Malcolm Turnbull questioned over immigration minister’s claims ‘illiterate’ refugees are taking Australian jobs. Follow all the updates on day 10 of the campaign
8.36am BST
Well, I think that’s all I can give to campaign Wednesday, with all the usual thanks to colleagues and salutations to the readers.
7.41am BST
Readers with me all day know that earlier on, I was conversing with the Liberal party’s pollster, Mark Textor, about Peter Dutton, and whether not he went too far.
Textor didn’t answer my question until now. Here’s the answer: no, the immigration minister did not go too far.
@marcuskelson @BenDohertyCorro @KKeneally @murpharoo no. he didn’t go to far
7.35am BST
The conversation is turning now to immigration and Peter Dutton. Dastyari is on this afternoon with the Liberal Senator Arthur Sinodinos. Both of the guests are migrants.
Dastyari says when he arrived as a five year old with his parents who were fleeing conflict in Iran, he couldn’t speak a word on English. The Labor man says he’s personally offended by Peter Dutton’s comments. Sinodinos says he didn’t learn English until he went to school because the family only spoke Greek at home. He says Dastyari is entitled to feel however he likes about the Dutton remarks, but what voters need to focus on is this imminent Labor/Greens alliance. Dastyari says hang on a minute, you are the people doing a preference deal with the Greens.
7.28am BST
Sky News has been unhappy for most of the afternoon because Labor’s David Feeney was due to be on a program this afternoon and he’s pulled out. Labor’s Sam Dastyari has stepped in instead.
So now we have one of those television moments where the stand in has to cop the shellacking that Sky had been planning for Feeney, who has evidently been shoved into a cupboard in Labor campaign headquarters or inside a safe house somewhere courtesy of the fact he forgot to properly declare that he owned a $2m house, and Labor’s campaign brains trust would evidently like it if the forgetful candidate would just shut up and stay well out of sight.
That’s a matter for David.
You are fortunate enough to have me.
7.16am BST
Christopher Pyne was asked for his view on Peter Dutton’s remarks on asylum seekers stealing Aussie jobs on Adelaide radio earlier today. Pyne stepped through that fairly carefully.
Q: They won’t be numerate, they won’t be literate, they’ll be innumerate and they will take our jobs, are they sentiments that you share Christopher Pyne?
Well Will, the answer to the issues to do with asylum seekers around the world is not to simply keep doubling our intake of refugees…
Well I’m answering the question, and we already have the second most generous program to take refugees in the world, but obviously there are very complex issues when you take a large number of refugees from war torn countries. They need to have a proper settlement process which often involves English language learning, teachings in literacy and numeracy, resettlement, cultural understandings. You can’t just bring people to Australia from refugee camps around the world and expect them to suddenly, you know be instantaneously part of the society. You need to put them through a proper process where they can become full Australian citizens eventually, and know exactly how our community and our and society works, and that’s what he is saying.
No, I don’t think that’s what he was doing. I think he was trying to say that obviously we can’t just keep doubling the refugee intake, it’s a very expensive program, like very expensive, and there needs to be proper resettlement of refugees when they come to Australia. Australia does this really well, and I’m sure Anthony will agree on a bipartisan basis that we do the resettlement of refugees extremely well, but the issues that are dogging the Labor party at this election are not about the resettlement of refugees. They’re about the fact that a large number of people in the Labor party support onshore, rather than offshore processing and would restart the people smuggler’s business, now that is what happened under the Rudd government, despite the protests in 2007 that wouldn’t happen, and we got 800 boat arrivals, 50,000 unauthorised arrivals, and people opening up detention centres. I mean we’ve closed 16 of Labor’s detention centres, because we actually have a successful policy, and Tanya Plibersek confused us all again yesterday when she said that she and the 21 support the Labor party’s policy, not the Liberal party’s policy, well Bill Shorten says the policies are the same, so who’s right?
7.03am BST
Back to Labor’s gas policy, which I’m still not happy about, even though I still haven’t had time to dive deeply enough to have a proper view. Just some more from the questions and answers at today’s press conference with the shadow treasurer Chris Bowen.
Q: On your gas policy, are you talking about quotas for the domestic gas market?
No, what I’m talking about is a proponent of a new facility or expansion of an existing facility making the case to the Treasurer of the day about why it is in the national interest, and part of that national interest consideration is how much gas would be available for Australian manufacturing, which is my focus today – of course – Australian households as well, but particularly manufacturing, because these fantastic workers here know that they rely, and their company relies, on a clear and consistent gas supply. You’ve got manufacturers right across Australia who are saying they just can’t get gas. The Australian Industry Group has done a good job in building the case for this sort of reform, as has the Australian Workers Union and others. This is an example of Labor’s cooperative approach, bringing together people in the sector, and working on practical solutions for the future.
This is not a reservation, to be clear, this is a national interest test. They are dealing with similar issues. The treasurer of the day would be talking to proponents and saying where is something here for the manufacturing sector, tell us how you are going to cater for this, and through what I’m sure would be a cooperative process, the national interest be best served.
