Election 2013: Day 33 (or, Wow it seems like only 33 days ago this all started)

This last day of the campaign saw Kevin Rudd start off early by attacking the Liberal Party over its release of its child care policy last night.

Yep, child care. No one cares about, so of course you would release it without any fan fair…

So what was in it? Mostly it was about getting rid of the requirement to have child care centres move to 1:4 staff child ratio; remove the requirement for centres to have half of all staff with a diploma level qualification or working towards it, and the other half having, or be working toward, a Certificate III level qualification by 1 January 2014.

Similarly removing the need for Centres with 25 or more children will be required to have at least one qualified early childhood teacher.

Specifically:

“We will seek the cooperation of the States and Territories to pause the
requirement that all staff should be qualified until the Australian Children’s Education Quality and Care Authority has undertaken a full review of early childhood qualifications.”

As a result they are also axing the Early Years Quality Fund, which was $300m to provided directly to eligible child care providers to improve quality outcomes for children by supplementing wage increases of $3.00 per hour for Certificate III qualified educators.

It hides this in a bullshit statement:

“The Coalition will undertake a ministerial review of the EYQF establishment process and its operation. The review will examine the EYQF implementation process; in particular, allegations about the fund being established as a vehicle to boost union membership.”

A ministerial review? Yeah that’ll be thorough.

One small blessing: “If elected, the Coalition will honour funds contracted from the EYQF but no further expenditure will be approved.”

So in effect the move of the child care industry towards a more professional sector is pretty much undone.

Now sure, they can do that. It’s a typical right-wing move done under the guise of “reducing red tape” but given how big an issue child care is, that they put it out at such a late stage is a pretty dodgy way of operating.

Similarly they announced they would be cutting $42m in legal aid. This was done in the costings under the innocent line of “Reprioritise Indigenous Policy Reform Program” Let’s just say indigenous groups are rather shirty about finding this out. Especially as it had not been foreshadowed.

It also highlights what I was saying yesterday about not being provided any assumptions or details in their costings document.

For a party that has been well ahead in the polls, they don’t show much courage.

***

Today Kevin Rudd was in the seats of Dobell and Robertson. I’m surprised he was there, I thought those seats might be already gone to the Libs. so I guess it either means the ALP thinks they’re a a chance, or that all the other seats are so far gone that these are the only one’s left with any hope!

Three years ago Tony Abbott was going on a mad 26 hours straight finals campaign. This time round he’s off to bed early. Rudd has had the better last week, but I think both sides know it hasn’t been good enough.

The big failure for the ALP has been to get people engaged. I seriously doubt many actual uncommitted voters have given much thought or care to the goings on of the past 5 weeks. And when you are the party coming from behind, you need to make them care.

***

At his doorstop this morning Tony Abbott was asked a very good question:

QUESTION: Mr Abbott, on radio this morning, Andrew Robb said that the low-income super contribution which you're going to cut is the political pain that you have to take in order to live within your means. Why is it that low-income earners are taking the political pain and can you give me an example of one of your policies where high-income earners are taking that pain?

So there we go – all he needs to come up with is ONE policy that hurts high-income earners.

I won’t even bother relating you his first attempt. He spent a lot of blather on how the Liberal Party are really great with superannuation. Fortunately the journalist didn’t let up:

QUESTION: But on high-income earners, where are they taking the political pain?

OK. All he needs is to come up with one example. Let’s see how he goes

TONY ABBOTT: Well, it's very important that we try to strengthen our economy. It’s very important to strengthen our economy, and if you look at our paid parental leave policy, for instance, it’s capped at $150,000 a year, 80 per cent of the people who will benefit from our paid parental leave policy are earning less than $65,000. So it is a policy to enable Australians to move forward together, not to play the class war card, not to play the politics of envy which I absolutely reject.

Yep. The one policy he came up with as an example of high-income earners being hurt is his paid parental leave because it is capped at $150,000!

Oh to be hurt like that.

***

Yesterday the Libs announced that their budget bottom line would be $6 billion better off. So it was rather surprising to listen to Channel 7 Sydney news tonight and hear Tony Abbott say it would be $9 billion. Cripes money is easy to come by nowadays. (He didn’t get pulled up on it though.)

I also noticed that both Channel 9 and 7 used the exact same stock footage of kids looking at things on the internet while reporting on the Libs aborted net filter plan.

(This is possibly not the most incisive thing I’ve noticed this campaign).

***

And so tomorrow we get to have a sausage and vote. But mostly we get to have a sausage. I would have voted early, but I didn’t want to miss out on the sausage sizzle. I have been known on occasion to go to a Bunnings on the weekend not to buy any hardware but just because I know there’ll be a sausage sizzle on.

For me in the ACT seat of Fraser, the lower house is a non-event. Andrew Leigh will get home. The only choice is how many will give him their first preference and how many will give him their second preference.

