Sydney Morning Herald - Latest News
Dutton tells supporters to forget about ABC, The Guardian and other "hate media"
Ahahahahahahahahaha
Ahahahahahahahahaha
😆 🤣 😈
You prawn!
#AusPol #Greens #VoteGreens #ProgIndies #WeAreTotallyFscked #WeAreSelfishCruelBastards #Misanthropy #FsckOffDutton! #ShitParty1 #ShitParty2 #ComeOnTanya! #WhyIsLabor #NatsAreNuts #NoNukes #racism #FuckRacists #TuckFrump #OzElection2025
@sister_ratched Sigh, all i wanna do is quietly finish my muesli n have my coffee, but no, oh nooooo, i get subtly nagged into having to do this stuff. I wanna pay rise.
Mark Kenny (paywalled)
QUOTE BEGINS
The most consequential policy pivot in the election campaign went almost unnoticed
Some may find it strange that the most consequential policy pivot announced in the election campaign went almost unnoticed.
Strange, too, that it was timed to elude electors in winnable seats who were already voting.
Seeking to justify a dramatic $21 billion increase in military spending over five years, Coalition defence spokesperson, Andrew Hastie, stepped up to the microphone in front of Peter Dutton and explained bluntly "America is moving to an America-first posture ... we have a strong relationship with them but can't take anything for granted."
Outlining an aspiration to lift defence spending to 3 per cent of GDP over a decade, he said the country faced the "most dangerous strategic circumstances since the Second World War".
Many Australians would agree with that diagnosis, terrified that Donald Trump's America has shifted from a global force of stability to a net creator of instability.
More than a million Australians who have voted ahead of election day will have missed this startling Coalition admission that the central pillar on which this nation's security rests might already have toppled.
If it really is the Coalition's clear-eyed assessment that a priority shift is required from hospitals, schools and infrastructure towards a new strategic self-reliance, why did it wait until now to say so?
Its bombshell recalibration was secreted between Easter and Anzac Day, and then was further swamped by the death of Pope Francis.
Only the last of these complications was unforeseen, and yet even the Papal death was not wholly surprising, as evidenced by the fact that Dutton's office issued a written statement within an hour.
There are more questions. Why was it the unknown Hastie who, having been warehoused in the Coalition's national campaign, finally said out loud that the US alliance may be a dead letter?
It wasn't, as cynics might conjecture, that he had been beavering away on the details of the policy. For a start, there were few fine-grain details as to specific new capability timelines. Neither was it the case that the policy itself had been hastily conceived or belatedly upgraded to arrest Dutton's descending poll numbers as his campaign faltered.
I understand Dutton and Hastie had quietly informed some of Australia's partner governments in the last months of 2024 that the Coalition would promise to increase defence spending, even stipulating the quantum expansion of $21 billion.
Again, one wonders, if the policy was both urgently required and ready-to-go last year, why was it not released then, well ahead of the campaign? This might have given the Coalition a fighting chance of leveraging its superior credentials in national security just as Labor had done with its pre-election $8.5 billion Medicare boost.
In the weeks leading up to the delayed April election announcement, I asked a senior minister if Labor was concerned about a likely Coalition emphasis on defence and national security. The answer conveyed a level of insouciance along with an explanation that any new defence expenditure would require other savings to be listed, or it would simply worsen the bottom line.
Still, not even an overly confident government expected its opponents to withhold such a key policy plank until the death-knell, thus failing to capitalise on a brand strength.
The emergence of Trump as a risky negative in the campaign has brought forth missteps and mealy-mouthedness on both sides.
When Anthony Albanese was asked during the second leaders' debate if he trusted Donald Trump, he didn't hesitate: "Yeah, I have no reason not to."
Really? This flew in the face of observable reality given the shambolic circus in Washington and the amateurish havoc currently washing through the global trading system. Has there ever been a less trustworthy American leader?
If Albanese's answer reflected a fear of Trump's epic pugnacity, Dutton's response to the same question served two different imperatives. First, the wider latitude that comes with not being in power, and second, Dutton's desperation to create distance from the unpopular American after previously welcoming Trump's triumphant anti-woke reprise.
"We trust the US," Dutton responded, conspicuously de-emphasising any personal element in the bilateral relationship. "I don't know the president. I've not met him". Gone was Dutton's glowing testimonial of Trump, the shrewd and visionary big thinker.
The shabby and disreputable theatre of this election campaign has heaved with such sophistry, but let us not delude ourselves that it is just politicians who are guilty.
When racist neo-Nazi agitators disrupted solemn dawn service commemorations on Friday, the condemnation across mainstream media was universal. But in screaming "we don't need to be welcomed to our own country" as Indigenous representatives spoke, these traitors to Australian values were citing the words emblazoned across the front pages of the most venerated newspapers around the country. Including on that very morning
Media organisations justify their ad revenue bonanza from Clive Palmer's openly divisive pro-Trump Trumpet of Patriots on the grounds of freedom of political expression. This is risible.
