Attacking Albanese, The Media Plunge To A New Low, And We Take A Look At The Fusion Party

It was Anthony Albanese’s turn to appear on 60 Minutes, but not as much enthusiasm as they displayed for Scott Morrison, even though more people tuned in to watch Albanese, compared to Morrison’s episode several weeks earlier. And his appearance brought the ire of Morrison, who complained about Albanese’s weight loss, his lack of interest in Italian cakes and his choice of glasses. In Morrison’s mind, these are critical issues for choosing a prime minister and it explains why his time as prime minister has been a disaster.

In his attacks on Albanese, Morrison claimed “he's not pretending to be someone else” – except for sheep shearer, hair beautician, racing car driver, carpenter, barre dancer, gnocchi maker, chef, court sweeper, ukulele musician, a pilot. If these are Morrison’s ambitions, he should follow his dreams and allow someone else to become the prime minister but, with the opinion polls still pointing to a Coalition loss at the next federal election, perhaps the decision is going to be made for him.

Senator Kimberley Kitching died last week and the grieving hadn’t even started before the media started blaming the Labor Party for causing her death. It was unedifying and yet another example of the mediocre standards of the Australian mainstream media, and how willing they are to support anything that is detrimental to the progress of the Labor Party.

When Don Randall died in 2015, there was no discussion of the “stress of the job”, or Liberal Party preselection issues. But when it’s a Labor parliamentarian, it’s an open attack and no point is too low to go to.

And election signage is causing problems in Melbourne. Michael Sukkar and Tim Wilson rarely do anything in Parliament – their ideological pursuits are based on that libertarian theme of no government at all, but they’ll jump to action when it comes to election posters. Wilson has actually gone to the Supreme Court to stop his opponent, Zoe Daniel, from putting up election posters. Parliamentary work: forget it. But work to get yourself re-elected into parliament to not actually do anything: that’s a definite yes. Wilson has got his priorities all wrong.

And we feature Sahar Khalili from the Fusion Party, candidate in the federal seat of Reid. It’s an amalgamation of several minor parties and find out what their ambitions are for federal politics and the future.