Blogs

I've decided to run for Party Policy Director of the Environmental Caucus. Party Policy Director is a new position that will be responsible for identifying resolutions and platform issues and bringing them to the attention of the caucus. If elected, I'll use my research skills and technical knowledge to provide caucus members with background information on the issues at hand. I won't tell anyone what to think, but I will ensure that people have access to the information they need.

Day 24 and 25 of the Federal election campaign, and the big news items are the second leader's debate and a number of policy announcements coming from Labor's official campaign launch. Again our independent and publically-owned ABC (which the IPA finds troubling) provides a fact-check on the debate, which, on sheer volume of dubious claims made, don't look good for the Prime Minister. Looking even less good was Scott Morrison gesticulating wildly towards Bill Shorten, with the latter describing him a "space invader".

Since John Howard became Prime Minister in 1996, the Liberal Party and the majority of the Australian media have perpetuated the myth that the Liberals are better economic managers than the Labor Party. This as been the bedrock of every Liberal election campaign since.

As expected, Jay Inslee rockets into first place on the climate change front. Beto's plan is pretty good when it comes to funding, but is pretty vague on everything else. Where Beto relies on a single federal mandate for net zero emissions by 2050, Inslee has three separate mandates for 100% carbon neutral electricity, 100% EV sales, and 100% zero-emissions for new buildings, all by 2030, along with a broader goal of being completely carbon-neutral by 2045. This is much more enforceable than Beto's proposal.

Day 22 and 23 of the Federal election campaign, and the major policy announcement of the day has been $2 billion dollars of Federal funding for the Victoria's Melbourne Metro Tunnel. The project costs $11 bn overall and the Andrews government has been trying to get the Feds to cough up money previously allocated to infrastructure, but they want it to be spent on projects of their choosing (like the East-West Link).

Day 20 and 21 of the Federal election and on the policy front Labor again takes the charge with a pledge of $1 billion worth of solar panels for schools which will feed back into the grid, reducing power costs for the schools (obviously) but also reduce prices overall with an increasing energy supply. On-cue the Climate Council released a report outlining government cuts to climate science funding, the rejection of scientific advice, and cuts to CSIRO.

As a gentle reminder, we're likely to have somewhere between two dozen and too many candidates running for president this election cycle. The odds of any one candidate securing a majority of pledged delegates are basically zero. This means that we're probably going to have a brokered convention, and this means that we're going to have to ask delegates who had been pledged to other candidates to support our candidate instead.

Day 19 of the Federal election campaign and we had a leader's debate. General assessment was that the night was won by Bill Shorten, partially because he had big policies to defend and actually did so, and showed that Morrison policy cupboard consists of "stop the boats" and "tax cuts" (for the rich; $77 bn actually, but people aren't talking about that). Hilarious gaffe (in my opinion) was Morrison's closing statement that the election comes down to... who do you trust to manage the economy?

Day 18 of the Federal election campaign and the big policies come out. Labor has a massive hit with a $4 billion plan to increase the childcare subsidy available to families with household incomes under $175,000 a year (since the Coalition took office in 2013, childcare costs have climbed by 25 per cent), plus free dental work for pensioners.

Scott Morrison promises to freeze the refugee intake. Personally, I find it odd that someone who professes to be a Christian would have put the baby Jesus and his family behind barbed wire on a remote island during a typhoid outbreak.

Between 2007 and 2013, under the last Labor government, wages rose on average by 8.9%.

Accounting for inflation and more Australians now working in low paid jobs, since 2013, under the Coalition the average wage decreased by 0.5%.

Trusting this government on the economy has cost Australians 9.4% in wage growth. That's like having to pay the GST twice.

Australia's GDP is currently around $1.85 trillion. So 9.4% lower wage growth means nearly $174 billion less spending money. That's what it costs to trust the government on managing the economy.