With a fortnight to go in the election contest, Labor launches its campaign in western Sydney. All the developments from Penrith with Katharine Murphy, live
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Thanks for joining today’s special edition of Politics Live, but that will do us for today. I’ll be back tomorrow with the campaign day, followed by another special edition in the evening for Malcolm Turnbull’s solo effort on Q&A tomorrow night.
5.50am BST
Speaking of video, if you’d like to see how it looked as well as reading the rolling report, here’s a short compilation of bits from the Shorten speech.
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A short bit of video from Mr Bowers capturing Bill Shorten’s arrival and greeting by the former prime ministers.
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I gather the prime minister was at a truck rally, with grandson, Jack.
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Also, a flu question.
Q: Your voice is a bit croaky today. Are you going to make it to the end?
That is very touching. I’m glad that you’re so concerned. Do you have any flu remedies for me? I would be happy to receive some advice.
5.39am BST
While we were all preoccupied with the Labor launch the prime minister has been out on the hustings. Two questions about Medicare at his press conference.
Q: On the Medicare issue, you have ruled out outsourcing the payments system to the private sector. The whole reason for that was the modernise the systems. Will it require more spending from the government to upgrade the systems?
Medicare will never ever be privatised. It will never ever be sold. Every element of Medicare services that is being delivered by government today, will be delivered by government in the future. Full stop. That is the fact. What Bill Shorten is doing, is peddling an extraordinary lie, so audacious, is defies, it defies belief. This is the first time I’ve been asked about this issue by this press pack, and we do one of these everyday. You all know it’s nonsense. But Labor has been pushing this. They had trade union officials calling up older Australians at night, trying to frighten them with a scare campaign. Every single element that is delivered by government for Medicare, as part of Medicare, will continue to be delivered by government.
Every delivery system of government has to be upgraded and improved, so that people are able to access services on digital platforms. I announced that when I was talking about our digital policy just a few days ago. We will continue to improve the way that Medicare interfaces with their customers, with citizens, and patients, but it also all be done by government and within government. I repeat, there will be no outsourcing of any elements of the Medicare service that are currently delivered by government. Improvements and efficiencies will be undertaken within government. There is no privatisation of Medicare or any part of Medicare. Any element of Medicare that is delivered by government will be delivered by government. Full stop.
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In case you weren’t with me from the beginning of the coverage, here are details of the jobs initiative which Bill Shorten unveiled during the launch.
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Fabulous pictures coming now for a bit.
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The Labor leader had four key messages for the faithful in western Sydney.
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I’m here at the “Joan” in Penrith, otherwise known as the Joan Sutherland Performing Arts Centre. It is a grey day, brightened only by the sea of red Labor volunteer T-shirts. The Labor luminaries walked down the concrete carpet, which was lined with corflutes, hiding the construction site next door to Joan.
Security was tight and a lone Nick Xenophon candidate in a sandwich board was asked to stand off the concrete.
The theatre is smaller than those used for past campaign launches, which provided a little extra energy to the event. The highest cheers began when the former PM Julia Gillard entered the room and carried on as Shorten introduced “the one and only” Paul Keating and finally Bob Hawke.
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Now, Medicare, before I get to more pictures and I know Gabrielle Chan is giving me a point of view from in the room. I did cover this pre-launch but I can add a bit now. Medicare privatisation is clearly biting out in the electorate. This is obvious from the prime minister’s very defensive reaction to the Labor campaign.
It’s pretty obvious that Labor is going to go in hard on this issue over the closing fortnight of the campaign, and it makes sense from a political point of view.
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Just some quick first analytical thoughts, leaving aside the merits of the Medicare push, which I’ll treat separately.
To understand what Bill Shorten just did there, we have to take ourselves back to 2013, the hollow, terrible, broken campaign launch of the last campaign, where Anthony Albanese was onstage on the brink of tears.
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That’s it for Shorten.
I’ll be back very shortly with analysis and pictures and more.
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Bill Shorten:
The Australia I see in the future is a creative country, a place of community, a Commonwealth built by common effort, courageous and generous people, striving together, shared opportunities and shared reward. We carry that fight forward. We can win this election if we give it every ounce of our energy. We will be a Labor government that will always put people first in the finest tradition of this great country we all love together. Putting people first!
3.51am BST
Bill Shorten is into the summation now, a rallying cry to the base.
