• Are we there yet?
  • At the Press Club yesterday, Tony Abbott claimed Australia was now less safe an investment destination for mining than “Tanzania, Zambia, Ghana, Namibia and Botswana”. No journalist appears to have picked him up on this patently nonsensical claim, and as you’d expect it was faithfully carried in The Australian. The source? Abbott didn’t say, but it comes from the right-wing, pro-tobacco and anti-gun control Canadian think tank the Fraser Institute. Sadly, investors didn’t get the memo from Vancouver. Rio Tinto, BHP and Fortescue — which has been loudly bleating it didn’t agree to anything with the government — have all strongly outperformed the ASX 200 in recent months. In contrast, South American iron ore competitor Vale is only marginally above its price at the end of May, and Anglo-American has fallen. So much for this crap about “sovereign risk”.
  • More polling overnight suggests what some Gallery veterans have been saying, that Labor will suffer quite a few losses, but not quite enough to be in danger of minority government or defeat. For mine, the most telling poll is the Morgan poll in Bennelong, which has Maxine McKew narrowly trailing John Alexander. If McKew is still within touching distance, the mood toward Labor isn’t as toxic as necessary for the Coalition to get up. Still, three days to go and remember there’s an anti-Gillard leaker still on the loose.
  • That said, why did the Liberals leave it until the death to launch their economic plan? Abbott’s relentless negativity has got him within striking distance in this election, but if he loses, the Liberals’ failure to provide something positive to give his effort momentum in the second half of the campaign will surely have been a contributing factor. Talk of infrastructure provision would have been more useful while everyone’s attention was focussed on population and sustainability, not in the last days of the campaign when 90% of us have made up our minds how to vote and most of the remainder aren’t interested anyway.
  • Yesterday’s policy was the Liberals’ ‘Economic Action Plan’. The last leader to announce an Economic Action Plan was Andrew Peacock in 1990. In that election, the Liberals ran Labor close — Peacock didn’t concede on election night — but Labor ended up winning with the help of Green preferences.
  • A year and a half ago, Labor consideration of subsidising state government borrowing for infrastructure investment was ridiculed by the Coalition as “Kevlani”. Now the Coalition wants to subsidise private borrowing for infrastructure investment — in projects that Barnaby Joyce admitted could involve investors “doing their money”. What’s the difference, apart from the fact state governments have lower borrowing costs than private firms?
  • My sometime colleague Stilgherrian yesterday summed up the Loughnane-Bitar debate debate (let’s see even the sickest mind try to get some political slash fic going there) brilliantly on Twitter: “Having Brain Loughnane and Karl Bitar post their whiney letters to the media is like passive-aggressive notes on the fridge.”
  • If, as Joe Hockey claims, “state or Commonwealth Labor officials” tried to intimidate accounting firms over the issue of assisting the Coalition with its costings, he must immediately refer the matter to the Australian Federal Police and the ACCC. Laws may well have been broken. Call in plod, Joe.