CLANCY OVERELL | Editor | CONTACT
Whispers coming out of Parliament House today suggest that Prime Minister Albanese will be setting the date for the 2025 Federal Election tomorrow.
This is the news that both journalists and the Federal Opposition have been waiting for, as Parliament pauses and the campaign begins.
The PM has dragged this announcement out for months, and it’s caused significant damage to the Liberal Party who appear to have lost all the momentum they had built in a hope that they’d be already be campaigning by now.
But now it looks like they are set to run out of money halfway through the campaign, and will need to instead rely on Peter Dutton’s charm to cut through the news cycle.
Worse still, Albanese’s unofficial announcement today means that nobody is listening to the Coalition’s reply to Treasurer Jim Chalmers’s 2025 Federal Budget – which was delivered to the nation on Tuesday.
So with zero policies to their name, and a leader who continues to put his foot in it, the Liberal Party are now heading into a lengthy election campaign blind.
Aside from the odd culture war, nobody knows what the Opposition plan on doing if they were to take power – other than banning Aboriginal flags from press conferences and holding a referendum to deport dual-citizens.
Even their own ministers are now leaking that they do not have any idea what Dutton plans to campaign on. The nuclear power plan does not feel like a genuine pitch because Shadow Treasurer Angus Taylor has not yet been able to reveal the costs of the 50-year project.
It will be hard to win over the swinging Labor seats without any policies, let alone keep their blue-ribbon seats safe from extremely well-funded Independent challengers.
However, there is one proposed policy that looks like it has cut through with voters: Tax-free long lunches for corporate bosses.
“Now we are talking!” says local forever renter, Blayne Rocksmith (35, panel beater)
“Finally someone thinking outside the box” says his wife, Dijana (33, nurse).
“Our number one concerns are obviously the fact that we will never afford a home on two incomes in the outer suburbs”
“Or the fact that it costs us $500 a week to have two kids in childcare so that we can work”
But Blayne says after those major concerns, he wants a Federal Government that lets corporate bosses spend 5 hours in a boozy restaurant as a tax write-off.
“I gotta give it to the Libs. They really understand what it’s like for working families like us”
