At the time of writing, Corangamite looks like being a Labor win. This marginal seat was given electoral bribes of almost $34 million by Labor which sounds a lot until you compare it to the $3 billion worth of promises made by the Coalition. Of course, this begs the question that if it falls to Labor, will Scott Morrison deliver?
People are making comparisons to 1993, where Hewson lost the “unlosable” election by outlining a broad agenda. While I’m sure many people are suffering shock and disbelief that the polls and betting markets could get it so wrong and are calling for Queensland to be removed from country, it’s worth looking at history and remembering that following Keating’s amazing win in that year, he was soundly defeated just three years later by John Howard.
Another three years of this mob, some of you are saying, I’d rather move to New Zealand. Unfortunately, I suspect that their offer to take 150 refugees from Australia only applies to those poor souls languishing on Manus and Nauru… Mm, what’s the Liberal’s plan for them? Leave them there forever as a deterrent?
I’m comforting myself by remembering a book on quantum physics I’m reading; it suggested that inside atoms there were billions of new universes being created all the time. This morning, I’m imagining that there is a universe somewhere else where everything has worked out well for the country and the Liberals have split into two groups: People with a different world view from Labor and the Greens, but who don’t think that they know more than just about anybody on any topic and are prepared to debate consider and find bipartisan solutions, and those who decided to join Fraser Anning’s new party. That way, I can tell myself that this is the world where Scott Morrison has to justify himself and live up to all he promised while presiding over an economy that’s turning to mush. Take that ridiculous first home buyer’s guarantee. Apart from destroying the mortgage insurance business, how will it work in practice? And how will first home buyers respond when they discover that the banks won’t lend them the money anyway because they still don’t have the sort of income to service the debt?
Yes, I know. Politicians get away with breaking election promises all the time, so what if Corangamite doesn’t get its fast train? I mean, Bronwyn just took a helicopter so why don’t they all do that if they’re in a hurry?
Not to mention, Morrison’s promise to pay for the East-West link without any contribution from the Victorian government. Premier Andrews copped a lot of flak for tearing up the contract and “wasting a billion dollars”. Ignoring all the political ins and outs and the whole idea of sunk costs, one certainly has to say that tearing up the contract looks like pure genius. Now we get the road and it’s all paid for by ScoMo. A bargain at a billion dollars.
And your power bills? They’ve started coming down, haven’t they? Oh, maybe not yet. But once the brand new coal-fired power station is built, we’ll practically be paid for using power. I mean, surely they have a mandate for that. We just elected a PM who took a lump of coal to Parliament and passed it around like it was something that wouldn’t get your hands dirty.
Of course, it seems those signs from the Greens which said, “Stop Labor’s Adani mine” worked a treat, now it’s certainly the Liberal’s Adani mine and I think the Queensland government should approve it straight away and ask them when they’ll start providing the jobs that Queenslanders seemed to think would be forthcoming from a mine that’s going to be fully automated.
Personally, I’ll be writing to Josh Frydenberg to ask when construction will start on removing the rail crossing at Glenferrie Road so I can get home to my family quicker. As I never use the road when coming home from work, I don’t really understand how that’s going to work, but there’s a lot I don’t understand at the moment. If Joshie has said that removing this crossing will enable me to get home to my family quicker then who am I to dispute that.
It’s just like when the Reserve Bank revised down the growth forecast, Morrison explained that they were wrong because he’s using a figure that enables him to predict a Budget surplus and to revise it down would mean that the surplus would be like the world I’m imagining where everything worked out well and we elected a government which was actually committed to doing something about the problems that we face and not simply pretending that climate change doesn’t exist, that the NDIS doesn’t need the $1.7 billion that they banked in the Budget, that they have an Environment Minister, that cancer treatment is free and that dealing with Clive Palmer isn’t the sort of thing that will come back to bite them.
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