But the Senate contest is more interesting. I doubt the Green’s Simon Sheik will get up and beat the Lib’s Zed Seselja, but it would be nice to see. Mostly it would be nice to see because it might at least give the Liberal Party some pause before it goes through its standard policy of thinking all they need to do is cut the public service and everything will be great.

The main seats I’ll be watching are

• Melbourne – to see if Adam Bandt gets back in. It would be a fair effort, but I think it unlikely
• Griffith – mostly because I think the individual seat polling of the seat were crap and I think Rudd will get back with a bit of a swing against him, but no real danger
• Longman – I heard early on the polling wasn’t good for Wyatt Roy, so it’ll be interesting to see if that holds.
• All of QLD and NSW. Under Gillard the ALP was likely to only have one seat north of Sydney Harbour. So let’s see how they do with Rudd.
• Indi. I’d wager if you told lefty political tragics that the result would be Abbott wins the election but Mirabella loses her seat, that a fair few would say they could live with that. Her losing would be an absolute net-win for the parliament.
• WA Senate. Partly because I know him (he launched my book), but mostly because he is one of the smartest people in Parliament I hope Scott Ludlum gets up in the WA Senate race. In a better world he would be Australia’s Communication Minister. The Senate needs people like him – especially when you look at the LNP and ALP Senate benches and you such light weight space fillers who have the job purely because of factional deals.
  Do the right thing WA – and especially don’t be so dumb as to vote Wikileaks and end up giving your preference to the Nationals.
• NSW Senate. The LNP ticket has Arthur Sinodinos third, which could mean he gets the last Senate vacancy. If something stupid happens someone like Pauline Hanson could get that spot. Again, the Senate would be poorer if that were the case.

***

This election campaign has been a rather different one for me than the last one. In some ways I have felt less connected with it. One of the things about working in the APS is you know the result will determine who is your boss. Whatever happens tomorrow, I’ll still be writing away my posts next week hopefully finding interesting things in economic data that provides people with some knowledge they didn’t have before.

This blog has also felt a bit less vital to me – probably because I spend more time trying to think up interesting things to write for Guardian Aus and The Drum.

I wasn’t sure how I would cover the election, but I quite like that my two most read Guardian blog posts were both yesterday on the Libs and Greens costings. I also like that my post slapping down the Libs boat buyback scheme got some good coverage. On The Drum my post that got the most discussion was the one suggesting that Rudd had a lot of thought bubbles, but not much of a sense of being in government with developed policies.

Last time round I was a pretty small voice mostly trying to find things not being mentioned, but perhaps too often complaining about things not being mentioned. This time I tried not so much to write about the coverage but to try and be a bit of the solution.

The experience of having to write on the election as a job is rather different. But to be honest it gives me no sympathy for those others who do it, because it is an incredibly privileged thing to be able to write for large audiences, and being paid to write is about as good as it gets.

It does make me perhaps more admiring of those who do it well. In the economics field this means people like Tim Colebatch, Laura Tingle, Ross Gittins, Stephen Long and David Crowe (when he is not forced to have his name attached to shite with Adam Creighton or David Uren).

I should have written more on the Greens policies, though. They were far and away the most honest with voters with their spends and cuts. Anyone looking for the party at this election that tried to bluff their way through with vague announcements and polices pushed out at the last minute will have to look elsewhere.

And I also think this election would have been better if Christine Milne was allowed to participate in the leaders debates. At the very least she would have knocked Abbott and Rudd off their talking points a bit.

But overall for me, it has been good to get back into some real blogging – as opposed to just using this site to post graphs.

I’ll probably however, drop the posts again (they are actually a bit of an effort – especially when like yesterday I also wrote about 2000 other words for the Guardian), but I do plan to write some more stuff on movies and sport and assorted things.

Writing about politics and economics is great, but it has (largely by accident) become my job and this blog was always my hobby, so I’m going to see if I can make it a bit more of that.

Of course it’ll also still be home to all my graphs – couldn’t stop that!

Election 2013: Day 32 (or, Is that all there is?)

Well today we had Kevin Rudd giving his final speech at the National Press Club.

He made some good noises that went to Tony Abbott’s line about Australia not getting above its station. 

Ben Chifley had ideas above his station when he dared to dream of Australian citizenship rather than simply being a British subject.

Gough Whitlam had ideas above his station when he made university access available to all, based on merit.

He also had ideas above our national station when he led tiny delegation to Peking in 1971 to begin the process of formally recognising the country that has now become our largest economic partner.

Bob Hawke had ideas above his station when he introduced universal health insurance under Medicare – for which we celebrate the 30th anniversary of tomorrow.

Paul Keating had ideas above our station when he introduced universal superannuation with the result that 20 years later we now have $1.6 trillion under management and the fourth largest funds management industry in the world.

It was good ALP-True Believer stuff.

I think Rudd has actually had a pretty good week – probably his best week. He needed to be operating at this level all weeks however.

His pitch in the end became very much the “if you have doubts about Abbott, don’t vote for him”.   

