The second week of the election campaign is done, with just under a month to go – and the coalition seems determined to prove once again its uncanny ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. In any normal universe, the Albanese government should be a pushover: all the opposition has to do is keep hammering the message on cost of living and energy.
But this is not a normal universe: it’s one where a supposedly centre-right party has been white-anted by dripping-wet ‘blue-greens’ and spends too much time listening to 20-something ‘advisers’ straight out of university with their dinky little communications and poli-sci degrees and their Twitter feeds.
Consequently, they’re letting themselves get spooked by trivia and handing free kicks to the government.
Liberal Whitlam candidate Benjamin Britton has been disendorsed and replaced after old interviews were uncovered in which he railed against women enlisting in the Australian Defence Force and opposed Covid lockdowns.
Except that that’s a lie: he never said women shouldn’t enlist in the ADF, only that they shouldn’t be deployed in combat roles. A perfectly reasonable argument and one that I’ve made myself. The fact that females are only required to meet a fraction of the physical requirements of male personnel is the answer why.
As for lockdowns, Britton is only saying what a great many of the coalition’s own voters are.
The coalition should remember what happened before, when they panicked and disendorsed a candidate. Her name was Pauline Hanson.
Labor has increased its lead over the Coalition heading into the second week of the election campaign, with Anthony Albanese edging closer towards retaining majority government despite voters backing Peter Dutton as the stronger and more decisive leader.
An exclusive Newspoll conducted for the Australian shows Labor leading the Coalition 52–48 per cent on a two-party preferred basis […] [they] appears to have lost ground in the latest survey to the minor right-wing party, Pauline Hanson’s One Nation.
How many more will they lose by shafting centre-right candidates like Britton?
Not to mention showing weakness and kowtowing to the middle-class, taxpayer-funded quota queens in Canberra?
Peter Dutton will dump his demands that public servants return to the office and will not hand out any forced redundancies to taxpayer-funded workers, in a backflip designed to reboot the Opposition Leader’s campaign and win back female voters.
The coalition will on Monday unveil a five-year plan to reduce the bureaucracy by 41,000 people through hiring freezes and not always replacing workers who retire or resign.
Could they be any more pathetic?
And just when Albanese is stumbling and showing what a gormless idiot he really is.
Anthony Albanese maintains discussions between the federal government and the Northern Territory government about the intervention on the Port of Darwin have been “underway”, following claims from the territory government it was “blindsided”.
The Australian revealed NT Treasurer Bill Yan said he had been told by the Albanese government had ruled out the acquisition of the port, currently under lease to Chinese firm Landbridge Group.
This follows a trainwreck interview, where Albanese tried to gazump Dutton’s announcement that the coalition would forcibly re-acquire the port from the Chinese leaseholders. Under questioning, though, Albanese’s claim fell apart. There have been no such talks from the government. Albanese was also caught out lying that he always opposed the lease: in 2023, he stated that he stood by review by his own department that OK’d the continued lease.
Another unforced error from Albanese came when he took his campaign to Victoria, where the Allan Labor government is deeply unpopular. Albanese was forced to basically shitcan Jacinta Allan while she was standing right behind him.
Anthony Albanese has distanced himself from Victorian Labor Premier Jacinta Allan’s record levels of debt while standing right next to her, saying her budget was her issue.
Victoria under Labor has the lowest S&P credit rating in the country and state debt is projected to hit $177.8bn by 2026/27 […]
Mr Albanese refused on Monday to answer if Ms Allan is running a responsible budget, despite appearing alongside her for the first time in this election campaign.
Even more tellingly, Albanese refused to deny that Victorian Labor would be a drag on his own re-election chances.
‘Awkward’ doesn’t begin to describe it.
Which makes you wonder why Dutton is handing a clearly flailing Albanese such easy own-goals, instead of staying on-message with stuff like this:
Peter Dutton says “it would be great” if Energy Minister Chris Bowen were more visible in the election campaign and noted voters had not “heard much” from him.
“I think it would be great if Australians could hear more of his ideas about massive increases in electricity prices, massive increases in gas prices and one thing you know about the Albanese government is they’ve re-elected the cost of groceries – if re-elected, the cost of everything in your budget will go higher if we get Labor-Greens government,” the opposition leader said.
This is what voters want to hear, not mealy-mouthed apologies aimed at wealthy lefty women with their snouts in the trough.
