ANOTHER DUTTON BACKFLIP
And just like that, this is the last Worm of the penultimate week of the election campaign. With Anzac Day tomorrow pausing the campaign once more, we are now getting mighty close to polling day on May 3.
The Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) told us yesterday morning that around 542,000 votes were cast at early voting centres on Tuesday, significantly up from the 314,000 cast on the first day in 2022. The AEC was keen to highlight that pre-polling started later in this election and the higher numbers may reflect the short week this week. But still, the fact remains that a lot of people are voting already.
So, where do we find ourselves with hundreds of thousands of people already voting and election day just around the corner? Well, in pretty familiar territory actually, namely — another Peter Dutton backflip.
The Australian Financial Review and others have led overnight on the news the Coalition leader “quietly backflipped on a pledge made just two days ago to keep Labor’s tax breaks for electric vehicle drivers”.
The AFR highlights how Dutton was asked on Monday if he would scrap Labor’s EV tax breaks if elected on May 3, to which he answered: “No” and then later: “We don’t have any proposals to change those settings.”
Well, as we’re all aware at this point in proceedings, a couple of days is a mighty long time in this Coalition election campaign, and come yesterday, Dutton was declaring the EV tax breaks were among the “wasteful spending” he would scrap.
The ABC says the news came in a media release from Liberal party headquarters on Wednesday, which stated the Coalition would repeal “Labor’s taxpayer-funded and badly designed electric car subsidies”.
Shadow treasurer Angus Taylor told the broadcaster that this was not in fact another backtrack from the Coalition (following the work from home debacle) — what had actually happened was his boss had misheard the question on Monday.
“Our position on this taxpayer-funded subsidy has been clear for a long time. Press conferences have many, many questions asked, often in a raucous environment, and Peter misheard the question,” he said.
You’ll be shocked to learn Labor jumped on the mishearing/backflip, with Energy Minister Chris Bowen saying the Coalition statement was “work from home all over again, but worse” and Treasurer Jim Chalmers declaring: “The Coalition is a risky and reckless bin fire of inconsistency and incompetence on the economy.”
Yesterday, the Coalition also said it would not go ahead with Labor’s promise to cut 20% from student loans, calling the policy “elitist”, the ABC flags.
“It’s not fair that [uni students] should get thousands of dollars from taxpayers, but the young tradies who had to borrow to pay for their ute or their tools, or the uni students who diligently paid off their student debt, get nothing,” a Coalition statement said.
The ABC says the student debt announcement and the pledge to scrap EV subsidies came after the Coalition faced pressure to explain how it would fund its $21 billion boost to defence spending.
Earlier in the day, Guardian Australia said Dutton had “refused to specify where an additional $21 billion in pledged defence spending would be allocated, nor where the money would come from, committing only to releasing the Coalition’s costings before the May 3 election”. The AFR reports Dutton said the defence spending boost would be funded by his promise to repeal Labor’s income tax cuts.
Meanwhile, shadow defence minister Andrew Hastie’s return to the spotlight came with a barrage of questions over whether he believed women should serve in combat roles, following his comments in 2018 when he said “the fighting DNA of a close combat unit is best preserved when it’s exclusively male”. Brett Worthington at the ABC has a good write-up of Hastie trying to find an answer.
The Australian’s reaction to the Coalition’s defence announcement is pretty interesting, with the top three opinion pieces in the paper overnight headlined:
- “Too little, too late: No defence for this”
- “Too little detail too late produces popgun plan”
- “Higher churn of votes may see seat swapping between parties” (with the sub-heading: “The scale of the negative campaign against Peter Dutton is colossal. Yet the Coalition appears to have no strategy to counter this, unless it is one that is deeply hidden from the rest of us.”)
The paper has led its news coverage overnight on Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s upcoming announcement of an initial $1.2 billion investment in a national reserve that will stockpile critical minerals such as lithium, nickel and cobalt. The Australian says the minerals will be made available to Australian manufacturers and “like-minded” nations. The reserve will apparently also be used as a bargaining chip to win an exemption from Donald Trump’s chaotic tariffs.
“The strategic reserve will mean government has the power to purchase, own and sell critical minerals found here in Australia,” Albanese will say. “It will mean we can deal with trade and market disruptions from a position of strength. Because Australia will be able to call on an internationally significant quantity of resources in global demand. This will be a national asset and our government will use it to advance Australia’s national interest.”