If it’s in the national interest it would be approved, that’s the point. Similar to the foreign interest national interest test, the Treasurer would be the ultimate arbiter. A Treasurer would take into account a vibrant and growing resources sector, a vibrant and growing manufacturing sector, impact on households, and of course, existing environmental approvals would be unaffected.
If the treasurer was not satisfied it was in the national interest, just like foreign investment. It’s not a tick the box exercise, it’s a process where the treasurer uses their judgement whether the national interest is being served.
I don’t believe so. These sorts of tests apply in the United States, where the gas industry has been growing very strongly. Of course, not everybody will approve of this, some people will say this goes too far, some people in the sector would prefer no regulation. I accept that, I know that, I’ve had those discussions, but we set the policy settings for the nation in the national interest, not in any vested interest. I’ve got to tell you, having a good and vibrant manufacturing sector is in the national interest.
The AWU has run a campaign for dealing with gas, as has the Australian Industry Group, Manufacturing Australia, the Aluminium Council – they’re not affiliated to the Labor party.
6.55am BST
Bernard Keane in Crikey this afternoon (for subscribers, do subscribe) notes that refugees are exactly the kind of people that Turnbull’s innovative, agile Australia apparently wants. Yes it’s true that it costs money to resettle them, but the investment pays off over time.
Here’s an excerpt.
Refugees — because they’ve been forced to move rather than voluntarily decided to migrate; because they usually can’t access their assets in their home country; because they haven’t developed skills with the goal of being employable in a different culture; because they often suffer from mental health problems created by the circumstances that forced them to flee — require assistance when they resettle. They require assistance to learn English, to acquire skills, to adjust to living in a different culture and economy, to educate their children (children make up a higher proportion of refugees than other migrant categories).
Once they acquire jobs, it’s possible it may be 20 years before they pay enough income tax to bring the taxpayer out ahead in net terms. However, there’s little evidence from Europe that large numbers of refugees depress wages. Reported effects of low-skilled migrants on wages, The Economist found, were slight.
6.32am BST
Two views of Malcolm Turnbull in Townsville: the first from his official photographer Sahlan Hayes, and the second from Fairfax photographer Andrew Meares.
6.25am BST
It was a pity I couldn’t keep eyes on the National Press Club debate about climate policy at lunchtime through until the end because the encounter was cooking away quite nicely. The Greens are unhappy not to have been invited to the debate. NPC president Chris Uhlmann said at the start of today’s proceedings these election encounters are designed to test the propositions of the parties of government, and there will be other opportunities for the Greens and other non-government parties to address the club over the course of the campaign. In the interests of full disclosure, I’m a director of the club. In any case, the Greens aren’t waiting for an invitation. Larissa Waters plans to host a Q&A this evening via Twitter and Facebook. If this is something you are interested in, the details are below.
You can also tweet questions to @larissawaters & she'll answer tonight on her Facebook. Sign up here: https://t.co/v2QuZ91nZL #NPC #Greens16
6.02am BST
A bit more detail about Labor’s gas policy unveiled earlier today. The opposition is promising to establish a Domestic Gas Review Board to consider whether any new gas export facility, or proposal to expand an existing one, would meet Australia’s national interest.
It would also require foreign gas companies to say how much gas they plan to make available for local manufacturers and households.
5.49am BST
Poor Mr Bowers’ more than excellent photographic work got short shrift from me this morning because we were in the middle of asylum shock and awe. Quick catch up now.
5.26am BST
Little bit of photographer hijinks from the hustings. Magic Mike. A man who never rests.
5.18am BST
Meanwhile, looking southwards, the Liberal party’s Indi candidate, Sophie Mirabella, has been cut loose by the Coalition.
The deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce has been openly mocking her and senior government sources claim she has been starved of Liberal party funding apart from that which she can raise locally.
5.11am BST
My colleague Lenore Taylor on the day’s asylum developments. This comment piece could have been headlined stop the stupid.
There’s the entry-level scare campaign, the one that has been running all week, that says that because Labor candidates and MPs have expressed concerns about the humanitarian consequences of our offshore detention centres a Labor government would inevitably “restart the boats”.
But are those concerns really heresy, or a reasonable response to the horror stories flooding in from both Manus Island and Nauru, of rape and self-harm and self-immolation? Is it really bad to have some qualms about camps that have been declared illegal by the Papua New Guinean supreme court and condemned by the United Nations?
5.01am BST
4.57am BST
I reckon this is worth a little side by side exercise.
Peter Dutton, last night, on Sky News
For many people, they won’t be numerate or literate in their own language, let alone English, and this is a difficulty because the Greens are very close to the CFMEU, as obviously the Labor Party is, and their affiliations with the union movement obviously are well known.
