t vote for the National Party he leads.
“One of the biggest problems we’ve got in this election is the fact that we’ve got a lot of young people voting for the first time,” he said. “And this sounds dreadful – who have probably never known how good they’ve got it.”
Dreadful indeed, friendo. If you’ve gotta stop yourself halfway through to remind your audience that what you’re saying is dumb as dick – maybe don’t say it. That advice is free but I will start charging if you don’t get your act together.
On the policy front, the Labor Party announced that the Spencer Gulf region in SA will be a “Renewable Energy Zone”.
Shortly afterwards the party went in on the Coalition’s whole far right problem. Tanya Plibersek called them a “coalition of creeps, crackpots, and cranks” and Shorten said the Liberal Party was “riddled with right-wing extremists.”
#BillShorten: “the Liberal Party of Australia is riddled with right-wing extremists.” #AusVotes2019 pic.twitter.com/CdT2V8boV3
— Hugh Riminton (@hughriminton) May 1, 2019
Shorten also continued to push against his party being ever aligned with The Greens, especially when it comes to negotiating in a way similar to the Gillard-Greens climate deal of 2011.
“The fact of the matter is that if we get elected we’ll be making decisions in a Labor cabinet and the decisions will be made by members of parliament of the Labor Party,” he said.
Greens leader Richard Di Natale addressed the National Press Club and answered questions about his party’s take on carbon permits. A carbon permit essentially amounts to a fixed amount of carbon dioxide a company is allowed to emit. Di Natale said he wouldn’t rule out carbon permits completely, but that he didn’t want the government to use permits as an excuse.
“We’re not going to give a blanket ‘no’ under any circumstances,” he said, “but we do want the next Australian government to set us up for the future. That’s what we’ll be doing going into this election.”
Scott Morrison, usually having fun kicking a football around or patting dogs like a boy with only two weeks left to live, had to spend a large chunk of his day defending a growing murmur of far-right extremism in his own party. Liberal MP Andrew Hastie is still facing allegations that he met with far-right personalities like Neil Eriksen. He denies ever meeting with the man fellow MP Ian Goodenough said was “dressed like a rapper” when they met.
Finally, Shorten will be on the ABC’s ‘7:30’ tonight, so watch that if you have nothing better to do.