The paper highlights that Dutton said yesterday he would cut critical minerals production tax credits as well as other Future Made in Australia funding.
SUDDENLY NO-ONE BELIEVES THE POLLING
Regular readers of this newsletter will be well aware that barely a day goes by without me warning that all polling should be taken with a very healthy dose of scepticism and should never be treated as gospel.
It doesn’t matter how many times people have been burned before, they just can’t help themselves when polling shows results they are hoping to see. At the same time, in every election campaign, after weeks of polling generating near-constant headlines and being treated as 100% fact, suddenly when the finish line is in sight, everyone starts claiming the polling is wrong, or calling for caution. And, dear readers, we are at that stage of the campaign.
As mentioned yesterday, in the third leaders debate this week, Peter Dutton attempted to cast doubt on the polling and drew comparisons to what happened in 2019.
Since then, Sky News host Sharri Markson has declared the polling done in the election campaign so far is “wrong” and “a fantasy”. Markson makes the argument that the election will be won and lost on the result of certain seats, rather than the overall vibe from around the country.
On the ABC’s Politics Now podcast yesterday, Patricia Karvelas said “just watch this election closely … I think to write off Peter Dutton yet … I think there is a swing [to the Coalition], I’m not saying it’s a decisive swing that delivers government, but I think it’s a thing.”
And Phil Coorey has a piece in the AFR this morning headlined “Danger for Labor is undecided voters tuning in to Dutton for last 10 days”.
So, are the polls wrong? Is it all just jitters? Gaslighting? Caution? Hope? Boredom? No-one knows, but it’s definitely that stage of the election — where things tighten and everyone everywhere starts doubting themselves and everything they read and believed up until now.
On that theme, the Nine newspapers have led overnight on Labor reportedly going on the offensive against the Coalition in key marginal seats, while at the same time, government MPs are warning that Labor’s core support is at risk from a backlash over the cost of living.
“I’m worried that we’re getting lulled into a false sense of security because of the polls,” an unnamed Labor MP is quoted as saying. “Some people are angry with us because the cost of living is really hurting them, and that doesn’t always get picked up by the polls.”
Elsewhere in the campaign, the ABC reports the Coalition has pledged to create a national database of domestic violence offenders as part of its $90 million domestic violence strategy. The Coalition claims the National Domestic Violence Register would allow police and agencies to access details of a person’s previous family violence convictions, but it would not be publicly available.
The broadcaster picks up on the theme of last-minute policies, highlighting that the Coalition has also proposed “to create a $100 million grants program to fund regional boarding school infrastructure and create up to 660 new places, primarily for Indigenous students”.
In other announcements, Guardian Australia reports: “Peter Dutton has committed to redoing security checks for thousands of Palestinians from Gaza granted visitor visas in Australia as he doubled down on introducing questions on antisemitism in citizenship tests.”
The Australian says the Coalition leader would also reinstate the activity test for parents wishing to access childcare if he wins on May 3, after Labor pledged to scrap it in its pitch to allow families access to childcare subsidies three days a week.
The ABC says that despite Labor and the Coalition pledging $8.5 billion to incentivise doctors to bulk-bill all patients, surveys show “only a fraction of doctors believe they will be able to bulk-bill more patients”.
And The Conversation carries polling which says only a third of Australians support increasing defence spending.
But what do the pollsters know about anything, right? See you next week for the final week of the campaign!
ON A LIGHTER NOTE…
A 46-year-old man has walked 53 miles dressed as a ten-foot-high bird.
The Yorkshire Post reports Matt Trevelyan completed the walk to raise awareness of one of Britain’s most iconic and threatened birds, the Eurasian curlew.
Trevelyan walked around the Nidderdale Way route, in the Yorkshire Dales, over the Easter weekend.
“The curlew is my favourite bird and I’ve been saddened as their numbers have reduced massively around the UK. They have such a beautiful song — it pulls at your heart strings — it was great to hear it whilst walking the awareness raising adventure,” he said.
Trevelyan completed his walk ahead of World Curlew Day on Monday. His massive curlew costume was made of split bamboo, muslin, and polystyrene, The Yorkshire Post adds. The BBC has some enjoyable pictures of its creation.
ON THE CAMPAIGN TRAIL
Everybody cross “candidate pulls a tap beer” off your campaign bingo cards.