There are people who will tell us [we can’t win]. Mind you, these are the same people who said less than three years ago Tony Abbott was unbeatable, that the 2014 Budget was right for the times, that national conference would divide and break our party, that a royal commission would crush our movement.
The same people now tell us that Malcolm Turnbull is invincible.
3.47am BST
Bill Shorten gives a shout out to Hawke in the front row, who has fronted Labor’s Medicare ads.
Bill Shorten:
You built Medicare and we stand with you now to defend it. We will prevail.
3.46am BST
Bill Shorten:
Medicare is more than a column in a spreadsheet. It’s not some corporate asset to be sold off and exported. It’s not a shell company where you can rip out the heart, keep the brand and outsource the responsibility. Medicare is not just another business. It is everyone’s business. It belongs to all of us. It belongs in public hands.
3.45am BST
The Coalition is dissembling on Medicare, the Labor leader says.
Bill Shorten:
Now, first Mr Turnbull said there was nothing wrong with this. Then he said there was nothing to see here. Now the Liberals are trying to pull off the biggest fraud of this campaign and there’s some stiff competition for that title. They’re pretending their task force doesn’t exist and that now privatising Medicare isn’t part of their plans. But facts have an inconvenient way of ruining a Turnbull story. Today, we have new proof of their true intentions. The Liberals have given the Productivity Commission new riding instructions to investigate privatising human services and Americanising Medicare. This is Mr Turnbull’s second strike on Medicare and we know he won’t stop, he won’t rest, piece by piece, brick by brick.
The Liberals have never liked Medicare and they want to tear it down again.
3.42am BST
Shorten addresses the disaffection with politics in the Australian community. Some people think politics doesn’t matter, but he has a word for why politics matters: Medicare. Applause for that. In the front row Bob Hawke and Paul Keating are having a little chuckle, rather like those critics from the Muppets.
Bill Shorten:
Friends, this election is a referendum on the future of Medicare. Your individual vote will decide the fate, direction and quality of health care in this country. Medicare is the community standard. It’s the gold standard. It speaks to Australians about who we are. It’s an echo of an older, uncomplicated sense of solidarity, the belief that the health of anyone of us matters to all of us.
It’s also a thoroughly modern economic policy. Lifting productivity up and keeping sick days down, saving employers the expense of paying health insurance for their employees, and Medicare costs Australia far less than other countries pay and we get better care. It is the job of good government not to just preserve Medicare as it was, but to make sure it keeps up with the needs of our people, but under my opponent, the Liberals have cut $650m from bulk billing for pathology and diagnostic imaging.
3.38am BST
Teenage mental health now.
Bill Shorten:
There is a hidden story in our country. Teenagers are taking days off school to attend the funerals of classmates who’ve taken their own life. Parents sitting at kitchen tables numb within comprehension, shattered by grief, trying to write a eulogy for their child. No parent should ever bury their child. Yet seven Australians die every day at their own hand. Every single day. We can do better than this. A new Labor government will start by providing $72m for 12 regional suicide prevention projects. I say to the people among us at the brink of despair that we must offer more than help. We must offer hope.
3.36am BST
Bill Shorten addresses equality for women, and marriage equality.
In modern Australia, no-one should have to justify their sexuality or their love to anyone else and instead of sitting in judgement, instead of providing a taxpayer-funded platform for homophobia, we will gift every Australian an equal right in respect of love, nothing less.
3.34am BST
The NBN – the prime minister has messed it up. And a bonus zinger.
Bill Shorten says the management of the NBN was the perfect preview for his time as prime minister: over promise, under deliver and take forever to get to the point.
3.32am BST
Education now. A big clap now for the commitment to lock in the Gonski funding, needs based funding for schools. Bill Shorten talks about a hustings visit to one of Australia’s most disadvantaged schools, in Cairns. He says Labor needs to win the election to make the case that education investment is a productivity investment.
Bill Shorten:
When I think about how they keep having to do more with less, it is an outrage, when the Liberals say that money doesn’t make a difference in education. Let is win this election, so we put to bed forever the argument that funding schools is not an investment in our future.
3.29am BST
A section on infrastructure and on TAFE and on apprenticeships and some bonus economic nationalism for advanced manufacturing.
Bill Shorten:
We choose local content. We choose the apprenticeship system. We choose renewable energy and Australian steel. Because we believe advanced manufacturing has a future in this country. And the only three-word slogan I want to see and hear a lot more about in the next three years is - Made In Australia!
