Well, spring is finally breaking, here in Australia, although a persistent La Nina is poised to send more of Tim Flannery’s tears flooding along the east coast in the coming weeks. But the sun is shining, the trees are blossoming and, no matter the weather, the politicking goes on.
Here’s what’s happening in Australia this week… so far.
Popular support for the Coalition has slumped to its equal lowest on record in the wake of the Morrison ministry controversy, as Anthony Albanese extends his lead over Peter Dutton as preferred prime minister.
The Australian
At 31%, the Coalition’s support is where it was in 2008 — and that’s where they should take some comfort. It’s beginning to look a lot like 2008 in many ways, and few of them good for the government.
In 2008, remember, Australia also had a newly-minted Labor government whose PM was soaring in the polls. But 2008 was also the year of the Global Financial Crisis, which was just one of many factors that saw Kevin Rudd booted out by his own party within 18 months. His successor, Julia Gillard, limped along to the next election and turned a landslide victory into a hung parliament.
More pertinently, when the Coalition was in the doldrums in 2008, the two-party preferred gap was much, much wider: 63-37. In 2022, that’s narrowed to 57-43. Labor has much less wriggle-room to deal with the multiple financial crises already on us. Which are only going to get worse: within a month, the Josh Frydenberg relief from fuel excise will expire.
If nothing else, the Coalition might note that Labor won the last election with just 32% of the primary vote.
All of which may be cold comfort for Peter Dutton, handed the poison chalice of opposition leadership following an election defeat. Despite the low poll numbers, which are mostly a hangover from his unlamented predecessor, Dutton is doing about the best that could be expected right now.
He wisely stayed above the fray of the Morrison’s multiple ministries bunfight. He’s refusing to commit to the “Voice” referendum, either way, both leaving it to others, so far, to point out its dangers, and giving Albanese enough rope to hang himself.
And he’s hitting Albanese in his government’s weakest spot: economic management.
Peter Dutton says the best way Anthony Albanese could tackle cost-of-living pressures was to live up to Labor’s pre-election pledge to lower electricity bills by $275.
With interest rates set to surge again this month — the third rate rise since Albanese came to office, with rates soaring the highest in decades — pressure will be on Albanese to deliver on his much-gabbed “Plan”. As Tony Abbott did with Gillard’s broken promises on carbon tax and boats, Dutton needs to hammer Albanese relentlessly on his own promises.
“They spoke about it …on 97 occasions before the election. He’s not mentioned the figure once since that time, not once,” Mr Dutton said at Parliament House in Canberra.
“We’ve asked him repeatedly about it during the course of question time. He’s got some sort of complicated answer to it that the public just don’t get.”
Albanese is already well on the way to being seen as Kevin 2.0: all long-winded talk, selfies and gabfests, with no delivery where it matters.
On the state Labor front, in Victoria, premier Daniel Andrews has delivered yet another of his endless “apologies” for his endless failures.
Daniel Andrews has offered a personal apology to Victorians following the damning release of the Inspector General’s review into the state’s Emergency Services Telecommunications Authority (ESTA) on Saturday.
Having dodged the media since the review’s publication on Saturday, Mr Andrews addressed journalists at Frankston Public Surgical Centre on Tuesday morning.
“I offer my deepest condolences and sympathies and my personal apology,” Mr Andrews said.
Well, as my Mum always used to say: don’t say it if you don’t mean it. How long will even masochistic Victorians keep buying endless Andrews promises like this?
Mr Andrews said he had accepted the eight recommendations made in the audience report and was continuing to recruit “hundreds” of additional staff to deal with the “thousands” of additional Triple 000 calls.
The Australian
Will that happen before or after the 4,000 intensive care beds he promised in 2020?
Back to Federal politics: another day, another Teal caught out on their own self-rigtheous bullshit.
The latest teal to be given the third degree about her personal finances is the Member for Mackellar, Sophie Scamps, who faced a grilling from the normally mild-mannered host of Sky’s NewsDay, Tom Connell, after it was quietly revealed that she owns personal assets through opaque family trusts. Despite some persistent questioning from Connell, Scamps seemed determined to shed as little light as possible on what was actually in her trusts.
These are the people, remember, who keep pointing the finger about “transparency” and “integrity”.
And to end on a lighter note, the hits just keep on coming for the power couple of elite wokery, Lisa’n’Pete. Fresh from making yet another arse out of himself, bullying (allegedly!) Aboriginal senator Jacinta Price, Pirate Pete’s copped another serve over his double standards.
Pete FitzSimons on Wednesday afternoon posted on Twitter a previous article he’d written that was highly critical of the Saudi Arabian government’s use of the LIV Tour – and of players like [Cameron Smith] — for the purpose of “sportswashing”, to improve its poor human rights reputation. In recent weeks, he has lashed out at the “blood money” of the LIV Tour and its impact on the sport.
This is, remember, the same Pirate who pontificated that you should never call a black man an ape, “Ever!” — and then turned around and described a black man as a “gorilla”.
But Fitzy may not have expected to cop a ball and all tackle, in full view of his 137,000 Twitter followers, by Queensland State of Origin star and Melbourne Storm prop Christian Welch: a commerce graduate and MBA student widely regarded as one of the smartest players in the NRL.
The Australian
Welch pointedly noted that FitzSimons was a paid spokesman for Uber Eats — a firm founded with a $3.5 billion Saudi investment. As Welch said, “It’s OK for you to profit (albeit indirectly) from the Saudi investment fund but not a golfer?”
Any day that Pirate Pete is copping a serve is a good day.
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