Someone please tell Bill Shorten the campaign is over
Stump speech gets a workout while the Electoral Commission keeps counting the votes.
Sid Maher, The Australian, yesterday:
Malcolm Turnbull’s election campaign has been dubbed “aloof” and “presidential” in a damning assessment for the Nationals that urges a “complete policy rethink by the Coalition” … It finds that the “grassroots” Nationals campaign trumped the Liberals “big picture” and succeeded in holding off Bill Shorten’s Medicare attack on the Coalition’s health plans.
Sky News’s David Speers asks Nationals MP Darren Chester if he’d seen the report, yesterday:
The first I saw of that briefing document was on the front page of The Australian this morning, which is disappointing …
Whoops. Crikey issues an apology, yesterday:
On Friday, in a piece on the federal election battle, he made references to Labor MP David Feeney and his wife Liberty Sanger that were tasteless, certainly offensive and did real damage to our reputation. We should never have published them.
How tasteless? This is a family newspaper, but here’s a sample. Guy Rundle writing in Crikey, last Friday:
David and Liberty — I mean, what can that be? … It’s gotta be tongue, right? It’s always tongue in these cases. I bet that fat man has a tongue like a big wet flesh carpet. I bet it’s like Oscars night …
You can say that again. More from Crikey publisher Jason Whittaker, yesterday:
We screwed up. Royally. We breached our own standards and, more importantly, we breached an uncommon level of trust we’ve long enjoyed from readers. We must bear the consequences of that.
Bill Shorten, still campaigning in Tasmania yesterday:
Mr Turnbull made an appearance yesterday and he said that Australians don’t trust him with Medicare …
More from Shorten, yesterday:
Today (Turnbull’s) Treasurer popped up. He was blaming the voters …
Shorten, continuing, yesterday:
If Mr Turnbull does scrape home his problems have only just begun. He’ll be hostage to Mr Abbott and the right wing of the Liberal Party …
We’re getting the idea. More from the Opposition Leader, yesterday:
We see talk about splits in the Liberal Party ranks, expressions of a lack of confidence in his leadership …
But this isn’t a negative post-campaign campaign. Shorten, yesterday:
We will stick to our positive platform and our positive policies.
Unfortunately she lost her seat on preferences. Bob Katter, The Australian website, yesterday:
I have no difficulty in forming government with the Queen of Sheba if I can get the outcomes I want.
Regretful Greens. Melbourne artist Sean Layh, The Age, yesterday:
I’ve had time to reflect on this and I regret my vote.
A sudden free-market epiphany? Not quite. More from Layh, yesterday:
By undermining the Turnbull government we’ve provided ammunition for the right wing to claim vindication. They can now argue that it was wrong to depose Abbott in the first place …
The science is settled. Britain’s The Independent, yesterday:
Pasta is not fattening and can reduce the likelihood of obesity, Italian scientists have found.