3.27am BST
Shorten references the jobs package I flagged earlier on this morning, and returns to the empathetic language about jobs in a time of transition. He’s pitching to people in the hard-scrabble suburbs and postcodes of this country, where perhaps the family unit isn’t working as well as we’d like it to, or those older migrant workers in the great factories of Australia, who 30 and 40 years ago came off the boat and into our factories and delivered us our standard of living.
Bill Shorten:
We are a more imaginative country than we give ourselves credit for. My policies, our policies, for small business and to jobseekers is one and the same - Labor believes in you and we will invest in you.
Not new paperwork, just new jobs.
3.24am BST
Bill Shorten brings the speech around for jobs. Labor doesn’t have a slogan, it understands the issues, and has a plan.
The Australian economy needs a real jobs plan because, from Western Sydney to northern Tassie, from regional Queensland and the Hunter Valley to the suburbs of Perth, the Australians finding it hardest to find a job are young people under 25 looking for their first start, and workers over 55 displaced by change, stranded by change, looking for another chance, and, of course, the parents and careers returning to work after more than six months away.
Labor is determined to do more to help people find work in a changing economy, not by waffling about agility, but just getting on and doing the job, not talking about jobs, doing something to create them.
3.22am BST
A segment on bank bashing, the cultural problems in the financial services sector, banks don’t need a tax cut, they need a royal commission.
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Big target politics, versus a tax plan which is foreign aid for foreign companies.
Bill Shorten:
I am so proud of Labor. We have taken the high road of politics, outlining the most comprehensive program in a generation and how we pay for it.
And the difference in competing economic visions has never been sharper or starker. A Labor party investing in people, in productivity, in infrastructure and in technology and a Liberal party asking for three more years on the back of one bad idea: a $50bn giveaway to big business, $30bn of which goes straight overseas.
3.17am BST
Bill Shorten moves to the team, he says Labor has a better team than the government. Then to the policy agenda and fiscal management. We’ve got the best people. We’ve got the best policies. And we’ve got the best plan to pay for them.
Bill Shorten:
We are being accountable and responsible for every single dollar. Only policies that we can fund. Only policies our country can afford.
We will not be a big-spending government. We will be a government for the fair go, fully paid for. Bringing down the deficit, each and every year, saving more than we spend over the decade, returning the Budget to balance at the same time as our opponents, and each and every year therefore, our surpluses will be bigger and stronger and we will pay down the public debt faster. Because our savings plan is built upon structural reform, not savage short-term cuts.
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Then the delicate business of leaders, who is here and who isn’t.
Bill Shorten gives a shout out to Kevin Rudd. Shorten wants to thank him for his example and his service. With that dispatched, Julia Gillard. A continuing inspiration for everyone who fights for Labor. Paul Keating. A man of courage, conviction and imagination, a person whose public life was spent painting the big picture, yet always with working people at the centre, the reason the true believers kept the faith, the one that every other party would like to have but only Labor has, the one and only Paul Keating. Then Hawkie. Bob Hawke. There is more fight in Bob Hawke’s right arm than the whole of Malcolm Turnbull’s cabinet put together.
3.07am BST
Bill Shorten:
We can win. We must win, because only a Labor government will build astronger economy and a fairer society. We will fund our schools and protect Medicare. We will create jobs and build roads, rail, a proper National Broadband Network. We will grow our regions. We will make our cities work. Only Australia will have a Labor government which delivers prosperity for everyone who works and prosperity that works for everyone. Only Labor can do this.
Friends, our issues are starting to bite. Please keep up the great work!
3.05am BST
His first objective it to counter the suggestion Labor has already lost.
Bill Shorten:
Turnbull says he’s got this in the bag. He claims he’s already won it. I say to him - never underestimate Labor. You ain’t seen anything yet. Has he?
3.03am BST
The Labor leader inverts the old Whitlamism to begin his speech.
Bill Shorten:
Women and men of Australia, we gather as one united party, ready to serve, ready to lead, ready for government!
3.02am BST
Then, the specific warm up for Shorten.