And while this might get a few changing their mind, I’m always pretty sceptical of those who think their side will win because once voters get in the ballot box they won’t be able to bring themselves to vote for the other guy.

The questions asked of Rudd weren’t all that special, but David Crowe of The Australian asked an excellent one about the homeless. Tackling homelessness was a big pitch of Rudd in 2007; it has rather fallen off the radar.

***

And so today at 2:32pm Joe Hockey and Andrew Robb stepped up to release all their “costings". By 2:55pm the press conference was all done.

It was an embarrassing performance, most memorable for Hockey sweating so profusely that I am sure some journalists present were wondering whether or not to call an ambulance. It reminded me of Broadcast News:

Jane Craig: People called in complaining about your sweating?
Aaron Altman: No, NICE calls, worried that I was having a heart attack.

But the more silly thing about it was Hockey attempting to tell us that after all his talk of a budget emergency in the end his Budget position is just $6b better than the ALP over the next 4 years – or around 0.36% of the budget revenue better.

I wrote about it in the Guardian here. (so go there!)

Their “costings” were just a list of their policy costs. Do they add up? I guess so. But I have no idea why they add up to the number they do.

I guess we’ll get that information after we’ve all voted.

That sounds fair.

The big cut announced today was a $4.5b cut in the growth of foreign aid.

How brave of them.

The ALP has also done this type of thing – deferring promised foreign aid to later years. It’s a cut that is not really a cut. The spend does nothing to affect domestic demand. And it is eminently affordable.

But no, now it is the first thing “deferred”.

Our two main political parties have become like people who live in a McMansion and who when the Red Cross come knocking say, “Oh gee, I’d love to but I don’t have any cash on me”.

Even more laughable tonight on ABC 7:30 Hockey couldn't even say how the aid budget would be cut and he said that he didn’t want to make up foreign aid policy “on the run”.

Gotta love that you can say you’ll cut $4.5b out of something and not know how it will be done.

Genius.

The Libs also went the other usual savings measure of looking for a bigger efficiency dividend from the public service – calling for another 0.25% “efficiency dividend” to get another $428 million.

They also has deferred the water buyback of the Murray Darling scheme for another $650m in “savings”.

Pathetic.

Abbott keeps talking about under promising and over delivering, but here they’ve over bullshitted and under delivered.

As I wrote in my Guardian piece, it’s pretty clear Abbott is, like Campbell Newman, leaving any big domestic cuts for after the election (how big will be determined by the size of their victory). The wonderful Commission of Audit will do that work for him. As he said today He has made it pretty clear

QUESTION: Mr Abbott, with respect, I was asking about the commission of audit there and exactly what areas will be quarantined – are there some areas that would not be touched?

TONY ABBOTT: I'm very happy to have the commission of audit go through the whole of the administration, to tell us whether, in their opinion, they think things can be done better and where things can be done better, more frugally, more prudently, with more benefit for taxpayers. Surely it would be a foolish government that would ignore that.

Expect the “Budget Emergency” to be wheeled out again after the election. You don’t do a Commission of Audit to not find anything.

***

So what does Abbott see Australia looking like? Well it is one with roads and not public transport.

The “costings” today have $11.5b spent all on roads. And the specific cuts they’ve made in infrastructure? All from rail and public transport (and $40m on a bridge)

***

Today as well the Liberal Party released a policy for a default Internet Filter.  It was under the guise of a policy for “Online Safety for Children”.

The policy announced was:

“We will introduce nationally agreed default safety standards for smartphones and other devices, and internet access services. As has recently been achieved in the United Kingdom, we expect these standards will:

• involve mobile phone operators installing adult content filters on phones which will be switched on as the default unless the customer proves he or she is at least 18 years of age; and
• involve major internet service providers providing home network filters for all new home broadband services, which will be switched on as the default unless the
customer specifies otherwise”

It is incredibly laughable, and wouldn't work. It would not achieve any of its aim of protecting children and also it goes against everything said by people like Malcolm Turnbull and Joe Hockey about the ALP’s attempted policy of a mandatory filter.

Backbencher Paul Fletcher talked to IT website ZDnet about it, saying:

“The key thing is it is an opt-out, so it will be open to the customer to call up and say, 'look, I don't want this', and indeed, we will work with the industry to make this a streamlined and efficient process”

So OK. They have a stupid policy released at the last minute. As dodgy as all get out, especially given how much of a vote changer this issue is for young voters who are pretty sceptical about any attempts to censor the internet.

Shifty work.

But then Malcolm Turnbull took to Twitter to admit a massive stuff up (read from the bottom up):

A statement was released saying:

The Coalition has never supported mandatory internet filtering. Indeed, we have a long record of opposing it.

The policy which was issued today was poorly worded and incorrectly indicated that the Coalition supported an “opt out” system of internet filtering for both mobile and fixed line services. That is not our policy and never has been.

