It’s a tale of two campaigns as Malcolm Turnbull leaves a Brisbane start-up ‘inspired’ while Bill Shorten takes talkback calls on the physical toll of manufacturing work and health insurance. Follow all the developments with Katharine Murphy, live
1.34am BST
1.26am BST
Mel did mention this early but in case you’ve tuned in to the live coverage only recently, there’s lots of focus on the national accounts figures, due later this morning.
1.12am BST
The Coalition’s campaign spokesman Mathias Cormann, from earlier today, on super.
Q: Will you go back to the drawing board on your superannuation changes or find a better way to sell it?
Our changes in the budget to our superannuation tax arrangements are designed to make the system fairer and more sustainable. It was not sustainable to have a growing proportion of income generated in Australia entirely outside the tax system. If you have a growing proportion of income generated in Australia attracting zero per cent income tax, that means that everybody else in Australia has to pay more tax in order to make up the difference. These changes are very carefully calibrated to ensure that superannuation is more sustainable, is fairer. The purpose of tax concessions in superannuation is to encourage people to save more, in order to provide an income in retirement to replace or supplement the age pension. The purpose of these tax concessions is not to provide a vehicle to tax effectively accumulate wealth and to tax effectively transfer wealth between generations.
We have made some changes which mean that a number of people who were able to generate income tax free will now have to pay 15% tax on some of those earnings, some of that income. We understand that is not something that is necessarily popular. But we believe that the changes that we have made are fair. We believe that they are important changes that make the superannuation system more sustainable and we will continue to explain what it is that we have done and why we have done it. Over time we would like to think that the majority of people will come to accept that what we are doing here is the right thing.
1.09am BST
Sky News grabbed the prime minister on his way out of the Brisbane event. How is he travelling?
Malcolm Turnbull:
I’m good, I’m great I’m pumped up, I’m so inspired.
1.07am BST
Unions aren’t the only group cranky with the Coalition. The Institute of Public Affairs, normally a Coalition ally, is on the field again today about the super changes. The IPA has been hot to trot against the changes from the beginning. This excerpt is from the ABC.
John Roskam, from the Institute for Public Affairs, said it was “clear that many Australians who are not classed as rich are affected”.
“So for example, one particular superannuationfund estimates that up to 90 per cent of their members who use these pension programs earn less than $100,000 a year,” he said.
1.02am BST
Union protesters are giving Malcolm Turnbull a rousing send off in Brisbane.
Union protesters giving the PM some free advice in Brisbane #ausvotes pic.twitter.com/Lw1CLGsieH
12.57am BST
Malcolm Turnbull full of ebullience with the tech disciples – Bill Shorten and a bloke on Brisbane talkback whose body has been burned out at 55 by a lifetime of factory work. Two Australias. Two campaigns.
12.53am BST
That last 30 minutes really was a tale of two campaigns.
12.49am BST
A lady in Brisbane is asking Bill Shorten about lifetime health cover penalties. Shorten says Labor hasn’t yet announced its health insurance policies.
He’s then asked about a Goldman Sachs report which suggests the cost of the company tax cut is less than treasury thinks.
Mr Turnbull’s old bank that he worked for has come out with this report. I am going to take the Treasury department of Australia, that is the organisation who Mr Turnbull relies upon for his budget numbers.
What we will do is we will prioritise that we will have more savings to the bottom line of the budget than spending, and that we’ve got plans to improve our overall surplus position in the medium term, and when we’ve released all of our policies at the end of that, we will be in a position to explain how we are improving the budget both in the four year period and the next 10 years.
12.43am BST
Yeah!
This is the prime minister, in the cloud.
12.43am BST
Bill Shorten has been asked about offshore processing.
Q: How you can justify the continuation of these torture camps for any reason other than virulent racism and Islamophobia?
We are not racist and we’re not Islamaphobes at all. But let’s all be straight here ...
The point you make about semi or indefinite detention, if we get elected I will send my immigration minister as soon as we are sworn in to sit down with the high commissioner on refugees and make resettlement a reality.
12.39am BST
Back at the Turnbull event, Pablo from River City Labs is telling the prime minister there is very little red tape in Australia compared to his home country.
Malcolm Turnbull wants to talk about the start-up eco-system.
12.38am BST
Back on the ABC, Bill Shorten is pressed on the NBN.
Bill Shorten:
Not everything can be done in a 15-second sound bite which the media like. I am going to answer Eugene’s question. What we will do is have a greater proportion of fibre in our solution on the NBN. We are not going to rip up everything that the Liberal party has done. If I came in here and said that we will start again from scratch, that doesn’t help anyone. But what I can promise, Eugene, is there will be much more fibre our NBN propositions and we are not satisfied that just sending it to the node is a sufficient solution. We will have more to say in the next couple of weeks.
12.34am BST
My background is actually science.
Malcolm Turnbull is talking now to a man in a jacket who is growing his team after meeting a financier at a barbecue. He’s in the health sector and entirely cloud hosted.
So that was a barbecue starter, not a barbecue stopper!
12.32am BST
On ABC in Brisbane, Bill Shorten is facing questions about the Fair Work Commission’s decision to reject a workplace deal between right-wing union the SDA and Coles, which it found left many workers worse off relative to the award. Shorten told his host “I am not here to defend the SDA ... in terms of the union you have to the union about concerns their members have with them.”
The ABC host plays a clip from Duncan Hart, who brought the case against Coles and he describes as a “poor little Marxist from Brisbane”. Hart blasts Labor for not promising to legislate against cuts to penalty ratesand for the “pathetic” response from Labor figures to his David and Goliath case against Coles.
12.31am BST
On the radio, Bill Shorten is dealing with talkback callers. One former factory worker wants to know about raising the pension age to 70.
Q: I used to work in a factory for 30 years. I am burnt out. There’s a lot of people burnt out. We aren’t even near 65 let alone 70, Bill.
I get. Labor is opposing is increasing the retirement age from 67 to 70. We are opposing that.
Yeah, Six Pivot!
12.26am BST
The prime minister is accompanied by Wyatt Roy, also minus tie.
Malcolm Turnbull:
Sarah, what about fashion?
Hey! Jake! Talking about the cloud …
12.20am BST
Elsewhere in Brisbane, Malcolm Turnbull has thrown off the tie and is talking innovation in Brisbane. He appears to be interviewing the owner of a startup. “It’s really about building an ecosystem, not about building a company,” the startup bloke tells him.
Malcolm Turnbull:
That’s awesome!
12.17am BST
Q: I ask that because you say you support coal mining or the Labor party supports coal mining but Terri Butler, your member in Brisbane, does not support coal mining?
Terri Butler:
I don’t support the Adani coal mining. Our state parliament didn’t have much discretion, they were using laws amended by the Newman government.
If the Labor party is elected to the government on July 2, there will still be coal mining on the July 3. A Commonwealth government I lead will not be investing any money in the Adani coal mine.
12.13am BST
The Labor leader, Bill Shorten, is in Brisbane this morning and speaking to the ABC now.
Q: Does the Australian Labor party support coalmining?
Ah, yes, we think coalmining is part of the energy mix going forward but we also support putting greater investment into renewable energy. The truth of the matter is the world is reaching a tipping point in terms of climate change. We have to act to be able to restrain the increases in temperature which are under way and leading to extreme weather events and the very harmful effect that has on our economy. So we need to focus a lot more on renewable energy.
Whether or not the Adani coalmine goes ahead will be up to the investors of Adani.
You ask do I support it? It’s not up to me to support a particular business enterprise. What I do say is that, under a Labor government, coalmining will still go on. What I also say is that we won’t be expending any commonwealth resources on the Adani mine.