After Dutton's opportunistic repudiation of the Voice, Friday morning's outrage is a further denial of Australia's true history. The dawn service attacks by neo-Nazis are a down-stream consequence of mainstreaming racism and vileness. Worse may be to come.
Between Trumpian hatred and self-serving media nihilism, there is plenty of shame to go around.
QUOTE ENDS
#AusPol #ClimateCrisis #WomensRights #ShitParty1 #ShitParty2 #FsckOffDutton #WhyIsLabor #NoNukes #VoteGreens #ProgIndies #TuckFrump
I'll only link to the excellent pieces by Paul Bongiorno [It’s all over bar the voting] & John Hewson [Peter Dutton’s empty leadership], but i've fully quoted the Editorial, as i have such visceral hatred of the odious Lyle Shelton.
https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/comment/topic/2025/04/25/its-all-over-bar-the-voting
https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/comment/topic/2025/04/24/peter-duttons-empty-leadership
Quote
Editorial
Sexual preferences
Lyle Shelton is the crab louse of Australian politics. He’s an itchy little man. In his entire career, the only thing he has won is a campaign not to drink recycled sewage. He finally found a cause more unpopular than himself and it was the consumption of human excrement.
Shelton led the unsuccessful campaign against same-sex marriage. He argued that anti-discrimination laws needed to be suspended so he could properly put his case. He likened the children of gay couples to the Stolen Generations.
Undeterred by his failure, he joined Cory Bernardi’s Australian Conservatives. He was on top of the Senate ticket in Queensland in 2019, where he won 5533 votes. The anti-fluoride party was more popular.
When the Australian Conservatives were deregistered, he switched his allegiance to the Christian Democratic Party. Fred Nile promised to make him leader but betrayed him after he moved to Sydney. This is a little like being tricked by a slow-growing mole.
The gay-hating 90-year-old said: “I had high hopes for Mr Shelton and am sorry it has come to this.”
Shelton is now leading Family First. He is running for the party in the Senate in New South Wales. He is still obsessed with sex and death. He describes himself as an advocate for life who “opposes abortion-on-demand and euthanasia”. He wants people to freely practise their faith and promises to “combat harmful gender ideologies and protect children from radical indoctrination in schools”.
Ordinarily, this wouldn’t matter. The only talent Shelton has shown is for losing. He runs as a husband and a failure. The difference this time is Liberal preferences. Peter Dutton’s Coalition is listing Family First and One Nation at the top of its how-to-vote cards.
For decades, the Liberal Party has avoided preferencing One Nation. When Pauline Hanson emerged as a racist force in the 1990s, senior Liberals worked hard to deprive her party of oxygen. There was a principled stand against her.
In the years since, the Liberal Party has changed. Rhetoric that appalled the country in 1996 is now commonplace. There is nothing Hanson said in her first speech that hasn’t since been repeated by a Liberal leader. She is the definition of the Overton window.
Dutton’s Liberal Party is not embarrassed to swap preferences with One Nation or Family First. They all live on the same fringe. There are differences on abortion and a few other policies, but the fundamentals are the same.
The Liberals who fought Hanson struggle to recognise the party now. Its values have been surrendered to its rightmost wing. It has forfeited its economic conservatism, giving in to reactionary policies. It is no longer conflicted over racism. It has no affection for institutions or plans to protect them.
When Lyle Shelton looks back at his life, squinting at all the failure and fantasy, it is this that will likely stand as his solitary achievement.
Unquote
#AusPol #Greens #VoteGreens #ProgIndies #WeAreTotallyFscked #WeAreSelfishCruelBastards #Misanthropy #FsckOffDutton! #ShitParty1 #ShitParty2 #ComeOnTanya! #WhyIsLabor #NatsAreNuts #NoNukes #racism #FuckRacists #OzElection2025 #IncludeAdam
A trifecta of unmissable interruptions has made Peter Dutton’s task of winning the election in just seven days’ time a seemingly impossible mission. If the Easter holiday break followed by the Anzac Day holiday weren’t already obstacles to the late run home on which the Liberals were counting, the death on Monday of Pope Francis threw another giant spanner in the works. The wisdom is that the Liberals needed to make every day a winner in the final two weeks to capture voters’ attention and to woo the waverers over to their side.
The push comes after recent research from Ideally found that only 17% of Australians truly understand that political ads are not legally required to be truthful. An overwhelming majority (94%) think it should be illegal to publish ads that are inaccurate or misleading.
#AusPol #Greens #VoteGreens #ProgIndies #WeAreTotallyFscked #WeAreSelfishCruelBastards #Misanthropy #FsckOffDutton! #ShitParty1 #ShitParty2 #ComeOnTanya! #WhyIsLabor #NatsAreNuts #NoNukes #racism #FuckRacists #OzElection2025 #IncludeAdam
A government that favours only one group will marginalise everyone else – men included
.
Under a Dutton government, life for most Australians, both men and women, will not improve.