The correct position is that the Coalition will encourage mobile phone and internet service providers to make available software which parents can choose to install on their own devices to protect their children from inappropriate material.

The policy posted online today is being replaced with the correct version.

“Poorly worded” I guess its the new euphemism for completely screwed up.  The policy is no longer on the list of the Libs’ polices (but it still lives on the net)

So how did this 11 page document get released without any checks by the Minister in charge of the policy?

Why did Paul Fletcher say “the key thing is it an opt-out”? Was he just poorly worded?

Is Malcolm Turnbull being so left out of the process that a backbencher is more aware of the Liberal Party communication policy than he is?

Not a bad effort from the wannabe Government. Good thing they’re not campaigning on being a safe pair of hands.

Election 2013: Day 31 (or, GDP grows by 2.5%, LNP costings sightings grows by 0%)

The last period of this election is rather different to 2010. I had a look back at my election posts from the last election and saw that on the final Wednesday there was the people's forum n Brisbane. This time round, Tony Abbott has no desire at this late stage to do anything that might risk his position in front.

Back then the Liberal Party costings were also an issue. They actually released them on the last Wednesday, so even with the Parliamentary Budget Office the Liberal Party has not been able to improve on that low bar.

Back then Peter Martin gave me his thoughts via Twitter:

Costings just one line per item - no assumptions, no reasoning. Treasury and Finance would have provided a touch more.

The more things change I guess…

(As an aside, my Drum piece today discussing this very issue.)

***

Today started off with a carry over of a pretty dumb story from last night’s Lateline. On it, the Chairman of Fairfax Roger Corbett criticised Kevin Rudd. As the chairman of a major media company and a director of the RBA his opinion carries some weight.

But as he is also a member of the Liberal Party let’s just say his opinion at this time is about as stunning as Paul Keating saying he doesn’t rate Tony Abbott.

And given Corbett was tonight at a Liberal Party fundraiser, let’s not even pretend his interview is just some unbiased, objective statement.

I think Emma Alberici is a great host of Lateline, but his political allegiances should have been made clear right up front. 

And yet of course Kevin Rudd had to answer questions on it…

***

Last night on Big Brother the leaders all had a video played to the housemates on why they should vote for them.

Let us pause for a second and just consider that they are doing this for a reality show…

…

OK, but when we see what Tony Abbott came up with, we see that once again he had his daughters along as props. We know they are just props because he told everyone what their real value is:

I know of no father who would ever describe his daughters to a national TV audience as “not bad looking” with a dumb grin that makes you use all your will power to keep down your dinner.

His daughters have been used by the campaign as very effective window dressing. Passive and pretty is the image they are required to present – read out some painstakingly work-shopped lines at the party launch and spend the rest of the month walking around smiling and laughing in a way that does not betray they actually have brains – which they obviously do.

I think it is abundantly clear the Liberal Party is desperate to present the image to the voters that an Abbott Government would be the complete opposite of the situation we had with a childless woman as PM.

The traditional order is back! And now that the pesky Gillard is no longer around they can do it and not be accused of using the daughters in a shameless manner.

But they are.

And the great thing is his daughters can play a prominent role in the campaign but because they are his daughters and not running for office they are off limits and don’t need to be held to account or answer any tough questions.

I would ask if they think their being held up as role models where their looks are treated as a political asset is what they think is appropriate for women in 2013.

I would also say either put your name on a ballot or get off the stage.

***

Today the latest GDP figures came out. I’ll be covering these a bit in my next Guardian post, but here’s the take away graphs.

Firstly, quarterly growth was 0.6% in seasonally adjusted terms and 0.5% in trend terms. This was slightly slightly above expectations.

The market reacted in their usual calm and non-caffeinated manner:

So the dollar rose a cent in the nine hours after the figures came out. Clearly they think slightly above expectations means no more interest rate cuts.

Ok, let’s have a look at some graphs

So you can see while growth might have been above expectations it is still below average.

In annual terms the same thing – trend growth of 2.5%, a bit below the average (OK 0.5 percentage points below average):

Given you need around 3.2% annual growth to keep the unemployment rate steady, unless we see a pick up, expect the unemployment rate to go up by another 0.4% over the next year.

The Nominal GDP figures were also quite interesting – still very low. The GDP deflator (the inflation rate proxy used in the national accounts) is still incredibly low at 0.4%:

So thus the nominal GDP growth (which is GDP growth in current dollars) is also very low:

As you can see it is well below the 10 year average – more than half – even though real GDP growth is just a smidge below its 10 year average. .

And given NGDP influences the amount of tax revenue you can see things are not exactly going to go boom time.

Here’s a comparison of real and nominal GDP growth from 2002 until the GFC hit, and in the time since then:

If the relationship was the same over the past 4 years as it was in 2002-2009 nominal GDP growth would have average 5.95% instead of 4.57%.

