Comment

While we grapple with the on-ground reality of the election result, nothing is weighing more heavily than what this means for the men and women stranded on Manus and Nauru. Policy change after nearly six years of being imprisoned, being denied freedom and justice, was the last hope many held out for. That hope has now vanished.

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.

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’s a sense of relief that the nation is now in caretaker mode – a nice change from the usual arrangement where the affairs of state are conducted with unremitting carelessness.

The prime minister seems to have decided the best way to win over voters is to treat them like mugs. ‘Their problem,’ one Labor strategist says of the government, ‘is the voters aren’t as dumb as they think.’

Melbourne’s Caulfield Grammar is building a pool with a moveable floor, while Presbyterian Ladies College will soon have an orchestra lift – which would all be fine, if it wasn’t part-funded by taxpayers.