Federal election: Shorten’s in the doghouse as campaign turns nasty
Bill Shorten has unveiled Labor’s cultural policy at one of Australia’s most famous live venues, as the Opposition Leader’s campaign for Prime Minister received star-studded endorsements.
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Bill Shorten has launched Labor’s cultural policy at St Kilda’s Esplanade Hotel alongside arts spokesman Tony Burke.
Mr Shorten said it would restore a funding cut to the Australia Council and “helping to restore the balance” to underfunded arts sectors, including literature and visual art.
The policy will also find contemporary music and help indigenous theatre and dance companies to grow.
It also pledges $8 million to establish an indigenous theatres company as a “major performing arts institution”.
It’s Labor’s latest funding in the arts and television production space after pledging $60 million for the ABC and SBS.
A large headed fake Scott Morrison holding a “Libs for coal!” sign greeted punters outside the Esplanade.
Meantime, a video of prominent performers and musicians endorsing Labor’s campaign has ended with artists calling the Government an unflattering term, and urging voters to kick them out.
The video played at the Esplanade Hotel in St Kilda where Labor launched its cultural policy.
Artists including rock legend Jimmy Barnes, actor Steve Bastoni, the Bell Shakespeare company and Karnivool’s Ian Kenny bemoaned cuts to the arts and said a Labor Government was the only way forward.
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SHORTEN’S IN THE DOG HOUSE
The Opposition Leader has gone on a ‘publicity drive’ spending time at Guide Dogs Victoria’s Kew facility today.
News Corp Australia photographed Mr Shorten cosying up with a pup named Bill.
He also shook hands with another guide dog named Max as he announced $2 million in funding for a new facility.
The guide dog centre is in the Liberal held electorate of Kooyong, held by Treasurer Josh Frydenberg. Mr Shorten told staff it was the first time a Labor leader had campaigned in Liberal Kooyong during an election campaign.
“Disability should not define an Australian,” he told volunteers and staff.
“It is the barriers that we put in the way of people with disability that we need to tackle
Mr Frydenberg holds the seat by 13.3 per cent — slipping to 12.8 per cent after a redistribution — but he could be in trouble despite the large margin.
Frydenberg under pressure in Kooyong
High profile human rights barrister Julian Burnside is running against him.
The Greens candidate’s profile and platform could be what people in the affluent inner Melbourne electorate are looking for if they want to make a protest vote.
Mr Frydenberg is also facing a challenge from former Liberal Party member Oliver Yates, who will run as an independent, and Labor’s Jana Stewart, a state Labor political staffer and family therapist.
Election analyst Dr Kevin Bonham doesn’t believe the Liberals will lose Kooyong but thinks the party will be forced to put up an expensive fight to hold it, which will drain resources from more vulnerable seats.
‘DEFACED’: JOYCE HIT WITH FISHY VANDALISM
Barnaby Joyce’s election poster has been defaced and dead fish hung below it in his seat of New England as the election campaign turns increasingly nasty.
The former deputy prime minister is the latest politician to be targeted.
It comes just days after Treasurer Josh Frydenberg’s posters were defaced with anti-Semitic graffiti and after claims that a Liberal supporter’s dog had been shot and placed beneath a campaign sign on their front lawn in the regional Victorian seat of Corangamite.
Opponents of Mr Joyce have distributed images of the defaced poster hung on Tamworth’s main street to media this morning.
It shows a dead fish hung below a poster of Mr Joyce and a sign pointing to it saying “the stench of corrupt politicians”.
Former prime minister Tony Abbott slammed the “new nastiness” in Australian politics when posters of his face with foul language were put up around his electorate of Warringah.
“This is a new nastiness in Australian politics, not suggesting that any of the candidates are somehow doing this but it is a fact that there are some pretty nasty people who want change here in Warringah,” he said.
“I say to all the decent people in Australia, if you want to try to lift the tone of our public life and to lift the equality of our national conversation, don’t in any way give aid and comfort to these nasty elements.”
