Last week I wrote that I didn’t think it was possible for this election campaign to maintain it’s frenetic and incredibly weird nature.
How wrong I was.
With some polls now pointing to a comfortable victory for the Labor party, it looks like the Liberals have hit the panic button. After spending the first week of the campaign spruiking “jobs and growth” and fending off Labor’s attack on education policy, the Coalition this week deliberately, and rather obviously, shifted gear back to safer ground: boats and refugees.
Immigration Minister Peter Dutton provoked criticism and outrage when he declared many refugees to Australia were “innumerate and illiterate” and would “take Australian jobs”.
High profile Australians as varied as Karl Stefanovic and SBS’ own respected football analyst Les Murray fired back, with the former declaring Dutton was “un-Australian” and the latter questioning if he was fit to be immigration minister.
There is no question Dutton’s comments were controversial, offensive and factually off the mark. So what was he playing at? Basically, it was an attempt to reclaim control of the political conversation, otherwise known as the “dead cat strategy”.
Rather than talking about education or health, which are traditionally stronger grounds for Labor during election campaigns, the Coalition is attempting to steer the conversation back towards the politically safer territory of refugees.
And it seemed to work. Journalists used every opportunity they had to press the Prime Minister and other senior government politicians on whether they supported Dutton’s remarks. Regardless of how they responded, the Coalition had already achieved its goal. All we talked about the first half of the week was refugees, refugees and refugees.
The ploy successfully shifted attention away from Bill Shorten’s landmark health policy announcement of a $2.4 billion Medicare funding injection.
Labor spent most of the week on the back foot, having to defend claims frontbench MP David Feeney had failed to declare a $2.3 million investment property he co-owned with his wife in the Melbourne suburb of Northcote. The oversight could result in Feeney being found in contempt of Parliament.
“Rather than talking about education or health, which are traditionally stronger grounds for Labor during election campaigns, the Coalition is attempting to steer the conversation back towards the politically safer territory of refugees.”
Unfortunately for Feeney, and Labor, things went from bad to worse. If “forgetting” you own an investment property wasn’t bad enough, Feeney also couldn’t recall whether the property was negatively geared – a touchy issue given Labor has been campaigning for a phase out of the policy.
Turns out it was, and Feeney had been claiming healthy tax deductions while railing against the very same system he was benefitting from on Twitter.
And to top it all off Feeney’s tenants turned on him by erecting a sign calling on voters in his electorate to back Alex Bhathal, the Greens candidate for his seat of Batman.
The whole saga demonstrates how a slip of the mind from a few years ago can come back to haunt an entire election campaign. It also feeds into the perception amongst voters that politicians are arrogant and out of touch. The fact that Feeney, who has spent basically all of his working life in politics, owns more than $6 million worth of property isn’t likely to sit well amongst younger voters who see themselves as being locked out of the housing market.
It’s one thing to be screwed over by a landlord, it’s another thing entirely when our landlords are the people who we elect to represent us and fight for our interests – including affordable housing.
The Greens, who believe they are in with a chance to unseat David Feeney, were put in an awkward position when it emerged that party leader Richard Di Natale had allegedly failed to declare his own family farm. Di Natale strongly denies the allegation and argues that he had declared the property as a business interest (as it generated an income).
He also faced scrutiny for alleged underpayments made to live-in nannies or “au pairs”. Again, Di Natale denies the claims and he stated that once room and board was taken into account the payments were above the minimum wage.
Nevertheless, the issue was a distraction for the Greens and blunted their attack on David Feeney. It was a contrast to last week, where the Greens absolutely dominated the political narrative and set the terms of the debate.
As we get closer to polling day the focus will likely narrow on the contest between Bill Shorten and Malcolm Turnbull. The question is, will Turnbull be able to stay focused on his own vision and agenda, or will desperation see him throw up more dead cats?