Now, these people would be taking Australian jobs, there’s no question about that, and for many of them that would be unemployed, they would languish in unemployment queues and on Medicare and the rest of it. So, there would be a huge cost, and there’s no sense in sugar-coating that, that’s the scenario.
Peter Dutton is an outstanding immigration minister. For more than 600 days, there has not been one successful people smuggling operation bringing unauthorised arrivals to Australia. He has done an outstanding job as immigration minister.
Let me say something about our immigration program. We are one of the most generous host countries for refugees. We take our responsibilities to refugees very seriously. As Peter was saying earlier today, many of them come to Australia from shattered areas of the world. They are from dreadful, devastated, war-torn regions of the world and many of them, large percentages of them have no English skills at all. Many of them are illiterate in their own language. Many haven’t completed high school. That is no fault of theirs. That is why we are reaching out to help them with compassion. What we do, in a way that many other countries do not, we invest $800m a year in ensuring they get the settlement services they need so they learn English, so they are integrated into our society. That is why we are the most successful multicultural society in the world.
4.36am BST
The prime minister’s tone is different to the immigration minister’s tone, and Malcolm Turnbull declined to repeat the Dutton suggestion that asylum seekers would take Australian jobs, he said the government wanted humanitarian entrants to get jobs, which is the same clean up formulation that Julie Bishop deployed earlier today, but he’s otherwise locked and loaded on the political strategy, which is beat the boats drum, just beat it a little more quietly, everything being relative.
4.31am BST
So did Malcolm Turnbull disavow Peter Dutton?
No, he did not.
4.30am BST
Q: Was Mr Dutton sent out to make those comments as part of a deliberate strategy as Mr Shorten suggested or was he freelancing?
Malcolm Turnbull:
Mr Shorten is freelancing. It is a long campaign. He is getting shriller every day. It is going to be a challenging campaign for you to deal with him by the time we get to the end, unless he slows up a bit.
We are the most successful multicultural society in the world. We are an immigrant society. We take a large number of refugees, through the humanitarian channel. We integrate them and settle them better than any other country and the reason we do that is because we invest a lot of money and a lot of time, a lot of hand holding in supporting them. That pays dividends, both for the immigrants, the humanitarian immigrants, the refugees and for all Australia.
We make no bones about the fact that we have a very generous immigration policy, a generous refugee policy, but you have got to do it right.
4.26am BST
Q: Immigration and border protection is notoriously hot as an election issue in this country over recent history. Do you, as our PM, seriously want, a deeply hot and divisive asylum and border protection argument running for the next six weeks?
Malcolm Turnbull:
Border protection and immigration are and always have been key political issues. Our position is very straightforward. We have a strong border protection policy. We have denied the people smugglers the product they want to market. They cannot get their boats to Australia. That is why we are not seeing thousands of people put on boats, leaky boats, many of them drowning at sea. That has been a profoundly humanitarian act and we have been successful.
Peter is right to draw attention to that. We have to do the job properly. Labor does not. For Labor it is all gestures and at the moment, gestures to the Greens. They are targeting Green voters and that is why you are seeing Bill Shorten shriller every day, more personal every day and moving further to the left every day.
4.22am BST
Malcolm Turnbull is asked twice whether he agrees with Dutton’s statement that refugees will take Australian jobs. Twice he steps gingerly around the point, deploying Julie Bishop’s third way formulation from this morning. We want them to become part of our work force.
4.20am BST
Q: Do you agree with Peter Dutton’s comments on refugees?
Malcolm Turnbull:
Peter Dutton is an outstanding immigration minister. For more than 600 days, there has not been one successful people smuggling operation bringing unauthorised arrivals to Australia. He has done an outstanding job as immigration minister. Let me say something about our immigration program. We are one of the most generous, host countries for refugees. We take our responsibilities to refugees very seriously.
As Peter was saying earlier today, many of them come to Australia from shattered areas of the world. They are from dreadful, devastated, war-torn regions of the world and many of them, large percentages of them have no English skills at all. Many of them are illiterate in their own language. Many haven’t completed high school. That is no fault of theirs. That is why we are reaching out to help them with compassion. What we do, in a way that many other countries do not, we invest $800 million a year in ensuring they get the settlement services they need so they learn English, so they are integrated into our society. That is why we are the most successful multicultural society in the world. Our immigration program is built on a pillar of compassion which means that we take the refugees and their needs seriously and we invest in them. What the Labor party isproposing to do, as you know, is todouble the refugee intake. That is presumably a gesture to the Greens who want to quadruple it.
4.15am BST
All local questions thus far.
Malcolm Turnbull:
There will be a new rail corridor, longer trains, more trains, more exports and more jobs. That is why we have opened up the big markets in Asia with our trade export deals. We are committed to that.
4.11am BST
I have to tune out of the press club because the prime minister is speaking to reporters again from Townsville.
4.09am BST
A question about funding for the agencies the CEFC and Arena. Hunt says the government has innovation dollars, Butler says he’ll sit down with Arena after the election.
4.07am BST
Mark Butler on the ERF.
