‘WHETHER THEY LIKE IT OR NOT’
Election campaigns always seem like they go on forever. Then when polling day suddenly appears in view, they feel like they’ve barely begun. Given how extraordinary this US election campaign has been, I’m not sure that totally holds up this time, but here we are now with the vote just days away.
The coverage is ramming up to feverish levels across the globe as next week is set to be dominated by the November 5 election and the expected days of counting and anxiety.
Dominating headlines overnight have been yet more controversial comments by Republican candidate Donald Trump. On Wednesday evening at a rally near Green Bay, Wisconsin, the 78-year-old former president declared he was going to protect women “whether the women like it or not”. The Guardian reports Trump told the rally his advisers had told him to stop using the line as it was “inappropriate”, adding: “I said, ‘Well, I’m going to do it whether the women like it or not. I am going to protect them’.”
Trump’s Democratic rival Kamala Harris quickly responded on X/Twitter with: “Donald Trump thinks he should get to make decisions about what you do with your body. Whether you like it or not.” The AFR reports she later told reporters on Thursday (Friday AEDT): “It actually is, I think, very offensive to women in terms of not understanding their agency, their authority, their right and their ability to make decisions about their own lives, including their own bodies. This is just the latest in a series of reveals by the former president of how he thinks about women and their agency.”
The New York Times reports Trump and Harris will make their way across the southwest on Thursday, with both holding rallies in Arizona and Nevada. Trump is also visiting New Mexico. The Guardian flags Harris will have singer and actress Jennifer Lopez with her for her rally in Las Vegas, while former Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson will interview Trump in Arizona.
The Associated Press says that in visiting places like New Mexico and Virginia ahead of polling day, Trump is “taking a risky detour from the seven battleground states to spend time in places where Republican presidential candidates have not won in decades”. The newswire says his team claims to be optimistic in said states because of early voting numbers and the potential knock-on effect if he took the swing states Nevada and Arizona.
New polling released by numerous places claims the candidates are pretty much deadlocked in North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Georgia. CNN says of its polling that neither Harris nor Trump has “established a clear advantage in the race for the White House”. Meanwhile, with just five days until election day, more than 60 million people had already voted early by noon on Thursday, the Election Lab at the University of Florida has said.
Elsewhere in the campaign, many publications are highlighting the fact a judge in Philadelphia has put a legal challenge of billionaire Elon Musk’s $1 million-a-day voter sweepstakes on hold. The Associated Press flags lawyers for the billionaire are trying to move the lawsuit to Federal Court. Musk did not attend the hearing, the BBC adds.
MICHELE BULLOCK HOLDING ALL THE CARDS
Back in Australia, almost a week after another polling day in the Sunshine State, Queensland’s new premier David Crisafulli will unveil his cabinet at Government House today as Governor Jeannette Young swears the MPs into their respective portfolios.
Crisafulli said during the election campaign there would be no changes from opposition portfolios if the LNP won Saturday’s election. The AAP reports the new ministers have been asked to work through the weekend ahead of the first cabinet meeting on Monday. “It’s important that we can get departments that are focused on being empowered to service Queenslanders,” Crisafulli is quoted as saying.
The newswire also flags that more economic data is being released this morning ahead of the Reserve Bank of Australia’s next interest rates decision next week (although everyone is now pretty certain rates will be held for the rest of the year).
At 11:30 am AEDT, the Australian Bureau of Statistics is releasing producer price data, lending indicators and a new childcare services cost index, as well as the monthly household spending indicator. The data follows the inflation figures earlier this week, which were somewhat overlooked amid the many column inches written about Anthony Albanese’s Qantas flight upgrades (and subsequently, all the other politicians’ flight treatment as well).
As the ABC’s Jacob Greber writes in The Commentariat below, the Albanese government is very much hoping the economic data moves enough in the right direction over the coming weeks and months to finally convince RBA governor Michele Bullock to start cutting rates ahead of the federal election required by May. Greger’s colleague Patricia Karvelas said on The Party Room podcast on Thursday that a “Labor person” said to her recently: “Michele Bullock holds the future of the government in her hands.”
Talking of interest rates, Guardian Australia says home prices hit a record high during the peak spring selling season. However, Sydney property prices dipped, representing the city’s first month-on-month decline since January 2023.
The AAP says a 0.3% rise in the national home value index marked 12 months of growth, adding though that the pace has been slowing. The newswire said, “heat is coming out of the rental market as well”. CoreLogic’s research director Tim Lawless is quoted as highlighting greater stock in the market to go with the slowing in price rises. “Total listings are now 13.2% above the previous five-year average in Sydney and 13% higher in Melbourne,” he said.
ON A LIGHTER NOTE…
Everyone likes a bad statue. A few months back we flagged the stir caused by a new statue of the late Queen Elizabeth II.
Now it’s the turn of American basketball star Dwyane Wade, whose statue received some mixed reviews when it was unveiled in Miami recently.
The bronze artwork, depicting Wade shouting “This is my house” after scoring a game-winning three-pointer for the Miami Heat against the Chicago Bulls in 2009, was revealed to the world on Sunday, the BBC reports.
Wade, who picked the moment to be commemorated and made multiple trips to the art studio while the artwork was being created, told the Miami-Herald: “Personally, I’m biased, I think it’s one of the best statues that’s been created because of what it represents for us and for me.”