12.05am BST
Meanwhile, in Como. Campaigning in a tunnel. Morning Como.
Day 24 - Back to Como Railway Station this morning and getting a fantastic response. pic.twitter.com/VjcNGT8hs4
11.58pm BST
I imagine the prime minister went into his conversation with Alan Jones earlier this morning immaculately prepped on super, but Alan didn’t want to talk about super this morning, he wanted to talk about that next week. Alan wanted to talk about windfarms – why are they being subsidised by someone or other – and whether Malcolm Turnbull was Liberal or Labor, and whether he was stuffing things up by failing to go in hard on Bill Shorten about his manifest wickedness. Thus far Alan Jones has been Malcolm Turnbull’s only major interview during the campaign. I’m sure talking about Alan’s various preoccupations to Alan’s fairly modest audience is a brilliant media strategy. You can see that, right?
11.37pm BST
Thanks, Mel, good morning everyone and welcome to Wednesday, it’s delightful to be with you. The Coalition campaign will be sending a collective thank you card to Julie Bishop this morning because the foreign minister’s stumble yesterday has projected superannuation to the front of the agenda in the early morning electronic news cycle. Yes the thank you card reference is irony. Because Bishop couldn’t explain the transition to retirement scheme yesterday on the Neil Mitchell program, breakfast radio hosts have taken advantage of the few hours heads up to get across the scheme. Michaelia Cash, Kelly O’Dwyer and Mathias Cormann have all taken their turn in various studios to try to fend off questions about the budget changes impacting lower income earners, in contrast to the government’s arguments at budget time that the changes only hit the top-shelf income earners.
Cormann’s formulation this morning is the budget changes “predominantly” affect high income earners. Predominantly is the more accurate description, given if you are taking advantage of the transition to retirement scheme, you will now pay 15% tax. Let’s take the cameo from the budget papers to illustrate. Let’s meet Sebastian. “Sebastian is 57 years old, earns $80,000 and has $500,000 in his superannuation account. He pays income tax on his salary and his fund pays $4,500 tax on his $30,000 earnings. Sebastian decides to reduce his work hours to spend more time with his grandchildren. He reduces his working hours by 25% and has a corresponding reduction in his earnings to $60,000. He commences a transition to retirement income stream worth $20,000 per year so that he can maintain his lifestyle while working reduced hours. Currently, Sebastian pays income tax but his fund pays nothing on the earnings from his pool of superannuation savings. Under the government’s changes, while the earnings on Sebastian’s superannuation assets will no longer be tax free they will still be taxed concessionally (at 15%). He will still have more disposable income than without a transition to retirement income stream. This ensures he has sufficient money to maintain his lifestyle, even with reduced work hours.”
11.30pm BST
ABC News 24 wrapped up their interview with Mathias Cormann with this question:
Finally, picking up on Peta Credlin last night, do you see a return of Tony Abbott to the prime ministership?
No.”
11.28pm BST
While I was listening in to other interviews, the assistant treasurer, Kelly O’Dwyer, was on ABC radio talking superannuation.
From AAP:
Australians taking advantage of transition-to-retirement rules are still getting a good deal despite losing a tax-free status on earnings, the federal government insists.
About 115,000 people – aged between 60 and 65 – are working and receiving a pension from their superannuation fund as they approach full retirement, O’Dwyer says.
11.22pm BST
Brendan O’Connor, the shadow minister for employment and workplace relations, is on the ABC’s Radio National program. He’s asked what Labor will do if the Fair Work Commission cuts Sunday penalty rates.
We will respect the decision of the commission, but we believe we can argue it will be unfair to many workers if the commission tried to unfairly affect them by way of this decision.”
It’s not a large amount of money, but every bit counts for people on very low wages. The commission pointed out even people receiving this wage are in households below the poverty line, so there’s still more work to be done. But look, I’d say the decision was welcomed.