Tanya Plibersek:
Since taking the leadership, I have watched Bill get clobbered from every angle. The media, the opposition, they have all done their worst, but he endured. He held his nerve. He doesn’t grandstand, he doesn’t preach or lecture, he’s devoted his life to the deep satisfaction of helping others. Every minute of his working life has been about that. Fighting for decent pay and conditions and for safe workplaces. Working with disabled Australians and their families for a national disability insurance scheme. Getting on with the job. Bringing us to this moment.
And every day he’s grown stronger. Two and a half years ago, it looked impossible, but Bill has united us and led us in developing a real plan for government.
3.00am BST
Now Labor’s deputy leader is moving in against Malcolm Turnbull. She says Labor was intensely critical of Tony Abbott, for sounds reasons, but at least he believed in things.
Tanya Plibersek:
Malcolm Turnbull promised so much. He promised better economic management, but he’s tripled the deficit and added $100bn to net debt. He promised a style of leadership that respects the people’s intelligence. He’s promised optimism, but he’s reverted to the same old lies and scare campaigns, the same old three-word slogans we had from Tony Abbott. And in this campaign, he has nothing to offer, but more fear and more failure.
2.57am BST
Tanya Plibersek:
Malcolm Turnbull’s one big idea is giving big multinational companies a $50bn tax cut and you know - even that’s not his own. It was Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher that came up with trickle down economics. Didn’t work then, won’t work now.
We don’t just have a set of talking-points to get into government. We have a plan for government. We don’t just have along list of reasons to vote against the Liberals, although goodness knows they have given us a pretty good long list, we have got a powerful case for Labor. And in 2016, this is the case that we are taking to the Australian people.
2.55am BST
Tanya Plibersek pitches voters back into the Abbott era, the 2014 budget.
Tanya Plibersek:
It’s a real treat to be introducing Bill today. Back when Bill was running for leader in 2013, he put three famous Whitlam words front and centre of his leadership - “party policy people.”
From day one, Bill began the tough job of uniting our party. He’s brought us together, but to be frank - he got more than a little help. We were galvanised by a sense of urgency by the Liberal Party’s budget of 2014 - the most unfair and the most regressive budget in living memory. And then in 2015, while we were still fighting this terrible government, Bill and I and this team before you made sure that we got on with the hard yards of policy development.
2.52am BST
Tanya Plibersek:
When I first became deputy leader, I set myself two main goals - first, to work with Bill to unite a party that was still pretty bruised and divided because we lost the privilege to govern. And, secondly, to develop a detailed program that told people exactly what we’d do if we won government and how we’d pay for it.
My colleagues on this stage are testament to our unity and to our solidarity, and I would put our people against theirs any day of the week.
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Bowen hands the rhetorical baton to Tanya Plibersek, Australia’s next deputy prime minister of Australia.
Tanya Plibersek:
Colleagues, friends, true believers, how good is it to be here together, allies, partners and comrades in the fight for the things that matter?
Good jobs, Medicare, education, climate change.
2.47am BST
Chris Bowen, continuing.
Friends, let’s be frank with each other - in 2013, most people wouldn’t have given Labor much of a chance to be back in the ball game as a viable alternative government three years later … Last September in an act of political desperation, the Liberals did something they said they would never do and dismissed a prime minister. But Labor’s back in the game as a competitive and viable alternative. Part of the reason is we have led the debate with detailed and courageous policies.
Part of the reason is the unity of our great Labor team, unity of purpose. We watched as Tony Abbott narrowly beat an empty chair in the leadership challenge and then we observed as Malcolm Turnbull hopped into the chair and beat him. We remained unified. Focused on our task, serving the Australian people by providing a better alternative.
2.44am BST
The Coalition’s campaign spokesman, Mathias Cormann, calling in, like Eurovision.
Labor's negative gearing change will drive down value of existing properties and push up cost of rents across Western Sydney. #laborlaunch
2.43am BST
Chris Bowen’s speech is heavy on the campaign values. The election is about choices, the business tax cut versus the investment in schools.
Chris Bowen:
Australia can’t afford to do both. We choose schools. And as shadow treasurer I’m very proud of our investment in schools. It’s worth every single dollar.
Friends we’re fast becoming a nation which can’t house our own children.
2.38am BST
Emma Lusar, Labor’s candidate in Lindsay, is opening proceedings. She’s giving her log cabin story, which neatly aligns with Labor’s campaign messages. This is significant exposure for the candidate in this marginal seat, where name recognition is everything.
On now to the second warm up act, the shadow treasurer Chris Bowen.
