Super Nintendo Chalmers As we enter the election season, the major parties are beginning to deploy their big guns on social media. And so Labor’s Treasury spokesman Jim Chalmers got the following stats together, ready to dispel the notion that the Coalition is a better manager of the economy:
“Cop that” he presumably thought as he clicked send. A quick reread revealed that it perhaps wasn’t making the point he’d like, and the tweet was swiftly deleted and corrected.
The dark web Meanwhile, Chalmers’ party leader Anthony Albanese really needs to hire a new SEO team. First off, any Twitter users looking up “Albo” will wonder why the ALP veteran is spending so little time talking about job security and so much time drawing horny cartoons. And anyone typing albanese.com.au into a search bar will be confronted with the sight of Scott Morrison and Josh Frydenberg giving them a disconcertingly meaningful look:
Incidentally, we’re not sure exactly how many voters the Liberal Party hopes to turn by forcing them to look at its homepage when they’ve specifically tried to look up the opposition.
Ad it up The case of Clive Palmer raises many questions, but the one at front of mind now is: are super rich people terrible with money? We’ve long covered the flooding of the front pages with ads for Clive Palmer’s United Australia Party — no matter the levels of misinformation or whether they dedicate every other issue to portraying him as a complete tool. Palmer has pumped hundreds of thousands of dollars into Nine and News Corp over recent years, to go with the tens of millions he spent getting Scott Morrison elected prime minister in 2019 (in lieu of any of his party’s candidates).
And now… he’s releasing the longest political ad in history. Clocking in at 45 minutes, he’s reputedly agreed with three major media companies to run it. According to marketing publication B&T, the ad will only air pending editorial approval — but we’ve established that throwing enough dosh at media companies in the current climate can make editorial standards a fair bit looser. And because we in the bunker are irredeemable masochists, we pledge to watch the whole thing once it’s launched.
Given the Joyce Have we ever had a similar level of disparity between the importance of a politician’s title and how seriously we take what they say? On the front page of the Newcastle Herald, Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce is in bullish mood, arguing that China “as a military threat” is a bigger priority than climate change: “Sorry if that offends people, but that is priority number one for me.”
The fact that Joyce, the deputy prime minister, is pushing China’s military expansion as the biggest threat to Australia — with all that position implies, and where it logically ends up — has barely made a ripple in other media. It’s as though people are taking it no more seriously than his announcement of, say, an unfunded dam that’s been under consideration for about 60 years and has been denied environmental endorsement by no fewer than 25 feasibility studies.
Truth Social hurts Who could have seen this coming? Former US president Donald Trumps’ MAGA Twitter Truth Social is reportedly collapsing. According to The Washington Post, the app is being downloaded so little that it’s fallen off the App Store charts. Investors and executives are jumping ship. Technical issues have prevented hundreds of thousands of potential users from signing up. Trump is apparently furious at the app’s slow rollout.
Feels like this is just what happens after Trump’s kids show up.
What is this “military threat” that Joyce is talking about? Is China threatening to make our summers unbearable? To pour floods down our rivers every tenth wet season, and droughts in between? Is China threatening to raise sealevel above our infrastructure, including storm barriers against an angry sea? In 1960 the Chinese army mobilised to get food into western China during the Great Famine, alerting a trigger-happy West. By the time our own defence forces are mobilised to protect our own people from climatic disasters, China’s military will be preoccupied with disasters of their own.
I’d love to know how Chalmers ended up with a 5.1% average for the Coalition. From most of 2014-2018, unemployment rates were at or above 6%, and didn’t get below 5.5% until 2019. They surged back up above 7% in 2020, and didn’t get below 5% until the end of last year. By contrast, Labor’s unemployment rates never got above 6% at any time during their time in goverment-not even when the GFC hit. This is despite the fact that average participation rates were higher during Labor’s time than during the Coalition’s time.
Palmer’s self-investment millions.
Where else but the media are you going to throw so much money in an election campaign – with that media’s self-perpetuating political ad income business model?
Having to spend even more (than the Coalition) to try to counter that media’s years-long vilification of you and your party – if you’re anyone but their pimped Coalition?
Give it a break Jethro. There’s a thousand things you prioritise before “climate change” – and one of those is your fossil fuel sponsorship habit.