However, the government is proposing family tax benefits cuts, any tax relief was not there for people on the minimum wage, so you have to take those things into account in terms of how people will go because of other decisions made by the government.”
11.07pm BST
Meanwhile, Bill Shorten has begun the day with a 8km run in Brisbane.
The Bill Shorten run. Time would have been better if he was able to jaywalk #ausvotes pic.twitter.com/0lLlgSlTiN
Bill Shorten running in Brisbane with a QUT robotics doctor #ausvotes pic.twitter.com/0fROnxFmwm
10.50pm BST
You might remember that on Monday I mentioned on this blog reports that the former treasurer Joe Hockey, who delivered his infamous “age of entitlement” speech in 2012, was allegedly at around the same time using his taxpayer-funded Cabcharge card for “phantom journeys” amounting to thousands of dollars.
Fairfax Media has more on this story, reporting:
Hockey tried to block the release of five-year-old hire car travel details by arguing it could put him at risk by allowing prediction of his movements in a heightened terrorism environment.
The argument was made during a freedom of information battle with Fairfax Media, which on Monday revealed the rules for MPs using privately chauffeured hire cars were repeatedly broken in relation to Mr Hockey’s Cabcharge account as shadow treasurer.
10.43pm BST
More from the Cormann interview. He’s asked about the foreign minister Julie Bishop’s struggle yesterday to explain the transition to retirement component of Australia’s superannuation system.
How does that work, minister?
Well I mean as the prime minister said yesterday, you know, superannuation tax arrangements can be complex. When it comes to the transition to retirement, I mean this relates to people who essentially have reached an age where they can access their superannuation, called the preservation age, but those people are not yet retired so they’re both accessing an income stream through their superannuation while still also drawing a salary because they’re still working.”
This is an integrity measure so it’s essentially putting the tax arrangements in relation to earnings for people who still make contributions to their superannuation because they’re still working, in line with those that apply to everybody else.
I mean what was happening here is, this was meant to help people prepare for retirement by reducing their working hours and supplementing their income through this transition to retirement income stream, and what’s been happening increasingly is that people have been working continuing to work full time and as well as drawing a tax-free income stream and, you know, obviously that wasn’t the original intent of this arrangement.”
10.39pm BST
While I was tuning in to Turnbull on 2GB, the finance minister, Mathias Cormann, has been on ABC News 24. He was asked:
A lot of economists are now saying that Australia’s relatively strong trade performance is masking a weak domestic economy. Do you agree with that assessment?
Well, the Australian economy continues to transition from record resource investment and construction-driven growth to broader drivers of growth and that’s why we’ve been saying that Australia needs this government to continue to implement our national economic plan for jobs and growth.
We’ve benefited from the period of very strong demand and high global prices for our key commodity exports, that’s come off. And now we need to transition the economy to broader drivers of growth and that has, you know, inevitably some challenges along the way and we are navigating our way through that with our plan for jobs and growth.”
Obviously the global economy continues to slow. There are global economic headwinds. There are also opportunities but that is why we’ve been pursuing things like our export trade deals to help our businesses in Australia get better access to key markets overseas.
And you can see in our export performance how obviously exports are very important for our overall economic performance. That’s why we’re doing things like pursue our ambitious innovation agenda, our ambitious defence industry plan to help local manufacturing and that’s why we’re focusing on a more competitive tax rate for business, to attract more investment here domestically and to boost growth, productivity and overtime real wages.”
Look, the numbers will be what they are. The point is that whatever the number is that is revealed today we need to continue to press ahead to implement our plan for jobs and growth, to put our economy on the strongest possible foundation for the future, to be as competitive and as productive as possible and that is what the government is focused on.”
10.33pm BST
Turnbull has turned to the need to revive the Australian Building and Construction Commission, in an interview plagued by a bad phone line ... I’m struggling to catch it all, I’m sorry.