Malcolm Turnbull got it right when he described it as a recipe for fiscal recklessness on a grand scale.
4.05am BST
A brief fight on environmental spending. Then ..
Q: Mr Hunt, at the last election, you went to the poll promising a $2.55bn Emissions Reduction Fund. There is $816m remaining, according to the clean energy regulator. Could you tell us what the future of that fund will be? Aren’t voters entitled to know how much you will be spending going forward? Mr Butler, you have got a 45% target that you’re taking to the election. Warwick McKibbin reckons it will cost $200bn more over the decade. Do you agree with that assessment?
Warwick did some research for the Tony Abbott government. The do nothing approach and the targets that Greg Hunt and Malcolm Turnbull took to Paris and the target we ended up adopting. The difference between Greg’s target and mine would be over the course of the 2020s, the difference between 23% and 23.5% of real GDP growth over that decade. That half a per cent difference would be about consumption of energy which is not a particularly productive use of GDP.
He also found that the higher target would produce a substantial positive impact on investment as businesses and households moved to become cleaner in their energy and cleaner in their technology. We took that analysis very seriously and considered it deeply when we came to the view to adopt the Climate Change Authority advice which is the minimum position consistent with keeping global warming below 2C.
3.59am BST
Mark Butler says this.
[Greg’s] own data, that he kept behind and didn’t release before the Paris conference and snuck out the week of Christmas Eve shows emissions in the year 2020 will be 6% above 2000 levels not 5% below. Year on year they will continue to climb from now on under direct action and the Renewable Energy Target.
That is the dirty secret at the heart of their policy. They are not actually reducing emissions in Australia. They are purchasing overseas.
3.55am BST
Q: You released modelling shortly before the election was called which you said proved you could meet your targets within your existing policies. It looked at where emissions reduction might be found and assigned it to various policies that might do the job. It assigned half the emissions reductions you would need to the safeguard mechanism and the Emissions Reduction Fund. The author of that study told me for those policies to do that job, you would need to either put lots more money into the Emissions Reduction Fund or tighten the baselines on your safeguard mechanism which would turn it into a baseline and emissions trading scheme. Since you have criticised your opponent with empty slogans, I am assuming you will be able to tell the voters which of those two options you will be choosing?
Greg Hunt says this question is framed on a false dichotomy.
What they have said, they put out a statement after your article effectively disagreeing with the interpretation of it and they said two things: that we can meet and beat our targets for 2030. A 52% reduction in per capita terms, one of the highest in the developed world. We can meet and beat it without additional measures, using the policy framework that we have set out, exactly what we have said and we have laid out where those sources of abatement are. We have attributed abatement. The second thing that they have said is that you can achieve greater emissions abatement than we have identified using our existing measures. It is not just that we will meet and beat our targets but that you can go further with the very mechanisms that we have put in place.
3.51am BST
Questions now.
Q: You have both promised to make extensive funds available for solar power projects and you have both made positive noises about the proposed solar thermal power and storage plant near Port Augusta, but can voters in SA rely on you both to deliver on that project after the election?
3.49am BST
Greg Hunt:
Now we look at the alternative. The alternative is very clear. What did we see last time? $5.5bn to brown coal generators to do nothing other than continue exactly what they do. We saw a carbon tax that they themselves pledged they had to terminate because it was too expensive and it wasn’t doing the job.
Then the very words pink batts, green loans, cash for clunkers are bywords for policy failure in Australia. Sadly, nothing has been learnt. When you look forward, what do we see now? Empty slogans because the carbon tax, they will tell us the plans after the election. The electricity tax, they will tell us the plans after the election. The plan for 10,000 turbines in 10 years, they will tell us the plans after the election.
3.45am BST
Greg Hunt:
The Emissions Reduction Fund is now arguably the most successful classic market mechanism auction fund in the world. After three auctions, we have seen 143 million tonnes of emissions reduction. We have seen that occur at an average price per tonne of just over $12.
3.43am BST
Greg Hunt opens with passion.
You know, it is an immense privilege to have a role in which you can both believe deeply and about which you can be passionate. Central to that role is the idea of a comprehensive national plan to protect the environment and to enhance jobs and quality of life.
I compare that with a set of empty slogans which will ultimately fail the environment on the Labor side and do damage to both jobs and quality of life and the cost of living.
3.41am BST
Butler goes through the government’s record, and Labor’s policy platform, and he concludes on this note.
Mark Butler:
Labor’s ETS will cap and reduce pollution from heavy industry without a direct carbon price. The most consistent message that I have received in my consultations, particularly over summer, across the board, is that the next parliament simply must do better than the past three have on this question. No-one, I’m sure, expects it to happen in the next hour or even the next six and a half weeks. People want the next parliament to work much harder at bridging our differences and establishing a level of consensus that gives business and the community the confidence to move forward on this question.
3.35am BST
I anticipate some solid shade over the next hour or so, if that isn’t already obvious.