In the PEFO, the Treasury estimated that a fall in the nominal GDP of 1% due to a fall in the terms of trade would likely cause a $3b decrease in tax revenue in the first year and $6b in the next.

For the past 4 years we’ve had average nominal GDP growth around 1.4% below what we would have expected prior to the GFC.

And with that ladies and gentlemen goes much of a chance of having a budget surplus.

I should add, the 2002-2009 growth is not coming back. So get used to this sluggish nominal GDP growth. It’s the new normal, and political parties need to realise it (which I think they have mostly now have).  

But let’s also look at productivity, because we all know it is a national crisis. Indeed, the editor of the AFR, Michael Stutchbury, yesterday wrote:

Mr Abbott and his team must build the case for a systemic rethink, not to strip workers’ rights but to promote the sort of workplace culture that will make them and their businesses more productive and prosperous. They will need to do this because reviving the economy’s productivity is the only way Mr Abbott can deliver his promise to improve the lot of working Australians.

Reviving? Geez, it must be falling. Let’s have a look…

Well we had the 10th quarter in a row of positive productivity growth. The best positive run since September 2002 (yes, over a decade ago)

In annual terms that look like this:

But looking at productivity growth in annual terms is a bit simplistic. There can be blips and bounces. So let’s look at the annual rate, but averaged over five years:

Yes, clearly Mr Abbott needs to revive our productivity. With luck he can take it back to where it was the last time the Libs were in power….

Election 2013: Day 30 (or, let’s go on a mandate)

So last night Kevin Rudd on QANDA was good. Real good. Sort of, where the bloody hell have been for 4 weeks, good.

The questions were decidedly not soft ball ones. There was some if not angry, pretty miffed people in the audience and they wanted their say. He also had Tony Jones sitting next to him. And I don’t know if Rudd once ran over Jones's foot in the ABC car park or something, but Jones didn’t seem particularly enamoured with Rudd.

And then Rudd talked about same sex marriage.

No doubt you’ve all seen it, but here it is anyway:

Now you can say, sure Rudd was a bit West Wingish, but I think it was a pretty instinctive response from him. The questioner was pretty much suggesting Rudd was not a Christian. To say to someone who considers themselves a Christian “if you call yourself a Christian why don’t you believe because the words of Jesus in the Bible” is pretty strong stuff. I’m not surprised Rudd answered the way he did. It’s pretty much how I would’ve answered.

Rudd could have played it easy and blathered about “broad church” blah blah. But he didn’t. Now you can argue the theology of his statement about the Bible considering slavery a natural condition. But it’s no easy thing for a politician to essentially call someone a bigot.  And Rudd was also pretty well saying, if that’s what you believe then don’t vote for me.

Maybe if he was ahead in the polls he would not have been so bold.

***

Today the National Press Club debate was on asylum seekers. It was tough watching for those who were eating lunch, but at least it confirmed that Scott Morrison and Tony Abbott are complete cowards on asylum seekers.

Morrison confirmed that they would not automatically announce if any asylum seeker boat came into our waters. Morrison in a typically pathetic move announced it would be up the “the three star general” in charge of the brain dead “Operation Sovereign Boarders”.

Yeah, it’s really a national security issue. From the bloke who has trumpeted loudly every boat arrival for the past 4 years like he is doing PR for people smugglers for the past 4 years, this policy shows Morrison is not just a hypocrite, but a gutless one at that.

It’s also dumb. There is absolutely no doubt the information will leak. All Morrison is doing is forcing the military to have to consider whether or not to appear politicised.

Morrison is the type of person whom those in the army would call a waste of rations.

***

Today the narrative seemed to be about what will happen after the Liberal Party wins the election. Mark Butler on Fran Kelly this morning was pretty much asked nothing but. Tony Abbott is running hard this week on the carbon tax.

It’s an odd choice because despite what he would like to believe I don’t think it is much of a vote changer now. I think more he is doing it to try and really lock in the sense that he will have a mandate after the election to get rid of it.

But mandate are always more in the eye of the beholder than others.

Take Tony Abbott two weeks (!) after the 2007 election writing in the an op-ed in the SMH:

[Brendan] Nelson is right to resist the intellectual bullying inherent in talk of “mandates”. What exactly is Rudd’s mandate anyway: to be an economic conservative or an old-fashioned Christian socialist?

The elected Opposition is no less entitled than the elected Government to exercise judgement and to try to keep its election commitments. In opposition between 1983 and 1996, the Coalition made two big mistakes. This time, there is little danger that the Liberal Party will repudiate its former leadership or its achievements in government.

Tony Abbott may be about to reap what he sowed.

The ALP are going to an election to block any attempts to repeal the price on carbon. So too are the Greens. If they roll on this they will be giving up any reason to think them worthy of your vote. A party needs to stick to its principles (such that they are) even when in opposition.

***

Was there any new policy today. Nah. If there was anything good left to announce it would have already been announced. Rudd was in Tasmania to deliver a greatest hits of things the ALP has done for Tasmania. Abbott meanwhile was in Adelaide talking about the carbon tax.

