Biden its time etc In a move you could see coming from space, The Australian is attempting to drag Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese’s slip-ups on rates — both cash and unemployment — into a third day of coverage. Terry McCrann has weighed in with a particularly edifying take. Under the headline “Does Albanese have early onset Joe Biden?” he seems to genuinely make the argument that Albanese might be mentally impaired, referring to concerns about the US president’s mental acuity, and asking: “Can we seriously risk having an essentially non-functioning and indeed non-functionable leader in a replay of Biden?”
There are many issues with this, obviously. But apart from its incredible grubbiness (we note at time of writing even the Oz has kept it off the homepage) we would note this analogy might not be quite as devastating as intended. Biden — whether breathing in the “springtime of his senescence” or not — won the US presidency with the most votes of any candidate in history.
Meanwhile, thanks to Troy Bramston, who concluded his piece “Pathway to victory lies in clues from the past” with a paragraph that will ring through the ages for its bold predictions and savage insights:
This election will be fought in about 20 marginal seats around Australia. Preferences of independents and minor parties will determine some seats. The Coalition and Labor are expected to win and lose seats. They will be defensive and offensive in their strategies. A hung Parliament is a possibility. This election will be decided in the campaign.
Work drinks after work Since 2019 when he seemed to drag the Coalition over the finish line by sheer force of personality, Prime Minister Scott Morrison has changed his tune. “It’s not a popularity contest,” he now insists, and he’d better hope that’s true, because he’s now encountered two shouting punters in as many weeks — a gatecrasher at a “private drinks” Morrison held with journalists shouting at him and after similar treatment in Newcastle. The pub story that emerged after that incident was the “wait, what?” response of many people at the idea that the PM was having a nice little private party with journos.
But despite several figures attempting to paint this as some kind of uniquely Morrisonian skulduggery, it’s actually extremely common. Many journalists, often reluctantly, have to attend these social events outside work hours. Of course it looks terrible, and feeds the sense that the media is far too cosy with those they are supposed to hold to account, but — and this really does need to be stressed — *all* the parties do it. For example, Crikey may not have made it on to the list for Morrison’s Christmas party last year (we can’t imagine why… ) but we were invited to the ALP equivalent.
Ad’ing it up As observed by Crikey‘s Cam Wilson, an image of where Morrison is paying to show his first campaign ad on Facebook and Google — and the demographics he’s targeting — is starting to emerge. As you can see his targets skew very male — particularly 25- to 34-year-old male, and very NSW, with a secondary focus on Queensland:
Flash in the pan Late last year we reported that News Corps’ Flash, a news streaming service, was spending on Facebook advertising leaning heavily into the vaccine culture war and Sky News opinion. Now a tipster got in touch to tell us it’s flooding Binge users with texts encouraging them to sign up the service in time for the election:
