Tardscream posted:

Annabel Crab is the Australian Joe Rogan for 35+ yr old middle class white women.

Measly Twerp posted:

Oh look, it's David Mitchell

Don Dongington posted:

The continued narrative that Shorten is a failure ITT is loving hilarous. He's presided over the complete destruction of the Liberal party and with the exception of some minor scratches during the Section 44 debacle which decimated the Greens and severely damaged the Liberals, and Sam loving Dastyari, it's been relatively scandal free for the ALP.

JJ posted:

Don’t get me wrong, I want Labor to win, but I’ve just been burnt by the NSW state election, so have nothing but dim hopes for May 18.

Amethyst posted:

Cory Bernardi seems to get little to no airtime these days. Upstaged by crazier assholes, I guess. I'll be glad to see him gone

JBP posted:

What did he do on top of disability insults

Periphery posted:

Boiled, mashed or stuck in a stew?

Schlesische posted:

Thanks for this, I'm new to Bendigo and I don't know anything about the politics here. I like Lisa, but I was thinking about giving the greens a 1.

R. Mute posted:

i saw this on twitter and i dont understand what's going on

GotLag posted:

The right wing cannot stop self-projecting. They're cynically corrupt with ulterior motives they feel the need to keep hidden and assume everyone else is as well.

Doctor Spaceman posted:

https://twitter.com/kevinbonham/status/1117612406992064512

Konomex posted:

I think that's what it comes down to, it's not a question of wearing a suit. It's a question of looking respectable and trustworthy. Tie dye shirts scream 'flake'.

Konomex posted:

Don Dongington posted:

So the only game plan they have is to pretend they're not getting trounced so... uh...actually I don't know. All this is going to do is make the ALP and GetUp campaign harder. Maybe they know the liberal campaign machine is so fragile that the whole thing implodes if they think they might not waltz it in??

Amethyst posted:

Gillard literally went into an election promising no carbon pricing. And yet Plibersek wants us to believe that the only way to get serious action on climate change is to preference them over the Greens?

What a joke.

bell jar posted:

I suppose my gut feeling is less potential nuclear disasters, the better

GoldStandardConure posted:

become the nats candidate yourself and then spend the next 3ish years making GBS threads up all their plans

Knobb Manwich posted:

Now they've gone "huh can't be that hard to grass roots it if they (GetUp) did it to us" and are trying their own thing, while being incredibly ripped off by their own people because lol capitalism.

Dude McAwesome posted:

the thing that grates me the most is just the complete dismissal of regular folks coupled with their disgust at the idea that people want them to actually to do journalism.

it’s your loving job to do journalism. not wait until you’ve had a week of twitter pile ons before actually making phone calls/investigation/whatever.

this Barnaby water thing wouldn’t even be a story without twitter (and the labor brokens that cheered it)

Anidav posted:

In almost two weeks observing the Prime Minister on the campaign trail, he's shown an unerring habit of seeking out an RSL or hotel, with a beer in hand, meeting the locals and (on at least one occasion) calling the bingo. There is method to it.

While Mr Morrison mingles, a photo of him is uploaded to his Instagram account, often accompanied by a self-deprecating comment.

It's an orchestrated media strategy aimed at showing voters he's just a regular bloke and no longer the shouty "stop the boats" persona he embodied as immigration minister.

"We haven't had a lot of time to introduce him to the Australian public, so we're kind of doing that at warp speed," one Liberal insider told the ABC.

Each time the Prime Minister travels, his advisers try to squeeze in an unannounced visit to a cafe strip or pop into a pub for a counter meal, because they have observed that when he meets people, they seem to like him.

In stark contrast with Malcolm Turnbull when he was prime minister, Mr Morrison appears more personally at ease rubbing shoulders and sharing a beer with "random", unfiltered voters he might encounter.

quote:

Only last week he propped up a bar in Devonport, Tasmania, effortlessly discussing football league ladders, real estate prices and chicken parmigiana.

The point is, he's targeting voters on their patch and following their conversational lead, in encounters that cost nothing and are captured by mainstream media and broadcast to the nation.

From his point view, Australia's 30th prime minister has had to cram into eight months what others before him have spent an adult life doing: building and projecting an image as someone other than the hard-line, Operation Sovereign Borders supremo.

The bingo-calling, Winx-cheering PM of the election campaign is merely the extension of the self-styled league-loving, curry-cooking, daggy netball dad that "ScoMo" has carefully cultivated since coming to office last August.

He is a socially conservative Pentecostal Christian (describing his church as the "bedrock" of his family) but avoids the sometimes-lofty philosophical debates Mr Turnbull enjoyed, and he steers clear of the culture wars, theological and ideological battles Tony Abbott thrived on.

quote:

Take last Wednesday for example. A reporter in Tasmania asked Mr Morrison whether the State Government should repeal the "controversial gender laws" passed by the Parliament — laws that make it optional to specify a gender on a birth certificate.

It's conceivable Mr Abbott might have taken it as his cue to launch a full-scale rhetorical offensive against what he would regard as risky social experimentation.

But Mr Morrison saw potential danger and steered clear. He responded by saying, "We respect the sovereign parliaments of the states", carefully avoiding a gender debate that's well beyond the scope of the election contest he's defined narrowly around trust and economic management.

Inquiries about last year's leadership spill are met with the equally dismissive "that is such a bubble question", as is the latest offering of tax modelling figures from "that left-wing activist group" The Australia Institute.

quote:

Adept and nimble on his feet might be one interpretation of the Morrison political skill set, but it also demonstrates what colleagues say is one of his less-attractive qualities: a smugness or arrogance.