Prime Minister Scott Morrison said: “I think there has been a lot of these very unfortunate and unwelcome incidents during the campaign but, to be honest, I can’t be distracted
by that.”
“What I’m focused on is less than a week to go and the big choice that Australians will make in just over a week’s time remains just as big — a choice about who you want to be the Prime Minister of the country on 19 May,” he said while speaking in Melbourne.
LABOR TO BOOST ABC, SBS
Australia’s public broadcasters will be $60 million better off if Bill Shorten wins next weekend’s election, as Labor’s pushes to have more home grown content on screens.
Mr Shorten announced the details of his funding package today — $40 million to the ABC and $20 million to the SBS.
Mr Shorten said the funding would allow the ABC and SBS to expand its programming, marking a change from the government’s “funding cuts and ideological attacks”.
“The ABC and SBS are at the heart of Australian culture — generations have grown up watching homegrown stories and communities across the country rely on our trusted public broadcasters for information, education and entertainment,” he said.
“That’s why Labor will reverse Scott Morrison’s $83.7 million cut to the ABC and invest a further $60 million to grow our public broadcasters into the future
“This election is a clear choice. Australians can have strong and independent national broadcasters under Labor, or a Morrison Liberal Government that cuts the ABC. They cannot have both. “
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PM’S PITCH TO WOMEN
The prime minister is also in Melbourne today to mark one week until election day.
Helping women get back into the workforce or pick up extra hours after caring for their children or elderly parents is the aim of a new career program Mr Morrison wants to see brought to life.
Mr Morrison has vowed to spend $75 million on mid-career checks for women, and some men, who have stepped out of the workforce for caring duties.
Women athletes are also set to be major winners from $70 million worth of sport funding the leader will unveil today, including $15 million to set up a permanent home for national women’s soccer team the Matildas.
The new career checks are expected to help 40,000 people who have been out of the workforce for at least two years and don’t have a similar program available in their current workplace.
They would involve women having an initial meeting with a career professional, who would assess their needs and provide support accordingly.
Some participants, for instance, need help with their interview skills, computer skills or benefit from advice on undertaking longer-term training.
Women who have already been back in the workforce for up to 18 months could receive tailored support on stepping up their career.
Mr Morrison says the skills and experience gained in unpaid family roles is often not properly acknowledged.
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“For those wanting the choice to return to work, we want to help them because tapping into their skills and talents is good for them, their families and the economy,” he said.
Mr Morrison’s wife Jenny and his two daughters will join him today as he announces the funding commitments.
In addition to providing the Matildas with a high performance centre to call home, another $30 million will be spent boosting the number of young athletes playing netball and setting up the first International Netball Hub in Melbourne.
South East Queensland’s bid to host the 2032 Olympic Games would also receive $10 million worth of funding.
Supporting the nation’s Olympic hopefuls would also be canvassed, with $11.5 million to support infrastructure upgrades at high-performance facilities and $1.5 million to improve Australia’s capacity to find the best para-athletes.
Staging elite-level sporting events in regional Australia would also get $2 million.
LABOR POLICY COSTINGS IN FOCUS
The Labor leader’s week on the hustings has taken him to hospitals around the country to spruik his party’s pledges in health care.
Mr Shorten is likely to be pressed further on his party’s policy costings, which were released in Canberra on Friday mere minutes after he finished a press conference in Cairns.
Labor is promising it will deliver bigger surpluses than the coalition’s budget laid out.
This improvement relies on its planned changes to negative gearing and capital gains tax, ending cash refunds from franking credits, and a range of clampdowns on tax concessions totalling $154 billion over the next 10 years.
But it will likely have to negotiate the support of a potentially hostile crossbench to get these measures through a Senate.
Mr Shorten on Friday refused to countenance that, saying he hadn’t won the election yet.
