The Morrison Government’s election campaign is a disaster, but the real story is still the state of the press, writes Joel Jenkins.
AT THE HALFWAY POINT of the election campaign, inside one of the most pockmarked government terms in modern history, Labor Leader Anthony Albanese comes back from a week incapacitated with COVID-19. Live in Perth, at an important time in the nation’s history, he stands before the media to take questions. After weeks of gotchas at the expense of genuine questions on policy — “Where’s Tanya?”, they ask.
Elsewhere in Tasmania, after gifting $4 million to a whiskey distillery owned and linked to people who are very rich, Prime Minister Scott Morrison was at a chemist dog-whistling to donors at the Pharmacy Guild of Australia. He offered cheaper prescriptions, something revealed and retracted around budget time, not challenged through his bluster, the “campaigner” that is somehow allowed to…