Mr Morrison's best hope, he believes, is to capitalise on polling, suggesting voters have a hard time trusting Mr Shorten, which is why he makes this contest personal.

"If you vote for me, you'll get me. If you vote for Bill Shorten, you'll get Bill Shorten," the PM says at almost every opportunity.

Labor strategists once argued to the ABC that if former prime minister Julia Gillard had sat around a dinner table with every family in Australia, she would have beaten Mr Abbott in a landslide.

It's the same feeling from the Morrison side and it's why Liberal strategists are seeking to give as many people as possible access to their leader.

quote:

But he is starting from behind and time is not on his side. The maths is impossible — 16 million people cannot be met in only four weeks, so the alternative is obvious: try to project the 'everyman' suburban likeability factor, in the hope as many voters as possible might relate to it.

Bill Shorten has spent six years building a bold reform agenda for Australia.

No change comes without pain or cost (something Mr Shorten struggled with this week when defending his climate change policy) but he's banking on the belief Australians want "real action on climate change" and are fed up with what they see as rising inequality.

In contrast, Mr Morrison is running a small target campaign promising to manage the economy well, change very little and reward voters with tax cuts in five years' time.

quote:

Voters are genuinely presented with a stark choice and the question is: whose vision will they choose?

After the Liberal Party's near-death experience in the disastrous eight-week campaign in 2016 (remember "jobs and growth" and references to "innovation"?), Mr Morrison has thrown out the old playbook, hired a new marketing company in Adelaide and gone on the attack.

Unlike Mr Turnbull, he is not afraid to turn sharply negative, branding Mr Shorten "a liar" and "sneaky" after his superannuation tax misstep last week.

quote:

Since taking over the prime ministership, Mr Morrison's Instagram following has reached 40,000, pipping Mr Shorten's 36,000.

That pales in comparison to Mr Turnbull, who has almost three times as many followers, and NZ Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern who at last count had 609,000.

"Every corner of the country counts. Every Australian counts," one Liberal insider said.

Mr Morrison and Mr Shorten have both joined WeChat to court Chinese-Australians (it's "half inoculation and half communication" for the Liberals who used the platform to ensure voters that family visas would be unaffected by changes to the migration system).

And Facebook — as is the modern way — is key to both leaders' campaigns.

Even if you don't follow the leaders, their sophisticated campaign machines are targeting Facebook groups you may be part of.

GoldStandardConure posted:

sounds like you just need a good pub feed

blackcat12951 posted:

Nope, it's also a foxtel series.

quote:

Senator Fraser Anning's anti-mosque candidate for the Victorian seat of Bendigo is an undischarged bankrupt, rendering her ineligible to serve in Parliament.

Julie Hoskin, 54, shot to prominence after playing a key role in the protracted – and ultimately unsuccessful – campaign against the Victorian regional city's first mosque.

Anti-Mosque campaigner Julie Hoskin was announced as a Victorian candidate for Senator Fraser Anning's Conservative National Party.


Ms Hoskin announced her candidacy for Senator Anning's Conservative National Party, despite having been declared an undischarged bankrupt.

But an Australian Electoral Commission spokesman said Ms Hoskin's nomination would stand and her name would still be on the ballot paper, given the AEC did not have the power to determine candidates' eligibility under the constitution.

s nomination would stand and her name would still be on the ballot paper, given the AEC did not have the power to determine candidates' eligibility under the constitution.

Candidates "self-declare" their eligibility, under section 44 of the constitution, to serve in Parliament when they nominate themselves to the AEC.

Australian Financial Security Authority documents show Ms Hoskin was declared bankrupt on September 20 last year, owing more than $92,000 in unpaid legal fees.

The former City of Greater Bendigo councillor tendered her resignation to council the next day.

Ms Hoskin was bankrupted after being unable to pay legal costs associated with the fight against the local mosque and Islamic centre, which far-right activists fought all the way to the High Court.

Her bankruptcy came after a bitter fight with her former lawyer, Robert Balzoa, against whom Ms Hoskin lodged a complaint to the NSW Law Society in 2017, alleging he had misappropriated money he held in trust to prop up his own firm.

Mr Balzoa denied the allegations and he was allowed to keep practising after a bid by the Council of the NSW Law Society to have him suspended collapsed due to a legal technicality.

Mr Balzoa is named in the National Personal Insolvency Index as the petitioning creditor in Ms Hoskin's bankruptcy.

Being an undischarged bankrupt prevents a person from being chosen, or sitting, as a senator under section 44 of the constitution.

Section 44 states that anyone who is an "undischarged bankrupt or insolvent" will "be incapable of being chosen or of sitting as a senator or a member of the House of Representatives".

It comes after the Australian Electoral Commission referred former One Nation senator Rod Culleton to the Australian Federal Police over his nomination to contest the federal election, after it emerged he is also an undischarged bankrupt, and ineligible to sit in Parliament.

In the event Ms Hoskin was elected, her eligibility to sit in Parliament could also be referred to the Australian Federal Police and potentially be referred to the High Court.

Senator Anning entered federal Parliament in late 2017 on a One Nation ticket, but quit the party after a falling-out with colleagues before briefly joining the Katter's Australian Party, only to be expelled from the minor outfit for "racist views".

The marginal Labor seat of Bendigo is held by former union organiser Lisa Chesters.

Turks posted:

As I said I'm still not going to vote for them (and I don't think Keen is either), but that's the logic.

GotLag posted:

Is there anybody who actually cares about which party is better at economic management, and still thinks the Libs are? I feel like it's a fig-leaf not an actual justification.