Mr Morrison was quick to dismiss Labor’s costings by plugging on with his attack line that the opposition lacks credibility on managing the economy.
“There’s always something very fishy when it comes to Labor’s claims about managing money,” he told reporters in Rockhampton.
Speaking in Melbourne today, Mr Morrison was forced to defend his claim the Liberal Party’s economic management would deliver a strong economy today after the Reserve Bank of Australia significantly downgraded it’s economic growth forecast yesterday.
Economists now believe another interest rate cut is inevitable after the RBA slashed its growth forecast to 1.7 per cent for the year to June down from 3.25 per cent six months ago.
Mr Morrison brushed off the figures today, saying: “The forecast the RBA has outlined is now consistent with the forecast we had in the budget.”
“We have always taken a very conservative approach when it comes to
the forecast,” he said.
“That’s one of the reasons we have been able to budget responsibly and ensure our budget remains on track and comes into surplus next year.”
TURNBULL AND ABBOTT TO SKIP LAUNCH
Malcolm Turnbull and Tony Abbott will be absent from the Liberal Party’s official campaign launch in Melbourne tomorrow in stark contrast to Labor’s launch last weekend where Julia Gillard, Kevin Rudd and Paul Keating attended to support Bill Shorten.
Mr Morrison denied it was a ‘sad indictment’ on the party today, saying: “it isn’t a day for party hoopla.”
“It’s a day for me to focus directly on the future,” he said.
“It’s to ensure tomorrow is an opportunity to focus very much on the people who will be watching and reading about what I have to say tomorrow at home.
“It’s not about party festivals and slapping backs and doing all that sort of stuff.
“People aren’t interested in all that rubbish.”
Speaking at a netball club as he made funding announcements mostly targeted at supporting women, Mr Morrison also brushed off questions about whether the Liberal Party needed gender quotas.
“I haven’t focused on that during the course of this election,” he said. “I have focused on my responsibilities as a parliamentary leader which has seen a record number of women in my cabinet, more than any other in Australia’s history.
He added that half of the party’s candidates selected since he became prime minister have been women, adding: “I’ve started how I intend to continue.”
AUSSIE GUN CASH REVEALED
Meanwhile it’s been revealed Australia’s governments have handed over more than $77 million to shooting clubs and lobby groups over the past five years, new data shows.
The figures collated by Gun Control Australia show the Queensland and NSW governments each spent more than $18 million on gun clubs and shooting complexes, while Victoria paid $16.8 million.
The bulk of the Queensland money was spent building the Belmont shooting complex in Brisbane for the 2018 Commonwealth Games.
The federal government paid out $13.3 million in grants, entirely to Shooting Australia, the peak body for target shooting sports. But GCA president Samantha Lee says the figure most alarming to her is the $1.7 million given to the Sporting Shooters Association of Australia to upgrade its gun clubs.
“While many sporting clubs hold sausage sizzles to keep afloat, the already cashed-up Sporting Shooters Association of Australia is flush with taxpayer funding,” she said in a statement on Saturday.
The GCA report quotes research from Sydney University gun policy expert Philip Alpers, who says the SSAA is the wealthiest sports shooting body in Australia, with more than double the assets held by Swimming Australia and annual income of about $20 million.
The 71-year-old organisation describes its aims as promoting shooting sports, including wildlife hunting, and protecting firearm owners’ interests. It also says it works closely with the firearms industry to lobby politicians on gun issues.
“Although the participation rate in shooting sports is declining in Australia, the level of government funds remains high,” Ms Lee said.
“It’s no doubt a reflection of how effective the gun lobby’s backroom deals with politicians continue to be.” Gun laws have been in the news recently, after an Al Jazeera undercover investigation showed One Nation officials travelling to the US to meet with and seek donations from the powerful National Rifle Association, and the party’s leader Pauline Hanson querying whether the Port Arthur massacre was a government conspiracy.
Originally published as Federal election: Shorten’s in the doghouse as campaign turns nasty
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