Comment

‘Mistake of fact’ comes from section 24 of the Queensland criminal code. It says that where the defendant had an ‘honest and reasonable but mistaken belief’ in a state of things that made their actions legal, they must be acquitted. This defence has had blatantly unfair consequences for survivors of sex crimes.

Both leaders have attempted to cloak themselves in the charisma of their predecessors in this campaign. Scott Morrison with Menzies, then Howard. Bill Shorten first with Keating, now Whitlam. Neither has managed to breathe life into the public imagination in the way these leaders did. The way Bob Hawke, who passed away on Thursday, was able to do so effortlessly – with his extroversion and his boundless energy.

You’ve got to admire the way the Nasty Party steadfastly wheels out Little Winston to wave, grin and hug people during election campaigns. He’s a reminder of things past and in a climate change election it’s good to be reminded that Winston for such a long time was a climate denier (aka sceptic). He resisted the Kyoto Protocol and stood against the implementation of legally binding carbon reduction targets.

Bill Shorten began the week on an upbeat note, saying he had detected a mood for change. Constant opinion polling has reinforced his discerned wisdom but there is a brooding reluctance in voter-land. One of Shorten’s key strategists was quietly confident midweek of a Labor win, “but it’s a white-knuckle ride”. It is because Scott Morrison has proved a formidable campaigner and has been able to mobilise Australian voters’ fear of change.

As politicians look to exploit the fringes, and governments are reluctant to implement reforms, what chance do Indigenous issues have? Yet these questions are fundamental to who we are as a nation, as a people: identity, the legacy of history, the challenges of diversity and pluralism, whether government can be truly representative.

In rebuking The Daily Telegraph’s editorial about his mother, Ann, Bill Shorten conjured a rare moment in Australian politics. He said: “My mum would want me to say to older women in Australia that just because you’ve got grey hair, just because you didn’t go to a special private school, just because you don’t go to the right clubs, just because you’re not part of some backslapping boys’ club doesn’t mean you should give up.” It is not rare, of course, for male politicians to relate the discriminations faced by women to their own families, to flatten to the personal: I wouldn’t want this to happen to my daughter/my wife/my mother. The test for Shorten, if elected, is how broadly his empathy can be cast.

The history of citizens egging their politicians is long and distinguished. When Billy Hughes was egged at Warwick, Queensland, in 1917 he ordered the local copper to arrest the offender, Patrick Brosnan. Senior Sergeant Kenny refused, saying that the PM had no jurisdiction over him – hence we got the Commonwealth Police, which morphed into the Australian Federal Police.

Labor has been the frontrunner in the published opinion polls for the past three years. This week was no different, with the tightening since the election was called reaching a plateau. But Bill Shorten has supplied a powerful campaign moment in an otherwise lacklustre affair. He spoke emotionally about his mother Ann’s life and its key motivating force for him. It was in response to an attack on him, and her career, in several Murdoch papers. And it is a development that has rebounded badly on his opponents.

In any other election, Australia’s headline economic figures would have the incumbent popping champagne corks. Twenty-eight years of uninterrupted economic growth, unemployment at 5 per cent, record-low interest rates and a budget in balance are close enough to a beautiful set of numbers. But the disconnect between the economic data and people’s sense of economic wellbeing has rarely been larger. And this economic ennui is proving fertile ground for both parties to push very different visions for the Australian economy and what the government’s role in it should be.

There is a nuanced debate playing out over Brian Fisher’s analysis of the cost of Labor’s climate policy. In the corner of Twitter where economists and climate pundits squabble, opinions fly back and forth – on cost curves, on the assumptions of Fisher’s model and even on his professional standing in the field. What is likely to stick with voters, though, are the numbers pulled from Fisher’s report, published on the front pages of papers around the country.