In these scrappy days before the prime minister announces the election date, the mud and the personal insults are flying, despite the politicians knowing voters hate this sort of thing.
On Wednesday morning TV, shadow finance minister Jane Hume, usually reasonably restrained with her language, called Employment Minister Murray Watt “king grub” of the “grubbiest people you will ever come across” – a reference to Labor’s pursuit of Peter Dutton’s past share trading. As Watt remarked, “That’s quite an accusation”.
Hume was later on the warpath in a Senate estimates hearing, where Treasury Secretary Steven Kennedy fended off an opposition attack suggesting, in essence, that Treasurer Jim Chalmers had sought to make Treasury his political pawn.