***

Today the RBA announced no change to interest rates. This was no shock whatsoever. Tomorrow the GDP figures come out. Always fun for econ nerds, but I don’t think there will be too much that is newsworthy in the headline figures. A slight fall perhaps, but a longer run of years with a fall in GDP will continue.

Election 2013: Day 29 (or, build a bridge and not get over it)

Blogging is like going to the gym. When you do it everyday it is easy to do it the next day. You get into a rhythm. But if you stop for a few days, suddenly getting back to it feels like a massive effort.

And so I turn back over the day’s events and I wonder if I really took in much. I was working/writing for most of the day and I had the TV on the background, but it was a bit of an odd day in that I didn’t feel much need to keep my ear’s pricked in case anything interesting was said.

Tony Abbott was at the National Press Club. He said nothing we hadn’t all heard a very many times before. In the question and answer session the best one related to the dopey Direct Action policy where he confirmed what has long been assumed – namely that the aim of the policy is to spend a set amount of money on Direct Action rather than actually achieving a 5% reduction in emissions from 2000 levels by 2020.

He remains “confident” that this can be done for the money spent. But given we have not seen anything resembling independent costings of the policy, we’ll take that confidence to mean he is confident that not enough voters care for it to be an election issue.

Could you imagine a politician saying if s/he had proposed a certain amount of money to build a bridge that s/he remained confident the money would be enough to complete the work, but if not, well then s/he would not spend anymore money on it.

You budget to build a bridge. You get independent agencies to check your costings. You put in place good management plans. But the one thing you don’t say is that the money is capped and no more will be spent.

But that is where we are with Abbott;s climate change plan. And it is because it – as I have so often said – is a policy for people who want to at least think something is being done on climate change, but who don’t really care too much about it.

He also announced his Defence policy with Senator David Johnston. The big policy announcement? They’re going to have another Defence White Paper. We clearly need one because the last one was done all the way back in May.

Other than that the policy to buy drones was dumped, but the policy to increase defence spending was affirmed.

***

Kevin Rudd today did a bit of touring around QLD. Interestingly he was not jus tin ALP seats. So either he is feeling confident about picking up the seats, or he’s deluded and doesn’t want anyone to think he is going to lose.

His big weekend involved the ALP launch. I thought his speech was OK. I wasn’t sure why his big policy pitch was to small business owners. His policy regarding TAFE was good as far as it goes. But the policy to take over TAFEs was a bit odd given it pretty much brought up memories of his claim to take over hospitals.

Also in 2007 the ALP loved TAFE being run by the states and closed the pretty redundant Howard Govt funded Australian Technical Colleges.

***

Tonight Abbott was on the 7:30 Report. He did alright. Leigh Sales skewered him pretty nicely when she asked him to “unpack” his statements about the “baddies against the baddies”. He couldn’t name any other group, let alone any other “baddie” than AL Qaeda when asked to explain his statement. He did a fair bit of fumbling and umming and it was abundantly clear he hadn’t even read the excellent 9 Questions You Were Too Afraid to Ask about Syria from the Washington Post. 

But it’s a war that won’t involve Australian troops, and even if it did I doubt it’d matter how poorly he answers on it.

***

Kevin Rudd is on QANDA tonight.

***

Tomorrow the RBA will announce its interest rate decision. There won’t be any change, and the statement from the RBA will likely contain nothing that is all that interesting.

Election 2013: Day 24 (or, Debate Double Header)

Today was about debates. First the Treasurer's debate at the National Press Club, and then the Leaders debate at Rooty Hill.

Prior to the Treasurer's debate Joe Hockey and Andrew Robb realised some of their savings. The $31 billion worth came out not in the PBO official costings format but the Libs’ own version.

I’d much prefer to see the actual PBO document like the Greens have been more than happy to display, there does however seem to be a bit of argy bargy over the savings of the 12,000 reduction in the public service, with the ALP claiming they have a PBO costing that suggests 20,000 fewer public servants would save the amount the Libs are claiming for 12,000. There were reports that today the ALP would release these costings, but I have yet to see them anywhere.

Moreover I largely agree with Laura Tingle in the AFR that this is not the biggest issue:

While Labor continued to suggest that there was something dodgy about the numbers because the Coalition hasn’t released the detailed Parliamentary Budget Office costings documents, it would really be better off moving on to argue the substance of the policy differences. There is nothing to suggest that it will find the sorts of holes in these numbers that Treasury and Finance found in the Coalition’s 2010 costings.

The problem is I don’t know if the ALP leadership is up to the task. They haven’t even thought to point out that while Abbott is pledging to have the Productivity Commission to look into child care, his PPL scheme was given the thumbs down by the Productivity Commission.

Instead we get dopey lines about “$75,000 payments for a billionaire to have a baby”.

The Treasurer's debate didn’t really reveal anything. To be honest I can’t even remember muc of it now.