[It’s] the only way we can get the rule of law restored in the construction sector and the building code re-established to ensure you don’t get shocking agreements between the CFMEU and builders … you talk to builders here [in Brisbane], developers here, they will tell you on union jobs there are only three tilers here that are allowed on site. And no one else will get a look-in.
The CFMEU stand over the builders and stand over developers and because the rule of law does not apply they get away with it. The Labor party took it away, as they acted at the behest of the unions.”
Reception suggests the PM may be speaking to Jones from a steel lined cupboard #ausvotes
10.25pm BST
Now Jones is referring to calls he’s had to his show from people concerned that Turnbull doesn’t have a clear plan. Turnbull responds:
The plan is an economic plan that will deliver stronger economic growth and will deliver more jobs. It will deliver tax cuts to hard working families and to small and medium businesses.”
10.24pm BST
Jones is asking Turnbull about why he’s set up a fund to spur investment in renewable energy. Everyday Australians are saying to themselves, ‘Hang on, [the government doesn’t] subsidise my business,’ Jones says. So why do renewable energy industries need tax payer money?
They’re not getting taxpayers’ money, Alan, the renewable energy target has an expense to electricity consumers overall but its a commitment that’s been there ... the disruption you would cause if you tried to remove the ...
10.17pm BST
Turnbull is on the Alan Jones program, and Jones opens by asking him about the budget deficit.
How do you turn this around?
Well Alan, the only way you turn it around is by containing expenditure, keeping it under control and living within your means and above all growing the economy. The faster the economy grows the stronger revenues grow.
That’s where Shorten’s war against business is self-defeating. It is business that provides the jobs that generate employment and the tax revenues that pay for everything.”
10.04pm BST
Last night Labor’s Tanya Plibersek, the party’s foreign affairs spokeswoman, was asked to weigh in on comments made by Bill Shorten that the US Republican candidate Donald Trump is “barking mad”. She was questioned by ABC 7.30 host, Leigh Sales:
If the future Australian prime minister considers, you know, the potential future US president “barking mad”, how could Australia in good faith continue to rely on the United States’ judgment and leadership and, indeed, follow it into conflict?
Look, I don’t think it’s particularly controversial to say that some of Mr Trump’s ideas are a little bit out there. I think there’s plenty of people in the United States saying the same thing.
But our relationship is – our relationship between our nations is about more than the relationship between the president and the prime minister. It depends on many decades of relationships between individuals, between our institutions, between our militaries, between our cultural institutions. It’s a big and wide and deep relationship.”
Well, I think that’s a very important point to make: not just at the time of a presidential election in the United States, but more generally. We’ve always said that we want alliance and not compliance: that it’s vital for Australia to make its own judgments about the conflicts that we enter into.”
Shorten - Trump 'barking mad.' Plibersek says the alliance will withstand such a President. https://t.co/IXiGo4xSLF pic.twitter.com/7iBl5MvKti
9.53pm BST
Expect a lot more talk of “jobs and growth” today. Australia’s official growth figures are due out today and many economists expect the GDP will have picked up during the March quarter.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics will release the figures at about 11.30am. Business Insider has this handy guide to the state of play.
9.45pm BST
Our photographer Mike Bowers posted this just after we closed off the blog yesterday. So much awkward.
Bill Shorten "collecting kisses" while campaigning at Carindale in Brisbane @murpharoo @GuardianAus #politicslive pic.twitter.com/vpH0T8zQxW
9.34pm BST
There’s political disengagement, then there’s this.
Keeping on the theme of former leaders coming back to haunt us, in the minds of some of the people in the electorate of Griffith, it seems the former Labor PM Kevin Rudd never really went away.
Labor door knockers have highlighted a problem for [Labor member for Griffith] Terri Butler, who yesterday said she was not surprised some voters believed Mr Rudd represented their interests.
Held by a margin of just 3%, Ms Butler’s seat is considered marginal, and in the past three weeks it has been visited by opposition leader Bill Shorten twice.