#AusPol #Greens #VoteGreens #ProgIndies #WeAreTotallyFscked #WeAreSelfishCruelBastards #Misanthropy #FsckOffDutton! #ShitParty1 #ShitParty2 #ComeOnTanya! #WhyIsLabor #NatsAreNuts #NoNukes #racism #FuckRacists #OzElection2025 #IncludeAdam
https://citynews.com.au/2025/dutton-faces-eject-button-as-dogfight-for-seat-tightens/
QUOTE BEGINS
Peter Dutton is in danger of becoming the first opposition leader to lose his seat in a federal election, with polling showing a drop in his primary vote in his seat of Dickson.
Mr Dutton is ahead 55-45 over Labor’s Ali France on a two party-preferred basis, but his primary vote has fallen from 42.1 per cent to 40.3 per cent, latest YouGov polling provided to AAP shows.
The Liberal leader has held the marginal electorate in Brisbane’s north since 2001, but has come close to losing his grip on multiple occasions, including surviving by just 217 votes in 2007.
His margin was cut to 1.7 per cent at the last election in 2022.
On the figures, if minor party and independent voters preference him at a lower rate than the national average, he could be in trouble, said YouGov director of public data Paul Smith.
YouGov’s seat poll surveyed 253 Dickson voters between April 17th and April 24th.
Because of the relatively low sample size, the results were weighted against a national sample of 7086 voters to match the demographics of the seat as a whole.
But the method still leaves it with a fairly high six per cent margin of error – larger than Mr Dutton’s five per cent buffer.
The Dickson two-party preferred figure doesn’t account for the possibility voters could preference against Mr Dutton at a higher rate in a concerted effort to oust him.
Prime ministers and opposition leaders tended to get a large vote boost in their electorates, Mr Smith said.
“However, the only two prime ministers to lose their seats – John Howard in 2007 and Stanley Melbourne Bruce in 1929 – both lost their seats because they were opposed to people’s fundamental rights at work,” Mr Smith told AAP.
“It will be interesting to see if Mr Dutton’s stance on working from home will have the same impact.”
Mr Dutton was forced into an awkward about face over the coalition’s plan to force public servants back into the office, which proved less popular than he hoped.
Another complicating factor in Dickson is the presence of a strong independent challenger, Ellie Smith, who is predicted to pick up 16.5 per cent of the primary vote.
That could dilute Mr Dutton’s primary take, although most of the votes Ms Smith has picked up have come from the Greens, whose primary share has fallen from 13 per cent to 5.1 per cent, according to the poll.
For Labor’s Ali France, who polled 24.2 per cent of first preferences, she’s hoping third time’s the charm after building her profile in the electorate at the 2019 and 2022 elections.
But the former journalist’s campaign hit trouble after it emerged she re-tweeted a doctored image of Mr Dutton wearing a Nazi uniform in 2017.
Asked about her tweets at a press conference, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said Ms France – whose leg was amputated after being hit by a car – was an “outstanding human being”.
“I don’t know what your tweets are like more than a decade ago,” he told reporters in Perth on Thursday.
QUOTE ENDS
#AusPol #ClimateCrisis #WomensRights #ShitParty1 #ShitParty2 #FsckOffDutton #WhyIsLabor #NoNukes #VoteGreens #ProgIndies #OzElection2025 #IncludeAdam
@Devorppa Two excellent points, but you accidentally omitted a vital third point
#AusPol #Greens #VoteGreens #ProgIndies #WeAreTotallyFscked #WeAreSelfishCruelBastards #Misanthropy #FsckOffDutton! #ShitParty1 #ShitParty2 #ComeOnTanya! #WhyIsLabor #NatsAreNuts #NoNukes #racism #FuckRacists #OzElection2025 #IncludeAdam
On ABC 7pm News a moment ago, i accidentally saw & heard a snippet of the Member for Maranoa. I'm now in need of a rusty nail for my eyes & ears. Aunty needs CWs.
#AusPol #Greens #VoteGreens #ProgIndies #WeAreTotallyFscked #WeAreSelfishCruelBastards #Misanthropy #FsckOffDutton! #ShitParty1 #ShitParty2 #ComeOnTanya! #WhyIsLabor #NatsAreNuts #NoNukes #racism #FuckRacists #OzElection2025 #IncludeAdam
My postal voting papers sit on my sunroom table, still unopened, since arriving last week. Unless a minor miracle occurs in the fast closing window, this will be my first ever election of not voting... with the subsequent fine presumably. I feel most sad about this.
#AusPol #Greens #VoteGreens #ProgIndies #WeAreTotallyFscked #WeAreSelfishCruelBastards #Misanthropy #FsckOffDutton! #ShitParty1 #ShitParty2 #ComeOnTanya! #WhyIsLabor #NatsAreNuts #NoNukes #racism #FuckRacists #OzElection2025 #IncludeAdam
@thejuicemedia Brilliant... not least for this classic pic...
#AusPol #Greens #VoteGreens #ProgIndies #WeAreTotallyFscked #WeAreSelfishCruelBastards #Misanthropy #FsckOffDutton! #ShitParty1 #ShitParty2 #ComeOnTanya! #WhyIsLabor #NatsAreNuts #NoNukes #racism #FuckRacists #OzElection2025 #IncludeAdam
Droppie [infosec] 🐨
