Back on 22 May I did a post Labor makes health central in its election bid:
In the third last week, with pre-polls open and the electorate yet to become engaged, or so it is said, the Coalition became more shrill, and the policies still roll out. Of particular importance, I think, were Labor’s restoration of funds to the CSIRO and Labor’s NBN alternative. I’ll deal with those two and then tell you who is going to win the election. Continue reading Election 2016 open thread: third last week
A claim has been made that that the ALP had the best terms of trade in history and blew it. The short answer is the terms of trade were certainly good back in 2011 when Wayne Swan tried to bring the budget back into balance, perhaps the best ever, but they turned sour and blew his budget ambitions away. Continue reading Did the ALP have the best terms of trade in history and blow it?
Three weeks to go and the biggest story electionwise for me wasn’t the 10-year Labor budget plan, it was Turnbull’s pork barrel strategy.
Phillip Coorey in the AFR has reported that the LNP are carpet bombing marginal seats with small vote-buying grants. We’ve had 58 “micro-announcements” in Coalition seats for projects like revamped football club change rooms, new netball courts, fixing mobile phone black spots. Some $1.3 billion has been used to sandbag LNP marginal seats. Funds have also been allocated to nine Labor seats and Denison, held by independent Andrew Wilke. Continue reading Election 2016 open thread: budgets and pork barrels
Economy up, living standards down, and ScoMo starts a war as a distraction. Only 29 more days to go!
The national accounts figures were ostensibly good news for the Government. GDP growth at an annual rate of 3.1 per cent is brilliant. The next OECD economy I think is the UK with 2.1 per cent.
Jacob Greber in the AFR put it this way: Continue reading Election 2016 open thread: war edition
The election campaign grinds on, and we are not yet half way there. In this post I look at some of the claims being made on the economy, and it can serve as an open thread on the election.
The Coalition has made a big play on jobs and growth, plus Labor’s said recklessness and inability to manage the economy, finding huge ‘black holes’ in their costings. Of course, Labor is yet to supply it’s costings, which in 2013 the LNP only released on the Thursday before the election. So, always helpful to a fault, they’ve done Labor’s work for them.
Problem is, say Labor, it was a litany of fiction and lies. Continue reading Election 2016 open thread
The AFR Fairfax-Ipsos page helpfully reminds us that Kim Beazley gained 50.98% of the vote in the 1998 election but did not win. So with the two-party preferred vote now at 51-49 to the LNP, officially it’s too close to call. Anyway that slight lead is offset by Newspoll which came in at 51-49 to Labor for the fourth time in a row. So a couple of weeks of electioneering appear to have made no difference overall. Yet there are, I think, some important messages to be mined from the polls.
Firstly, the voters in Queensland are grumpy. Continue reading Important messages from the polls
In revving up his election spiel Shorten said spending on health was an investment, not a cost. He says investment in health is basic to economic growth. It would be an important battleground if Turnbull would engage. The pointy end is that Labor is choosing to invest in Medicare and the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme rather than spending money on company tax relief.
Turnbull just says it’s unfunded, which is a lie, and he knows it. Continue reading Labor makes health central in its election bid
While it is far too early for polls to be genuinely predictive, a new crunching of the numbers has produced a plausible scenario where the crossbench including Xenephon will simply be irrelevant, and the Greens alone will hold the balance of power in the Senate if numbers are fairly even in the HoR.
Metapoll intends to do polling of voters intentions for the senate, as will no doubt other pollsters. Meanwhile they have analysed recent polls by other organisations and inferred from them a senate result using the NSW upper house election data as a proxy for preference flows, as its voting system is most similar to the new senate voting laws. This is how it came out: Continue reading Narrow Turnbull win could be a nightmare
July 2 is going to be a long time coming if the first few days are any indication.
Today a main election news item on ABC radio was still whether Shorten would take us back to the polls rather than do a deal with the Greens.
Turnbull ran into trouble in Sydney’s west when all the press was interested in was who Fiona Scott, member for Lindsay, voted for in the Liberal Party leadership spill. Turnbull cancelled the rest of the day’s campaigning, as well he might if showing up is only going to feed the media’s obsession with irrelevance that is damaging to his campaign. Continue reading Please can we have policy rather than politics?
The title is courtesy of Laurie Oakes’s column. I’ll come back to that.
The ABC is live-blogging here, and The Guardian here. The Conversation has an Election 2016 heading, and an election policy explainer. The ABC also has an election site. Continue reading Misfiring PM grabs the starting gun
Here’s a thread where you can vent about the budget, should you so desire.
Peter Martin has a handy list of what we already know, which is quite a lot.
The ABC does too.
Ross Gittins tells us what not to believe. He reckons they don’t use the appropriate accounting methods to add up the figures. He also says not to obsess so much about deficits. It is the government’s responsibility to borrow to spend on infrastructure and other good things. Continue reading Budget open thread