Joe Hockey is apparently a glass-0half full kind of bloke, which is kind of odd given the past 5 and half years he’s been screaming that the glass is fricken empty.

Chris Bowen was Chris Bowen.

He had one good line which appropriated the old Keating line about the GST of “if you don’t understand it, don’t vote for it, because if you did, you’d never vote for it” (it has also been stolen by Tony Abbott to attack the carbon tax. 

Bowen said, “If you don't know where the opposition will cut, then don't vote for them. Because if you did, you never would vote for them”

What this all means I think is we need more Keating in this election campaign.

***

The Rooty Hill Leaders debate actual contained some new policy!

Tony Abbott contradicted both Peter Dutton in yesterday’s Health debate and himself a week ago, when during the debate tonight he said that no Medicare Local would be closed.

Six days ago he said this:

There will be a review and the object of the review will be to try to ensure that we maintain the actual health services that are being provided by Medicare Locals while minimising the bureaucracy associated with them. Now, can I say that absolutely no Medicare Local will close? I'm not going to say that…

So that’s nice to know.

I wonder if it falls under the category of “sometimes, in the heat of discussion, you go a little bit further than you would if it was an absolutely calm, considered, prepared, scripted remark”

Kevin Rudd meanwhile suddenly morphed into Bob Katter and decided we needed to be cautious about foreign investment. Bizarre.

This is the standard of our campaign. Making it up on the run to get agreeing nods from people in a western Sydney RSL

Both leaders also pledged to honour their election promises even if it meant pushing of a surplus till later.

In the last debate Tony Abbott was accused of trying a “There’ you go again” moment when he said, “Does this guy ever shut up?” Tonight he decided to just steal the line completely and said at one point in a very over rehearsed attempt to appear unrehearsed “There he goes again.”

Well I’m sorry Tony Abbott, you are no Ronald Reagan:

I was waiting for Abbott to say “Mr Rudd, tear down this carbon tax”. Alas it was not to be.

Anyway, the debates were irrelevant. Watched only by tragics and rusted on voters.

Meanwhile I wonder if now the Essendon issue is over whether Melbourne voters will realise there is an election happening?

***

I won’t be posting for the next couple days because I’m doing things at the Melbourne Writers Festival. Tomorrow night I”m on the Radio National “Politics in the Pub”. It’s hosted by Jonathon Green and I’ll be on a panel with Corinne Grant and John Safran. The show starts at 8pm EST, so tune in to listen to me attempt to be not too lame.

Election 2013: Day 23 (or, come sail your ships around me)

Today was about Kevin Rudd and the navy.

He gave a speech at the Lowly Institute in which he stated:

The Government will establish the Future Navy Taskforce that will provide advice to the Government on implementing these recommendations and other recommendations of the Australian Defence Force Posture Review and 2013 Defence White Paper that offer operational advantages, enhance capability sustainment requirements and relieve future pressure on the current location of Fleet Base East in Sydney.

The Taskforce will provide advice on the timing, proportions and implementation of moving some or all of Fleet Base East to Queensland and Perth and developing, upgrading or expanding Darwin and Broome.

The media release that followed said much the same thing:

• Moving some or all of Fleet Base East at Garden Island in Sydney Harbour to new bases in Brisbane, Townsville, Cairns and Perth.

Now this quickly came to be represented in various parts of the media as only about moving all of Fleet Base East north to Brisbane – ie going beyond what was recommended. The “some” bit got left out a tad.

Barry O’Farrell went on the full offensive, suggesting it would cost 4,000 jobs in Sydney.

But what Rudd has proposed is pretty much in line with that recommended in the recent Defence Force Posture Review Report:

(14) Defence should commence planning now on long term options for establishing a supplementary east coast fleet base at Brisbane for the Future Submarine and large amphibious ships. This work will complement the development of options for embarking forces on amphibious ships at Brisbane in the shorter term, as set out in Recommendation 29.

(29) Defence should develop options to allow large amphibious ships to embark Army units based in Brisbane and (as a lesser priority) Adelaide, in addition to Townsville and Darwin.

So that sounds pretty straightforward. Rudd is just doing what was recommended. The problem however is that the Defence White Paper released in May noted:

5.38 The Government has decided not to proceed at this time with long-term planning for establishing a supplementary east coast fleet base in Brisbane (which had been recommended by the Review).

The significant preliminary cost estimate (in the order of $6 billion), challenges associated with land acquisition, environmental considerations, the need for extensive dredging and the wider dispersion to a third fleet base of Royal Australian Navy personnel and training, all suggest that establishing a fleet base in Brisbane would be challenging and require significant continued investment for it to remain sustainable.

5.39 Further detailed analysis and feasibility studies have confirmed that the fleet bases in Sydney and Perth will continue to meet the Royal Australian Navy’s needs for the foreseeable future. Should existing fleet base arrangements or operational requirements change in future, the Government may again consider the need to plan for an additional fleet base on the east coast.