Others aren’t so sure though. The statue has been compared to actors Kelsey Grammer and Laurence Fishburne, with some saying it looks like a zombie from the movie I Am Legend, the BBC said. Fellow NBA Hall of Famer Paul Pierce claimed there should be a “redo” of the statue because Wade was too “legendary” a figure within basketball.
One of the sculptors, Omri Amrani, has rather sensibly replied to the negative response with: “You cannot expect all of human society will have a positive reaction.”
Say What?
I have to begin by saying 250 million Americans are not garbage.
Donald Trump
Appearing at a rally in a high-vis vest and sitting in the cab of a garbage truck, the Republican nominee on Wednesday sought to keep the confusion caused by US President Joe Biden seeming calling Trump’s supporters “garbage” front and centre of the news agenda.
CRIKEY RECAP
There’s an easy fix for the prime minister amid apparently ceaseless attention on his close relationship with Qantas, as detailed by Joe Aston in his new book. It’s a fix that involves the old virtue of making good policy good politics — with a dash of sweet revenge thrown in.
The more important point raised by Aston about Qantas has been lost in the focus on Albanese’s upgrades. The Chairman’s Lounge is used to skew airline competition in Australia in favour of Qantas by duchessing politicians, CEOs and senior executives — including in the public sector — to ignore the lower cost of travel with Virgin and whatever brief third airline competitors are around, and to give their travel budget to the national carrier.
So the easy fix is this: Albanese announces he’s ditching the Chairman’s Lounge, and that his frontbench will ditch it as well. Backbench Labor MPs will be told that if they want a frontbench spot or a committee chair spot, they must abandon it too. Every departmental secretary and whichever other senior bureaucrats are in the Chairman’s Lounge will be told that the giggle is over for them. And Albanese announces that no member of his ministry will accept an upgrade from Qantas too. What they buy, they fly. Same for the entire public service.
Sure, none of this will mean much for Albanese as prime minister, who has his own plane. But it will at a stroke remove the more serious problem with Qantas — the use of the Chairman’s Lounge to distort airline competition.
The mainstream media’s envious, small-town obsession with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and his family having received special airline upgrades and lounge access from Qantas has seen journalists largely miss the point. The airline’s expert lobbying — and the soft power of its exclusive lounges and upgrades — is all about one thing: protecting its financial and market position.
Canberra has decades-long form in the Qantas protection racket. There are few cleanskins in senior government ranks, of both stripes, when it comes to sucking on the airline’s teat and giving it special treatment.
As for claims the current approach is alienating some core cohorts, the member for Melbourne is confident voters understand the party is acting on principle.
“When you take a position that’s different to Liberal and Labor and to the political establishment more broadly, that’s when criticism heats up,” he says, calling out the government’s failure to stand up to Israel. “Over time, people understand— many people understand that’s the right thing to do.”
It’s a big assumption. But one thing the Greens have going for them is the fact voters are increasingly turning away from the major parties — if they can avoid being seen as one of them.
“The days of the two-party system are gone,” says Bandt, expressing hope that Queensland gives the ALP pause. “There are people in Labor who understand that it would be better to have a cooperative relationship. It doesn’t mean we’re going to agree on everything, we’re not. And I think this is something that is contested within Labor.”
The approach towards the “Greens political party” may indeed be contested within Labor. But it’s unclear if either is willing to change approach at this stage, following a sad result from which neither can claim clear vindication.
READ ALL ABOUT IT
Spain floods death toll rises to 158 as rescuers search for survivors (Al Jazeera)
Saudi Arabia World Cup bid report accused of ‘whitewashing’ rights abuses (The Guardian)
Russia fines Google more money than there is in entire world (BBC)
‘Like it or not’: In one quote, Trump distills the 2024 gender gap (The Washington Post)
Man arrested in connection with theft of 22 tonnes of Neal’s Yard cheese (ITV News)
Thom Yorke challenges pro-Palestinian protester at gig (The Age)
THE COMMENTARIAT
Before we send Albanese to the ejection seat, let’s look at Dutton’s itinerary — David Crowe (The Sydney Morning Herald): A little sunlight on the Chairman’s Lounge is no bad thing. But this is not really about an airline club. It is about personal integrity and trust — for Dutton, just as much as Albanese. The prime minister denies asking the Qantas boss for a favour. The opposition leader admits his office asked a mining boss for a favour.
That means Dutton has questions to answer. What does Rinehart expect in return for helping the opposition leader? When politicians attack each other, the questions do not fly one way.
Anthony Albanese may find himself ‘kicking with the wind’ to an April election on double RBA rate cuts – Jacob Greber (ABC): Instead, many expect her to swing into action after the ABS publishes fourth-quarter inflation data in late January.
The prime minister will be watching closely, with the first Reserve Bank meeting of 2025 scheduled for February 18.
With an initial interest rate cut in the bag, Albanese could then wait about three weeks — until the Western Australia state election on March 8 is done — before visiting the governor-general and triggering a federal campaign.
That would result in the cancellation of the planned budget on March 25.
And would see Labor in full campaign mode as a second potential rate cut is announced on April 1.
History shows the Reserve Bank is unlikely to begin its monetary policy easing cycle with a solitary rate cut. Usually, there are reductions at successive meetings. Albanese could then find himself once again “kicking with the wind” — as he did in the 2022 election — in the final two weeks leading up to an April 12 polling day.
