CLANCY OVERELL | Editor | CONTACT
With the election campaign well and truly underway, our federal Politicians are being chased around the countryside by junior journalists who realise that Australia’s dwindling regional media is in such a bad state that they are never leaving their hometowns unless they can make a name for themselves asking pointless gotcha questions to politicians who are trying to announce policies.
After the Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese made the fatal error of being unable to quickly recall the exact percentages of rapidly changing economic statistics yesterday, his opponents are making sure they don’t make the same mistakes.
It seems every politician in Australia is brushing up on the important figures, out of fear that they might end up in Anthony Albanese’s position and have every commercial news network in Australian punching holes through him because their bosses are worried that Labor will demolish their business models by calling for royal commissions into media monopolies and perhaps making some laws that rein in their biggest advertisers like Gerry Harvey and Sportsbet.
While the National Party are unlikely to find themselves in this scenario due to their cosy relationships with corporate Australia, Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce has done his homework just in case.
While campaigning in the Northern Territory today, Joyce made sure not to forget the important figures while announcing a $1.5 billion tax-payer-funded subsidy to help the fossil fuels sector build a world-leading industrial hub for gas processing and high-value minerals processing and refinement.
“Our investment will deliver this, supporting port infrastructure, including a wharf and offloading facility, and dredging of the shipping channel,” he said.
“1.5 billion. That’s the number. Don’t forget that. I won’t. It’s important to remember the important numbers aye Albo ha ha”
Darwin’s existing port was controversially leased to Chinese company Landbridge for 99 years by the Liberal Party government in 2015, before former Coalition MP Andrew Robb retired from politics and took a job with the company and quadrupled his salary in the private sector.
This now means that Australia must build a second Darwin Port, to protect us from the Chinese that the same party seem so intent on starting a war with, less than a decade after leasing them the first port.
Joyce said Australia must become stronger and more resilient in the face of geopolitical tensions, and that’s why he’s up there today, to build a second port. Because we gave the first one to China. And now we can’t guarantee that tax-dodging fossil fuel multinationals will be able to export out of there.