So it’s a bit of a change of tack.

There’s nothing too wrong with that – sure it’s $6 billion, but we’re talking it being done by 2030, so it’s not like it is a budget killer.

It’s so far off into the future that those shipyard workers currently living in Sydney would be able to catch the Very Fast Train to Brisbane by the time it is all done.

The main problem with this policy is that yet again it shows that the ALP is not campaigning like a government. A government uses the White Paper and comes out with a number of great policy ideas that it can then announce during the election. And the policy then even if long-term has the ring of deep thought about it.

Instead once again we have Kevin Rudd announcing something that highlights how he was not PM 3 months ago.

It’s great to have long-term vision. But it must have the impetus of solid development behind it. Not a confused sense of “didn’t you rule this out in May?”

The policy also led to dopey stories around the traps, such as the headline item in the Adelaide Channel 7 news which suggested “thousands” of lost jobs in Adelaide. This was all based on the belief that spending $6b for this would have to mean $6b being spent on defence elsewhere.

Complete bollocks, but it got a run, nonetheless.

Moreover given today's run in between Rudd and Barry O’Farrell, The Daily Tele tomorrow will no doubt run something idiotic on its front page.

Ahh well.

***

Tony Abbott was spruiking his employment policy which was a re-tread of his similar policy in 2010. It involves

providing financial assistance of up to $6,000 for long term unemployed jobseekers if they move to a regional area to take up a job, or, $3,000 if they move to a metropolitan area.

This relocation assistance will only be available to long-term unemployed jobseekers who have been on Newstart or Youth Allowance for more than 12 months. People relocating between capital cities or within capital cities will not be eligible for the payment.

I doubt they’ll have to worry too much about the cost. I expect little of it will be spent. Sure there is unemployment in regions, but the most numbers of unemployment is within capital cities, and this won’t help those people.

They are however eligible for a bonus of $2,500 if they get a job and stay in it for 12 months, and a further $4,000 if they keep it for a further 12 months. 

Funding for long-term unemployed is all well and good, but I don’t think the main reason people are unemployed is they lack the incentive to get a job.

Far better to spend money of training and assistance to get a job rather than assume they just need some financial encouragement to get of Newstart.

***

Kevin Rudd tonight on Today Tonight suggested that Abbott lacks the “temperament:” to deal with international crisis.

Hmmm.

Rudd should let others do the head kicking. No one is going to start thinking this just because he says it. In fact it comes across as grasping at straws. A bit like Fraser in 1983 talking about the banks going bust if the ALP comes in.

You don’t want to over-reach. And if you think these things, let others say it for you – or even better use an advert to show why you think it, and get the voters to think about it without even knowing why they are thinking about it.

But in the end, Australia is not America. The ability of our leader to cope in foreign affairs issues won’t matter.

***

Today Tony Abbott announced a policy to provide retrospective payment for victims of terrorism of up to $75,000. The government brought in legislation to provide such support it was for future victims.

Abbott has pledged to “in the first 100 days” to introduce legislation to back date the payment back to Sept 11 2001.

Notionally trying to make the press conference seem non-political he still found time to suggest the ALP’s “behaviour towards the victims of terrorism was mean-spirited.”

During the press conference he was asked about the responsibility of those who travel to areas of danger, given in 2005 there were travel warnings about going to Bali:

QUESTION: There were travel warnings there at the time not to travel there?

Abbott responded:

TONY ABBOTT: And look, if you are walking down the street at 2am in Kings Cross in Sydney and you get king hit, maybe you shouldn't be there. Maybe it was an unwise place to be, an unwise thing to do. But if you do get king hit and you are badly damaged, you are helped by the New South Wales victims of crime legislation and I think that the Australian victims of overseas terrorism should get similar help.

It was a dumb analogy to use, and strays into the blame the victim area. It also in a sense suggests a similarity between an area with a warning about terrorism and Kings Cross at 2am.

Which I think even Abbott might realise is a bit of over-reach. 

But I can understand the point he was trying to make – namely that even if there had been travel warnings that does not mean they should be denied payment. But he made it in a poor way

I don’t think he deserves to be slapped too hard for it. The SMH and Guardian Australia have articles on it in which the father of Thomas Kelly who died after being king hit in Kings Cross says that Abbott’s comments were “throwaway” and “offensive”.

He won’t get much blowback for it. Had Rudd said it, the Tele would be firing up the Photoshop of course. The same rules don’t apply for Abbott.

But it would be nice if just once it was noted in a tabloid that Abbott’s campaign has hardly been gaffe free.

***

Oh look, forget the campaign. One great bit of news occurred today.

Today the Museum of Australian Democracy announced it had acquired the photo of Julia Gillard taken by 12 year old Sophie Deane.

Sophie has Down Syndrome and took the photo at the media event for the signing of the NDIS agreement between the Commonwealth and Victoria.

It was great shot, and an excellent move by the MoD.