Canning byelection: new PM and old defence policy hog final campaign day
|
Version 0 of 1. As the four-week-long campaign for the Canning byelection entered its final 24 hours on Friday, pleas from the candidates to focus on local issues fell on deaf ears. First up was Andrew Hastie’s military record, which has been examined and re-examined, often at his own instigation, since the 32-year-old former SAS soldier resigned from his position as captain to stand for preselection in the Western Australian seat. The issue in contention this time was Hastie’s comments to the Australian that Labor politicians had not listened to his concerns about “force ratios” – a 2012 policy which required 50% Afghan troops on military operations – and the impact of cuts to defence funding on morale. Related: Canning byelection: military service remains go-to answer for Andrew Hastie On Thursday, Hastie earned the disapproval of a crowd watching a live ABC local radio debate on Thursday for saying he didn’t feel Labor “had our backs” when serving in Afghanistan. On Friday, he said Labor MPs “wanted their photo ops with the boys and then they’d just fly home”. But despite reportedly telling the Australian that he “won’t be gagged”, Hastie gave a fair show of gagging himself when asked about the story at a press conference in Armadale’s Jull Street Mall on Friday. Standing in front of a throng of blue-shirted volunteers, Hastie refused to substantiate his complaint against the Rudd/Gillard government’s defence policy, and ignored a challenge that came via the Labor candidate for Canning, Matt Keogh, who wanted to know if Hastie would oppose the Abbott government’s cuts to defence pay and pensions. “As I made very clear today, and yesterday, I’ve highlighted the issues, but I want to move on from that, that’s in the past,” he said. Referring to the front-page article in the Australian, he said: “that’s unfortunately become a headline this morning. I didn’t want it to be that way, because this is ultimately about the people of Canning.” One of the people of Canning took the opportunity to shout from a passing car that Hastie was a “dickhead”. Hastie, with a grin, said that’s all part of the joy of democracy. “People can drive by and honk at you or swear at you, give you a high-five or shake your hand,” he said. “That’s great, I knew that going into politics, and I’m enjoying it.” Speaking at the other end of the electorate, the opposition leader, Bill Shorten, said there was no truth to Hastie’s comments about Labor’s approach to the military. “They’re not true, and are the Liberals still saying that today? They’re not true,” he said. Shorten said he was offended by Hastie’s “very unwise” comments, which he said went against the “great tradition in this country where Liberal and Labor together support our defence forces.” Shorten made the comments at a press conference at the Peel campus of Murdoch University, after taking a tour to meet students and peer at the dummies in the campus’s nursing school. It’s his fifth visit to the swing electorate, and the change from last Saturday’s cheery address to union protesters was palpable. No longer could he gleefully proclaim that the byelection, with what was then expected to be a 10% swing toward Labor, could mean the end of Tony Abbott’s prime ministership. Instead, with the Liberal party room acting to remove Abbott and install the new prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, on Monday night, Shorten was reduced to saying that Turnbull was no better than his decidedly less popular predecessor. He dismissed news of the first positive polling for the Liberal party since the 2014 budget, saying: “Well, I think to be candid, anyone who replaced Tony Abbott was going to get an improvement in their position. Mr Turnbull got there first.” The Galaxy poll, released on Friday, puts the Coalition ahead in the two-party preferred vote for the first time in 16 months by 51% to 49%. The result was even more stark on the question of preferred prime minister, with Turnbull at 51% to Shorten’s 20%. The remaining 29% were undecided. However, Shorten was circumspect about the impact the change of leadership could have on the result of the byelection. “I believe that this byelection will not be decided until 6pm Saturday night,” he said. “But already, there’s been one big loser out of the Canning byelection. That’s Tony Abbott. I think it’s the first time in Australian political history that even before the votes have been cast, the Liberal party’s run up the white flag.” Keogh, who spent time as both the head of the Law Society of WA and as a commonwealth prosecutor, before running for Canning, used his last press conference of the campaign to criticise Hastie’s plan to introduce mandatory sentencing for people who sell methamphetamines to children or endanger children in the manufacture of the drug. Keogh insists that the mandatory sentencing proposal, which Hastie is using as a wedge issue in the electorate, where methamphetamines – known as ice – are often blamed for increasing crime rates, “won’t work”. “The Liberal candidate in this election has made a lot about saying, ‘I will get people together, I will get the experts together, the subject-matter experts’,” Keogh said. “I’d like to say to him: I am the subject-matter expert. I was a prosecutor. I have sentenced these people. I have been involved in law enforcement and law reform for a long time. Mandatory sentencing doesn’t work. Catching criminals works and also investing in rehabilitation so we can get people off these drugs.” Keogh has promised $2.7m for drug rehabilitation services in the electorate, provided Labor wins the 2016 general election. Hastie said on Friday that he would fight for funding, but has secured none yet. As the day wore on, Hastie pulled out the campaign heavyweights: the foreign minister, Julie Bishop, who is immensely popular in her home state of WA; and his family – wife Ruth and three-month-old baby Jonathan. Though Jonathan’s appearances were minimal – he slept through most of their tour of the Mandurah foreshore – Bishop was more vocal. At a press conference perilously close to the water’s edge, Bishop defended Hastie’s comments about feeling unsupported by Labor in Afghanistan, saying it was the expected response to Labor’s decision to cut defence spending to its lowest percentage of GDP since 1938. “You’re asking about Andrew’s state of mind and how he felt,” she said. “They are his views and how he read it and my response is, what message did Labor think they were sending to our men and women in the defence forces when they cut spending to the lowest level in decades?” Bishop also defended Turnbull’s decision not to visit Canning in the last days of the campaign, saying he needed to focus on finalising the new cabinet. Instead, Hastie had to make do with a phone call from the new prime minister on Friday morning. “It’s been a long and challenging week but tomorrow I believe we will have a great outcome, not only for the people of Canning, but for the people of Australia,” Bishop said. |