3.35am BST
Down at the NPC, the environment minister, Greg Hunt, has won the toss and has elected to let his opponent, the shadow environment minister, Mark Butler, open the batting.
Butler obliges.
To Greg, a daunting opponent in a debate, not only was he famously crowned as the world’s best minister in February this year, I am told he was something of a world champion debater at university, I presume at the same time he was penning his thesis about making polluters pay. That is a story for another day.
3.29am BST
Gabrielle Chan is having way too good a time on the road. Like Mike Bowers, she needs to be brought home and flogged.
Delicate art of 3 cornered dance. Libs Murray cand Duncan McGauchie crashes @Barnaby_Joyce @SenatorNash @murpharoo pic.twitter.com/Aw95lwOEXr
3.27am BST
A few protesters outside debate pic.twitter.com/vCQQIOcS4a
3.21am BST
Let’s take stock.
3.08am BST
I’m making one more attempt to get Mark Textor’s view on whether or not Peter Dutton went too far on asylum seekers. I’ll let you know if he responds. Next a quick summary of the morning before we move on to today’s policy debate at the National Press Club, which is about the environment.
3.03am BST
2.58am BST
Q: Would a Labor government commit to funding the Safe Schools program post-2017? Could you keep the changes education minister Simon Birmingham has made and would you support changing the religious exemptions on anti-discrimination laws?
Bill Shorten:
Thanks for those three questions, Joe. First of all, when it comes to Safe Schools, the approach that Labor has taken is that we do support the provision of anti-bullying programs in our school system. I know that there are a lot of Australians who are deeply surprised when Malcolm Turnbull caved into the right wing of his party and instead of debating the issue intelligently in a fashion which recognises the need to have anti-bullying programs, he caved in, had a very quick review and said they won’t keep funding into the future.
Labor believes that our children when they go to school should be safe from bullying. The other thing I believe is that I don’t want politicians ... trying to dictate the books kids read in school or their curriculum. That’s what we’ve got teachers and experts for. When it comes down to a beauty parade for who’s best qualified to educate the children of Australia, I’ll pick the teachers and the curriculum experts over the right wing of the Liberal party every time. In terms of the other matters, we do believe that people shouldn’t be discriminated against in their employment on the basis of the criteria which currently exist so we are not as keen to simply start changing everything and denying people their employment rights.
2.55am BST
Q: How can Labor be considering a domestic gas reservation policy when Martin Ferguson and Gary Gray have called such a thing an investment killer and ill-informed populism?
Bill Shorten:
I can’t speak for Martin Ferguson but the policy we developed in the past was done while Gary was a member of the caucus. The truth of the matter is we’re very proud of our LNG export industry but we’ve also got to keep an eye on making sure our domestic manufacturing sector survives. For me it is all about manufacturing jobs, making sure as we export LNG we keep an eye on making sure Australian manufacturing has a fair go.
2.53am BST
The Labor leader gets hit with a bunch of questions about David Feeney’s house.
Q: Do you believe that David Feeney didn’t know his property was negatively geared?
In terms of Mr Feeney’s conduct, he’s indicated to me that he’s corrected the record, as I expect him to do, and I was very clear that this sort of behaviour is unacceptable.
Let me be clear here because people do negatively gear now. Liberals, Labor, many Australians, in terms of an amount of people. That’s why the changes we are making are prospective. I do not believe in retrospectively changing the tax laws.
No.
2.47am BST
Back to Bill Shorten, in Sydney.
Before we take questions, I want to address the deeply divisive and offensive remarks made by the Liberal party and Peter Dutton overnight. There are many issues that the people of Australia want addressed – jobs, education, Medicare, infrastructure. They’re just some of the issues that people want to see addressed but the best that [the Liberal party] can do it appears is to put out a string of lies and pathetic scare campaigns.
In the last 12 hours we’ve seen Mr Dutton insult refugees and indeed our great migrant history. Mr Dutton’s comments are comments that Pauline Hanson would have been proud to make and if this is the best that the Liberal party can do, it is not very good at all.
2.43am BST
Just while we are getting through the truck movements (which granted are very important in that part of Sydney, which is horrendously congested) .. Mark Textor says the immigration minister was trying to make a point that resettlement is not consequence free.
@murpharoo @marcuskelson ok, I’m talking the part of the *national* campaign many don’t see. PD's point is resettlement not consequence free
2.39am BST
The Labor leader Bill Shorten is holding his daily press conference, which for now is focussing on truck movements around Port Botany.
2.31am BST
Mark Textor and I are still chatting. He’s quite right that the bulk of the campaign happens at the local level, far away from the national spotlight. Absolutely correct. But national campaigns also matter.
@TextorMark @marcuskelson yes mate, but national campaigns still matter. Are you avoiding my question about Dutton?
