After the initial surge by Scott Morrison, Bill Shorten planted his feet more firmly in the campaign's third week.
Favourable assessments of his performance in Monday night's debate gave the Opposition Leader a confidence boost.
The previous day's multi-billion handouts for child care and dental treatment for pensioners injected a sugar hit into his campaign, keeping Labor's pitch squarely on voters' cost-of-living pressures.
Shorten's plan, also announced that day, for a Labor government to subsidise the wages of childcare workers, while it might go over well in the community, was highly contentious policy, potentially taking him into trip-up territory. Initially he left the way open to extend this largesse to other workers but then quickly closed that down.
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| Opposition Leader Bill Shorten at Agfest in Tasmania this week. Picture: AAP |
The serious policy headwinds buffeting Shorten have been coming on the issue that also plays well for Labor - climate change. The question kept being asked: what would the opposition's 45 per cent emissions reduction target cost the economy?
There were always two ways for Shorten to confront this fundamental question. Produce Labor modelling to provide a detailed answer. Or declare it unanswerable, while asking the cost of doing nothing.
The first course would have been the instinctive way to go. But it would take Labor into a maze of contestable numbers.
Refusing to own any particular set of figures, which is what Labor has done - apart from passing nods to assessments that suit its case - is risky. But it keeps the issue in the sunny uplands of the debate, tapping into people's general desire for action on climate.
For the government, the imperative has been to accept the widespread concern about climate change (anything else would be politically unthinkable) but exploit many people's reluctance to pay too much personally to address it.
Morrison's line is that something should be, and is being, done but it's a choice between targets. "Do you have a reckless target, or a responsible target?" he asks.
So the government is heavily focused on any modelling. It is trying to pin big cost numbers to Labor's target, most recently with this week's release of a report from economist Brian Fisher, who runs the consultancy BAEconomics.
The Fisher report is critical of the cost of Labor's policy. But the opposition dismisses it as lacking independence, and Shorten, in line with his broader tactic of refusing to get into the weeds, simply went into attack mode. "We will file this report under P for propaganda," he said.
Polling done in April and released this week by the progressive think tank The Australia Institute showed while Labor had the edge on the climate-energy issue, there is still a high level of uncertainty about which side has the best policies.
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| Protesters hold placards during a rally on climate inaction outside the office of Prime Minister Scott Morrison in Cronulla on Friday. Picture: AAP |
As the campaign passed the half-way point, the polls showed a tightening. Both Newspoll and Essential this week had the Coalition trailing 49-51 per cent, compared with 48-52 per cent previously.
The two sides continue to report the geographical lumpiness in this campaign. Labor is taking rather a beating in regional Queensland over the coal issue, where Shorten's carefully-crafted formula on Adani (designed to say everything and nothing) apparently isn't cutting it.
But to be able to win nationally the Coalition needs a primary vote well over 40 per cent: in Newspoll, it is on 38 per cent and in Essential, on 39 per cent.
And while Shorten has had more glitches than anticipated in this campaign, Morrison this week took some pain over his association, via the preference deal, with controversial businessman Clive Palmer.
Both leaders had a heap of trouble with candidates. Two Victorian Liberals had to be relegated to the scrap heap, for Islamophobic and homophobic comments respectively.
On Thursday, campaigning in Tasmania, Morrison found himself too close for comfort to Jessica Whelan, candidate for Lyons, who was accused of anti-Muslim online comments she claimed were doctored. Morrison initially stood by her, but then more posts emerged, and by early Friday Whelen was gone.
On the Labor side Luke Creasey, running in the Greens seat of Melbourne, finally stood down on Friday after more of his offensive online activity from some years ago appeared. On Monday an ALP Northern Territory Senate candidate had had to resign for his social media behaviour.
In the first four days of pre-polling, which started Monday, about 510,000 voted, compared to 315,000 in 2016. Shorten's Sunday announcements were timed for the start of pre-polling; Labor's formal "launch" this Sunday will put out more voter bait. The Liberals' launch is a week later.
One highly important day for Labor next week will be when it issues its comprehensive costings, which will show a better surplus over the forward estimates than the budget. The opposition hopes this will help counter Morrison's bid to own the economic management ground.
A difficulty for Morrison is that while negativity might have served him effectively in the campaign's early days, even Liberal-leaning commentators are saying there's not enough of the so-called vision thing for the next term. But attempting to produce this now would carry its danger for Morrison: it would attract more scrutiny onto him, blunt some of the negative hits, and could be received cynically as an expedient gesture. What an underdog should do in the final stages of a campaign is always vexed.
As for Labor, as it contemplates the tightening it is banking on 2019 being like 2007, when sufficient voters had decided on a change well before the campaign's last days.
*Michelle Grattan is a press gallery journalist and former editor of The Canberra Times. She is a professorial fellow at the University of Canberra.
Links
- Vote Compass finds economy and environment most important issues
- How the federal election will change Australia's response to climate change
- Is giving up flying the best way to stop climate change?
- Are humans making droughts worse?
- The Rising Temperature Of Climate Change Politics
- Coalition Is To Blame For Uncertainty Over Climate Costs
- Tim Winton: Our Leaders Are Ignoring Global Warming To The Point Of Criminal Negligence. It's Unforgivable
- Support For Action Surges, As Majority Say We Face Climate Emergency
- Australia’s Election Is A Chance To Regain Our Leadership On Climate Change
- Both Parties Still In Climate Policy Black Hole
- A Climate Reckoning Is Coming To Our Political Hothouse
- Experts Find 'Integrity Issues' With Coalition's Direct Action Policy
- The Next Reckoning: Capitalism And Climate Change
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