9.29pm BST
Guardian Australia’s political editor, Lenore Taylor, writes that “only about 40,000 of the 870,000 small businesses getting a tax cut under the Coalition’s ‘jobs and growth’ plan are likely to use the bonus to expand their operations”.
This is according to the chief executive of the Council of Small Business of Australia. Lenore explains:
Cosboa strongly supports the tax cuts and investment incentives offered by the Turnbull government in its May budget’s ‘jobs and growth package’, but its chief executive, Peter Strong, said the extension of the instant asset write-off for investments would give the government much more ‘bang for its buck’ in terms of economic growth than the additional tax cuts.
And he said the tax cut would benefit only the minority of businesses that left the extra money in their company to pay for expansion. Strong estimates that would be around 40,000 businesses over the next few years, which he says was ‘still a very good figure’.
9.09pm BST
Turnbull will be interviewed by Alan Jones on 2GB in about an hour, I’ll bring you that exchange as it happens.
8.54pm BST
Good morning, and welcome to Wednesday and politics live. When our deputy political editor, Katharine Murphy, closed this blog off yesterday evening she left us with the latest Essential poll results, which found the Coalition just ahead of Labor on the two-party-preferred measure, 51% to 49%.
Malcolm Turnbull’s approval rating is still ahead as preferred prime minister at 40%, though this is down 3%. It’s still a close race and I’m sure there’ll be poll pondering and responses to it this morning.
Guess which leader people would most trust to look after their pet? Hint: he likes unions #Essential Poll #ausvotes pic.twitter.com/A4rmSwGHqV
Well Neil, this is obviously a gotcha moment, you want me to go through … it’s not my portfolio and –
But I’d say this to you — it’s not very complex to know whether you own a $2.3m negatively geared house, most people can work that out.”
The government likes to pretend thats it’s only a very small proportion of people at the top who have been affected, but the evidence we’ve received is that people on various incomes are impacted by that change.”
The government, if it’s got a policy, has got to defend it or it has to fix it. It can’t be in this limbo land where it’s not able to explain it. It is going to bite the Coalition if it is not able to deal with it properly.”
The copy-and-paste job of the constitution, which sets out what the party stands for and how it is run, includes some typos which have been carried across.
One of the only noticeable differences in the 22-page document is replacing the words “Nick Xenophon Team” with “Glenn Lazarus Team” and “South Australia” with “Queensland” throughout.
A growing glut of doctors has forced GPs to “chase patients” and pushed bulk-billing rates to record highs, leaving Medicare vulnerable to overuse that will add to its projected cost blowout of more than $35 billion within a decade.
Growth in GP numbers of almost 50 per cent over the past decade — 2.5 times population growth — has undermined doctors’ ability to charge fees above the Medicare Benefits Schedule.
Joyce has rallied supporters – dubbed the ‘killer canaries’ due to their bright yellow T-shirts – to do their best to keep both seats in the hands of the country party.
The deputy prime minister conceded while the Nationals may not have the best social media campaign or the ability to nab newspaper front pages, the party did have old-school tricks.
Standing in front of posters emblazoned with ‘make ship happen’ Xenophon’s Target suit would likely be the first of its kind to be photographed for men’s magazine GQ Australia.
In a press release Mr Xenophon reveals he refused to be styled by the magazine, sticking to his rigid $100 clothes cap for the shoot which he says includes Lowes shoes and Kmart undies.
He will want to, but he’ll realise he can’t. To say that he doesn’t have a desire is ridiculous – to say that he can’t overcome that desire by the reality that’s just not going to happen [is another].”
I think that’s absolute rubbish. I was going to say horse shit but I don’t know if I can say that on TV. Honestly, Barnaby, get back on the wombat trail – please leave this alone. Tony’s made absolutely clear that the Abbott years are over, and no one can look at his performance during this campaign and see that he’s anything other than a team player.”
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