2.25am BST
Back at the Bowen press conference, the shadow attorney general Mark Dreyfus says the prime minister has questions to answer about Stuart Robert after a story broadcast last night on the ABC’s 7.30 program, which I confess I haven’t seen. Perhaps readers have seen it and can bring me up to speed? Robert, readers will recall, departed the Turnbull ministry earlier this year and is the subject of an AFP investigation.
2.20am BST
I’m continuing my discussion with Mark Textor on twitter.
@TextorMark @marcuskelson I've never assumed that, and again, you know it. And in any case it's Dutton's commentary. Do you agree with it?
2.15am BST
The shadow treasurer Chris Bowen is now outlining some detail about the gas announcement. He suggests this is a compromise.
Chris Bowen:
Some have called for things to go further but a national interest test strikes the right balance. We agreed this at Labor’s national conference this year and today I’m announcing further details that the treasurer of the day and a Shorten Labor government – that would be me – would appoint a domestic gas review board which would advise the treasurer of the implications of a export facility or a significant expansion of an existing export facility for the national interest.
That board would act in a similar way to the foreign investment review board in giving advice to the treasurer. It would consist of experts in the resources sector and in manufacturing and industry. And it would be able to see government, the resources sector and the manufacturing sector working together to ensure the best possible outcomes from the new facilities or new expansions.
2.08am BST
Now, Mark Textor is suggesting this is an outbreak of collective vanity. As receptive as I am to arguments about journalistic vanity (he’s completely correct, journalists are prone to vanity) – this is not about vanity, and he knows it.
@marcuskelson @murpharoo you all say it therefore its news? oh the vanity! “Je parle, donc je suis les news” :-P
2.05am BST
Mark Textor, pollster for the Liberals, is suggesting I don’t make assumptions.
@murpharoo this assumes “comments” count for gross penetration or salience. dangerous assumption!
2.01am BST
Labor’s gas announcement, the second policy agenda item for the opposition today, is a commitment to introduce a domestic gas national interest test for “new or significantly expanded natural gas export facilities.” If memory serves, this is something unions have been on about for some time – the Australian Workers Union and others. On the face of it I’d have a lot of questions about the merits of this as a course of action, but I’m not sufficiently across the detail yet to have anything approximating a settled view. I’ll get to it as the day unfolds.
1.55am BST
1.47am BST
Good morning too to Gabrielle Chan, who is chasing wombats.
Good morning from sunny #Shepparton at Pactum Dairy @murpharoo pic.twitter.com/wMrCd0247o
1.32am BST
Labor’s announcement in Port Botany is a $175m equity injection to the Australian Rail Track Corporation for rail infrastructure.
The commitment involves:
1.27am BST
An obvious consequence of the prime minister cutting and running in Cairns is the Dutton comments run all day on the electronic media. Cock-up or deliberate? You can make your own judgment on that.
1.16am BST
Meanwhile, in Port Botany. Good morning to Mike Bowers.
1.11am BST
Perhaps it’s time for the national media to step off the campaign bus if we are only taking local questions at events.
That little Turnbull deflection really is #PeakLame.
1.08am BST
Reporters did try and persist. A question on Peter Dutton’s comments goes to the local member, Warren Entsch.
Q: Any thoughts on Peter Dutton’s comments calling refugees ...
I haven’t seen that comment.
I will actually have a look at it but at the end of the day, the prime minister’s across it, I am not.
1.03am BST
Malcolm Turnbull is asked does he agree with Peter Dutton’s comments? He says we have the most successful multicultural society in the world, we have a very generous humanitarian program. The reason we are successful is we invest an enormous amount of money in settlement services.
Malcolm Turnbull:
So it is - it’s very expensive. We don’t begrudge the money but it’s important to get it right.
We are going to do have another doorstop in Townsville and this is really for the local Cairns media. Any more questions from Cairns?
12.59am BST
The prime minister has found the cameras and is currently enthusing about jobs and growth and excitement and patrol boats maintenance in Cairns.
12.58am BST
Really interesting news break this morning from my colleague Lenore Taylor, who has been looking closely at the peace deal the Turnbull government struck with pathologists last week.
Australia’s biggest pathology companies are likely to be millions of dollars better off after striking a peace deal with the Turnbull government on budget savings, with the biggest provider Sonic Healthcare estimated to be $50m to $70m ahead, according to an industry analyst.
The pathology industry – heavily dominated by two large companies Sonic Healthcare and Primary Healthcare – has in recent years been a large donor to theLiberal party.
12.48am BST
Burke is also facing questions on David Feeney’s undeclared house in Northcote, which Bridie referenced earlier in the morning blizzard. This story broke in Fairfax yesterday: the Labor MP has a house he has been negatively gearing in Northcote that wasn’t declared on the registry of pecuniary interests in line with the rules. Burke says it was plainly an error, which Feeney has now fixed.
Feeney is clearly a complete numpty for failing to declare this property, no doubt about it, and he deserves to be pulled up about it. But some of the extrapolations around this story I find a bit confusing.