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And some delightful little kiddies are leading the singing of the national anthem. Let’s all be upstanding.
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The launch begins with a welcome to country.
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Oh, and Hawkie, who gives a jaunty wave of his walking stick. Bob Hawke is even sitting next to Paul Keating. Who says there’s no prospect of progress?
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Here comes Paul Keating.
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Onto the main event now. Julia Gillard is arriving in the hall to big cheers.
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If there’s been entirely too much forced “humanising” during this campaign for your liking, you can skip the video while we pause on this final thought before we hit the main event.
The other battle Labor faces over the coming fortnight, apart from the obvious one of picking up about 20 or so seats for victory on 2 July, is piercing the low lying media fog – many commentators are already declaring the ALP has already lost the election. The basis for these early declarations (largely) is the Coalition is looking supremely confident that they are ahead in the marginals that matter. This may well be true. It also may well not be true, which is why I’m making no judgment on this matter at all in advance of the result.
2.12am BST
While we wait for kick-off, during this hard-hitting interview you can watch Chloe Shorten interview Bill Shorten about his history in the army reserve and about the rigours of the weekend ballet run.
Watch: @BillShortenmp's wife Chloe interviewed him in Darwin and it’s kind of adorable. #AusVotes #Auspolhttps://t.co/RWhI8gZ0BL
2.06am BST
One of Labor’s campaign spokespeople, Tony Burke, has been challenged in the pre-launch warm up interviews about the Medicare privatisation, which I addressed a couple of posts ago. The ABC reporter says to Burke: the Coalition has now explicitly ruled out privatisation – isn’t that the end of it?
Tony Burke says we have a prime minister who says one thing and does another.
[Malcolm Turnbull] explicitly said that he would vote for marriage equality, that he believed in climate change ... There is a difference with this man between what he says and what he does as prime minister.
2.00am BST
For readers wondering when we are going to hit the sharp end of proceedings – the launch is scheduled to commence at 11.30am, so in about 30 minutes. You’ve got time to butter the crumpets.
1.56am BST
Looking elsewhere on the hustings, the Coalition has announced it will provide $49.2m for new machinery at two mines to help Arrium, the troubled South Australian steel maker, remove waste materials from the ore to produce a higher grade ore.
Labor last week promised $100m: $50m in direct grants and another $50m in conditional loans.
Nick Xenophon has done nothing for Arrium or the workers at Whyalla. He can’t deliver anything because can never be in government. Nick Xenophon can talk as much as he likes but he can’t actually do. He is good at talking, and he will keep doing so in promising everybody everything they want to hear, but at the end of the day, a vote for the Xenophon team is a vote for instability, we need a stable term government into the future focused on jobs and the economy, a stable Turnbull government can actually deliver what we announced today, a Labor government can deliver for Arrium, a Xenophon party candidate can do nothing to help Arrium.
1.49am BST
More visitors have arrived.
Some more visitors to the Labor campaign launch pic.twitter.com/BKauv9kqvC
1.46am BST
Here’s a double side of our NXT guest, courtesy of Gabrielle Chan.
Rain will not deter him. Lone sandwich board and NXT candidate Stephen Lynch at Labor launch. @murpharoo pic.twitter.com/nsH8Ux5IxO
1.44am BST
Labor has briefed some news outlets about the centrepiece of today’s launch – a new $257m jobs plan, where small businesses will be offered a tax break of up to a $20,000 if they hire a mature-age job seeker, someone under 25 or a mother returning to work.
We also expect Labor to confirm today that it will not go ahead with the government’s proposed cuts to pathology services, which is a commitment worth several hundreds of millions. This decision is predicated on Labor’s rolling save Medicare campaign, which is doing the Coalition some damage.
1.23am BST
Hello everyone and welcome to Sunday morning. We are gathering together this morning because today is Labor’s official campaign launch. Labor plus a couple of friends. This NXT candidate has evidently absorbed the lesson of the micro party’s founder and leader, Nick Xenophon: opportunity waits for no man or woman.
Nick Xenophon Team candidate at @AustralianLabor campaign launch in Penrith @2GBNews @3AW693 @NewsTalk4BC @6PR pic.twitter.com/s9JqEw0syp
Proud to be a member of the Australian Labor Party for 35 years now. Wishing @BillShortenMP all the best for the campaign launch today KRudd
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