Below are some insights from Canberra having attended the Coalition’s Budget night and Labor’s Budget in Reply night activities.
Budget week is normally the busiest period in Federal politics, and even more so as we anticipate PM Scott Morrison driving to the Governor General’s residence in Yarralumla and calling the election imminently.
MPs on all sides mentioned to Advisory Street that they are anxiously awaiting the PM’s decision, many of whom are exasperated after campaigning since the leadership spill in August last year, and asking: “Will it be May 11th, 18th or 25th? Are we there yet?”
On Tuesday evening, Treasurer Josh Frydenberg’s first budget speech positioned the Coalition on their home ground of being seen as better economic managers and bringing the Budget back to surplus.
Did this work? Well, this morning’s Newspoll showed there had been a slight improvement for the Coalition with a slight narrowing in Two Party Preferred terms (52% for ALP, 48% for Coalition) and a pick up in the Coalition’s primary vote (to 38%).
In a vote of confidence from the business community, more than 600 leaders packed out at the National Convention Centre – the largest venue in Canberra to hear the Opposition Leader Bill Shorten deliver his sixth Budget In Reply speech. The fiscal messages from the Coalition and Labor could not be more starkly different: Labor promises bigger surpluses to be able to support their traditional home ground of health and welfare policies.
Labor is also emphasising leadership – That they are a united and stable leadership team ready to govern. These messages temper the fact that Shorten is less preferred leader to Morrison. For the business community, Chris Bowen pointed out that “Labor’s leadership stability should be the most overriding thing for business to consider”.
While this paints the picture at the macro level, the election will be fought State by State, seat by seat, and poll booth by poll booth.
Political operatives inform us that campaign headquarters will be in Brisbane for the Liberals and Parramatta for Labor – both cities are outside of the leader’s home states but are used for pragmatic (read financial) and political (read swing voters) reasons.
The NSW State election was a showcase to the Liberals of how to win government in the last week of an election campaign. Keep an eye out for Victoria – last November’s State election showed how strong the Labor brand is there, with some Liberals changing their banners to be “Modern Liberals” or doing away with Liberal branding altogether.
Queensland will be a critical State to watch – as one Senator for Queensland mentioned “In all my years of political advising, Queensland is line ball 50:50 and very hard to predict the election outcome”.
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