12.30am BST
Over in the Mural Hall, Labor’s campaign spokesman, Tony Burke, says in the constant stream of consciousness from the Coalition on asylum seekers he learns nothing factual about refugees, but he learns a lot about the Turnbull government.
Tony Burke:
This bloke’s just not some new candidate. He’s a member of Malcolm Turnbull’s cabinet. He is the person who’s meant responsible for this government’s attitude towards refugees.
Malcolm Turnbull can’t get out of today without being very clear whether or not the minister for immigration speaks on behalf of the Turnbull government on immigration policy, whether or not the minister for immigration is the person who provides the views of the government on immigrants.
12.25am BST
The Greens immigration spokeswoman, Sarah Hanson-Young, has followed Richard Marles in the Sky studio and says Malcolm Turnbull is running a dog whistle campaign.
She thinks Dutton should be stripped of his portfolio.
This is low, it’s xenophobic and this should not take place in an election campaign.
12.15am BST
Last week, when Peter Dutton held a press conference to announce that another asylum boat had arrived and been turned back during budget week, but he’d declined to tell the public about it until week one of the election campaign, I noted the Coalition has used boats during elections before in tricky ways. We were all here. We saw it and we haven’t forgotten.
This Dutton event last week kicked off the Coalition’s partisan campaign on boat arrivals. The turnback was used to highlight how hopeless Labor would be on border protection if they won government – as if this boat had somehow arrived on Labor’s watch. Does the Coalition really think voters are stupid? I mean, really?
11.59pm BST
Richard Marles says Australia is the country of Sidney Myer and Frank Lowy, refugees who came to Australia and made an enormous contribution to our society.
He’s asked by host Kieran Gilbert whether or not there’s any truth in Dutton’s assertion that refugees are illiterate. What about the people in offshore detention? Marles says the cohort on Manus Island and Nauru is extremely varied, some are university-educated, some would not be literate.
11.51pm BST
Labor’s immigration spokesman, Richard Marles, is on Sky News now. Marles says Peter Dutton’s comments about refugees taking Australian jobs are offensive, and they are a test for Malcolm Turnbull.
The prime minister needs to disavow Dutton’s comments, Marles says.
He can’t squib it like Julie Bishop did just then and if he doesn’t then I think we all know the transformation is complete: Malcolm Turnbull is running the Abbott government.
This is very ugly indeed.
11.38pm BST
I have only one question as I join you this morning, and it’s this. Will Peter Dutton promise to build a wall before this election campaign is through? Because I wouldn’t be at all surprised given the way the grim partisan nonsense on asylum seekers is escalating.
As I join you this Wednesday morning we are a considerable distance away from the adult government the prime minister promised us when he returned to the Liberal leadership. We are also a considerable distance from the positive campaign of affirmation Malcolm Turnbull wanted to run. Remember the exciting times? Remember disruption is our friend? Poor old Mathias Cormann is going to have to be reprogrammed because the poor love thinks this election campaign is about jobs and growth. Now the campaign is about stoking the national neurosis about invasion and about otherness.
11.32pm BST
After that galloping start to the morning it is time for Katharine Murphy to take the reins.
She will guide you through inevitable nonsense that will reign today as well as the policy, the important comments and the political movements.
11.31pm BST
Guardian Australia’s immigration reporter Ben Doherty has gone digging for those novel things in the asylum seeker debate: facts.
He writes:
The research found the overwhelming picture, when one takes the longer term perspective of changes over the working lifetime of Humanitarian Program entrants and their children, is one of considerable achievement and contribution.
The Humanitarian Program yields a demographic dividend because of a low rate of settler loss, relatively high fertility rate and a high proportion of children who are likely to work the majority of their lives in Australia. It finds evidence of increasing settlement in nonmetropolitan areas which creates social and economic benefits for local communities.
11.18pm BST
I have the extended comments Julie Bishop made on Sky News earlier when asked about Peter Dutton’s assertion that illiterate refugees would take Australian jobs.
She attempts to back him in with her “interpretation” of what he said:
Well, let’s have a reality check, of course the cost of ensuring the people who come here to Australia as a refugee is very high. As I indicated it was costed at over $700m just for 12,000 Syrian refugees, so Peter Dutton is pointing out the self-evident fact that it costs a great deal of money to settle refugees in Australia.
The Greens never have to account for the budget … it’s just another example where they are so out of touch with reality, there is a cost and the Australian people bear it.
It has to be paid for and Peter Dutton is talking about real cost in doing so.
The costs involved are also education costs, teaching people English because they speak another language, these are all significant costs and we shouldn’t run away from it, that’s a fact.
It’s not one of the considerations [that they would take Australian jobs], what he’s pointing out is that we would want such people to have a job, we wouldn’t want them to be on welfare, we would want them in jobs.
