Bad sign for the Coalition?

Campaigns pride themselves on winning the key battlegrounds at elections with targeted seat-by-seat professional operations. Which is why we were surprised to see these campaign ads so far from home.

The Liberal candidate for the marginal Sydney seat of Reid, Grange Chung (there’s a name we can toast), left one of his mobile billboards waterside in the affluent teal seat of Mackellar, parked at Church Point.

One of our eagle eyed readers spotted it and passed the photographs on to us.

Perhaps team Chung got lost trying to make their way from the traditional Liberal heartland to the more working class digs in Reid. Or maybe they think the good folk in Reid like to holiday in the Palm Beach area during Easter.

Either way the signage was far from home.

Jacinta who? 

Not as far from home as this billboard in the seat of Brisbane. The Liberal attack ad features Albo alongside Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan emblazoned with the words ‘double trouble’.

How many Queenslanders would even recognise the relatively new Vic Premier? Much less conclude that she’s trouble?

Besides, Labor doesn’t even hold the seat of Brisbane, the Greens do.

From what we can tell it’s a fixed billboard, the sort of which usually costs around $10k. Money well spent? Not really….

Voice activist uses Dutton line against him 

Pro-Voice activist and Maritime Union of Australia official Thomas Mayo – who has repeatedly attacked Peter Dutton in the past  – has launched a fresh attack on the Opposition Leader, borrowing a slogan from his opponents in the Voice campaign.

In an election advertisement for far-left campaign vehicle It’s Not A Race (run by the generally unfunny comedian and former ABC host Dan Ilic) Mayo had the following message for voters:

‘If you don’t know the details about Peter Dutton’s policies and if you don’t trust the man, put his candidates last, vote no to the Liberal National Party.’

Mayo must have been so enthralled with the effectiveness of the anti-Voice campaign slogan ‘if you don’t know, vote no’ that he’s decided to roll it out for the federal election.

They do say imitation is the greatest form of flattery. 

Campaign fail

Here’s something we never thought we’d write: Labor’s candidate for the safe Victorian seat of Gorton, Alice Jordan-Baird, has hit the campaign hustings with a polygamy advocate.

Yep that’s right, Gabriel Uchala Kwar Bak was photographed with Jordan-Baird at her campaign launch in March, also attending various other campaign events. In October last year he posted on social media that ‘marrying more wives in South Sudan mean compensation of those whose lives lost in struggle for independence. I recommend polygamy’.

We’re not going to get into the weeds debating the complex issues in South Sudan, other than to say his stance probably doesn’t gel too well with Labor’s affirmative action policies.

Bak is a well-known Labor supporter in the Gorton area who is close to a number of other Victorian Labor MPs.

What’s that saying about dogs and fleas? 

All aboard the Dutton bus 

On Tuesday both major party leaders suspended their campaigns ever so briefly to honour the passing of the Pope, before just hours later using the third leaders debate to lay into one another in the most un-Christian of ways. Not that we’re being judgemental, that’s politics right?

The debate was largely uneventful, unlike last week’s second leaders debate which resulted in a war of words in its aftermath between Team Dutton and its travelling media pack.

As soon as the debate was over the Dutton campaign bus looked to move on, but only after Liberal campaign spokesman James Paterson gave some quick thoughts on why Dutton won the debate. 

When Treasurer Jim Chalmers took to the mic to claim otherwise, the journalists were told they needed to board the bus and move on. Some of them weren’t so happy, and neither were the Labor minders who insisted on Jim getting a right of reply.

It wasn’t to be. With the bus leaving the journos reluctantly took their seats after some grumbling. But they did leave a cameraman behind to film Jim’s no doubt searing insights, in case there was anything worth quoting.

There wasn’t by the way.

Tale of two elections 

Here is a fun fact for the week. Singapore is holding its election on the same day as Australia. 

Not that you’d know it when touring the island nation. There are no signs and no sign of any campaigning. That’s because under Singaporean law campaigning is curtailed in ways Australians might not mind after this year’s showdown.

While Australians are buckling in for a tight contest where the government may only scrape home in minority, Singapore’s government (which has never lost) is unlikely to lose more than a couple of seats.