Say What?
He declined.
Sarah Ferguson
The 7.30 host on attempts to get shadow defence minister Andrew Hastie on the show to talk about the Coalition’s big defence day.
CRIKEY RECAP
On the other hand, does any of this matter? Is the point the quality of spending, or what magical proportion of GDP number we achieve? Richard Denniss of The Australia Institute had an interesting view on this issue at Malcolm Turnbull’s Sovereignty and Security gathering the other week. The fact that defence wasted a large volume of its budget on poor procurement and dud management was irrelevant to the debate about how much we should spend on defence, Denniss argued, because the role of Australia’s defence spending was to signal our seriousness to the United States as a strategic partner — our actual capability wasn’t especially important. To paraphrase Denniss, those figures of GDP proportion being bandied around by the parties — “we’re lifting it to 2.33!”; “not enough, we’re going 2.5! And maybe 3!” — is a form of virtue signalling by Australia to its imperial overlord.
In that context, the Trump administration’s demand that we lift spending to 3% of GDP merely makes explicit what was always the case: never mind the quality, feel with width. It’s a ticket to ride as a US partner — as long as we’re still showering that money on American defence contractors. Dutton and Hastie may insist that the strategic environment has changed, but it won’t change that much.
In a federal election where political parties seek every possible edge, voter data is one of the most precious resources.
Everything from electoral roll data, to data bought from commercial brokers, to basic voter interactions — such as emails to MPs, e-petitions or door-knocking records — is ingested by the major parties to help them decide which voters to contact, and with what messages.
This, combined with the unprecedented tools provided by digital advertising, allows parties to create sophisticated campaigns which reach individual voters with targeted messaging, giving campaigners what they think is the best shot at getting people to vote, donate or volunteer.
Despite the importance and scale of these operations, we know very little about exactly what information is being collected about us.
This election, the electoral roll is bigger than ever before. As usual, on the way to scoffing a sausage, we will fold up our ballot papers and put them in those big cardboard boxes. But when it comes time for some of those votes to be counted, they will instead be chucked out.
Why? Because we can’t vote. Not properly. As the next chart shows, in the 2025 election we can expect about 5% of votes to be “informal” — they didn’t follow the rules. That equates to about a million votes headed for the bin. A not insignificant number when it comes to the electoral fortunes of very key people, including the member for Dickson.
Stay with me.
READ ALL ABOUT IT
India closes main border crossing with Pakistan after Kashmir attack (BBC)
Thousands from around world wait hours to visit coffin of Pope Francis (The Guardian)
President attacks Zelenskyy for rejecting US terms to end war (The New York Times) ($)
EU fines Apple €500M and Meta €200M for breaking Europe’s digital rules (POLITICO)
Istanbul hit by 6.2 magnitude earthquake — more than 150 people injured (Sky News)
North shore teal distances herself from allegedly antisemitic posts (The Sydney Morning Herald)
THE COMMENTARIAT
Coalition cosies up to One Nation with preferences in ceasefire after 30-year war — Annabel Crabb (ABC): And — after insisting that One Nation would advocate for “parties of freedom” and “conservative independents” over both major parties — leader Pauline Hanson pulped and reprinted her preference suggestions in a number of seats at the very last minute to place Coalition candidates second.
The seats included Dickson, the marginal Queensland electorate held by Liberal leader Peter Dutton. The first version of the One Nation how-to-vote cards had Dutton at number four. The new ones have him at number two.
One Nation chief of staff James Ashby explained to The Daily Telegraph that the last-minute reversal was intended to counteract the effect of Clive Palmer’s preference guidelines, which in some cases urged a vote for “teal” independents.
“If it means saving Peter Dutton by shifting a ‘how to vote’, then we will do so,” Ashby said.
The MAGA crew is waving white flags towards the Fed, China and Tesla investors — Stephen Bartholomeusz (The Sydney Morning Herald): In Germany, where Tesla has a factory and had a strong market position — until Musk threw his support behind the far-right AfD party — Tesla sales were down more than 62% in the quarter, even as total EV sales increased.
Some of Tesla’s problems are specific to it and reflect the considerable brand damage that Musk’s association with the Trump administration has caused. Others, however, relate to the policies of an administration he’s been a key part of.
Perhaps Musk should have thought twice before joining a Trump train that, rather than making America great again, appears to be careening towards a derailment.
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