.@JulieBishopMP responds to Peter Dutton's comments on refugees not being literate and numerate #ausvotes https://t.co/TFhbNhkbep
11.04pm BST
Meanwhile, Bill Shorten is on 2DayFM where he has been asked about the woman who planted a kiss on him yesterday on the campaign trail:
Shorten on yesterday's kiss via 2DayFM "Take the adventures of life as they present", says better to be out on the street than in a bubble
10.56pm BST
The Labor campaign headquarters is helpfully distributing quotes from Pauline Hanson’s maiden speech after Peter Dutton’s comments on refugees.
Seems they are not too terrified of a scare campaign and think Dutton has gone too far right with his dog whistling. The sidestepping of Dutton’s comments by his own colleagues also indicate he has tripped and dived over the line.
Abolishing the policy of multiculturalism will save billions of dollars and allow those from ethnic backgrounds to join mainstream Australia, paving the way to a strong, united country. Immigration must be halted in the short term so that our dole queues are not added to by, in many cases, unskilled migrants not fluent in the English language.
@bkjabour @michellegrattan it took a full week of campaigning and some confirming opinion polls before the switch to vaudeville.i
10.48pm BST
The election campaign is pretty much off the front pages at this point:
The Courier Mail front page. Wednesday 18 May 2016. @couriermail #ausvotes #election2016 #auspol pic.twitter.com/JmTWXitIhB
The Sydney Morning Herald front page. Wednesday 18 May 2016. @smh #ausvotes #election2016 #auspol pic.twitter.com/NDMpuyOzv0
The Daily Telegraph front page. Wednesday 18 May 2016. @dailytelegraph #ausvotes #election2016 #auspol pic.twitter.com/XgyvJwJ9Ip
Financial Review front page. Wednesday 18 May 2016. @FinancialReview #ausvotes #election2016 #auspol pic.twitter.com/4Bo42uw8A2
The Age front page. Wednesday 18 May 2016. @theage #ausvotes #election2016 #auspol pic.twitter.com/O8a9GjoCGh
10.39pm BST
Julie Bishop asked on Sky News about Dutton’s comments:
There’s an extraordinarily high cost in ensuring they can be a contributing member of society.
Julie Bishop asked directly if she endorses Peter Dutton's comments: "Let's have a reality check here...the cost if very high" #ausvotes
I think it is turning nasty, whether it will backfire, it should but i don’t know that it would.
This is a very emotive issue and a scare campaign can be whipped up very easily.
10.34pm BST
Those comments by Dutton that refugees are illiterate and innumerate and will take Australian jobs are really gathering steam and beginning to dominate the morning news cycle.
Julie Bishop has been asked about it and tried to steer the conversation towards the economic costs of increasing the refugee intake. I will have her extended comments soon.
Peter Dutton's scare mongering on refugees over jobs exposes the Liberal policy as being steeped not in care for ppl in need, but xenophobia
10.29pm BST
The Labor MP David Feeney failed to declare a $2.31m house he bought in Melbourne in 2013 which brought his real estate portfolio to three properties. This is causing a headache for his party today while giving the Greens a free kick.
He has told the ABC he has written to the register of members’ interests to properly declare the property and it was a simple oversight.
Voters in Batman need honesty, not the Labor party … the people need a local over someone who doesn’t even live in the seat.
I’ve racked my mind how this omission came to be, I was elected in September 2013 and bought in December 2013 and in that maelstrom of events I failed to update my register. We had the former prime minister Tony Abbott in precisely the same circumstances having to update his register for his mortgage.
I’m not saying it as an excuse, just making the point it occurs.
Australia lost a premier over a bottle of wine, what happen to someone who doesn’t declare a $2m house?
If your point is that I am campaigning against my own economic interests than that is true.
Our intention is to make our home in Northcote our family home and when that happens it ceases to be an investment.
10.15pm BST
He may not be allowed in the leaders’ forum but Richard Di Natale always has his own town-hall style events:
Talking with folks in Granville about the issues raised by the community - global warming & treatment of refugees pic.twitter.com/kssE4tSYQg
10.07pm BST
Barnaby Joyce has dodged a question about whether he agrees with Peter Dutton’s characterisation of refugees as illiterate and innumerate.
We are an incredibly compassionate nation … we are a strong nation, we are a good nation, I am very proud of the work we do in getting refugees in our nation and we do that in making sure they don’t arrive by sea because we don’t want to be responsible for people drowning.
We want to show our compassion by finding people who are under threat of their life somewhere else and giving them support of our nation and allowing them to come here.
I have the discussions with dairy farmers and, to be frank, the dairy farmers I have ben talking do not want a levy. What they want is that over the long term we have a sustainable industry and they believe the levy will not fly.
We need to make sure we have a fresh milk market. We need to make sure they don’t sell off into another industry … for instance almonds.
Global prices have a problem in regards to oversupply, particularly in Europe. In Asia we have had exponential growth … globally there is no trend for people to start drinking less milk.
The issue was we want to make sure we get the labour supply in, within that six months [of reviewing the tax] we have the capacity to go through this and if legislation is required we will have capacity to get it through.
One would presume further change is required in six months.
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