Malcolm Turnbull caves after flirting with housing backflip
The public policy case for lowering the concession is strong. But the political cost was seen as too high.
Mark Kenny is Fairfax Media's chief political correspondent. A director of the National Press Club, he regularly appears on the ABC's Insiders, Sky News Agenda, and Ten's Meet the Press. He has reported from Canberra under three prime ministers and several opposition leaders.
The public policy case for lowering the concession is strong. But the political cost was seen as too high.
The last thing Labor can afford as it weathers a mounting scare campaign against its ambitious climate change policy, is any sense that it does not understand it itself.
The noisy parliamentary battle over renewable energy rages on
It is among the more glaring ironies that professional politicians tend to recoil in horror when accused of "playing politics".
Pushing ever more renewable energy into the national electricity network is mindless, negligent, and complacent, without new investments in energy storage infrastructure, Malcolm Turnbull has declared as he stepped up his attack on Labor's clean energy policy.
Federal government attempts to politicise blackouts in direct contravention of advice provided by department officials, emails reveal.
A new push for a full-scale probe into the Australian banking sector is set to test the resolve of key Nationals agitators and the Labor opposition – both have campaigned hard against poor bank behaviour, and promised to back a royal commission even if the government opposes.
For most of its life, the Turnbull Coalition government has mysteriously underperformed – like a luxury car with persistent mechanical problems.
A resurgent Malcolm Turnbull has accused Labor of being "drunk on left ideology" as he capitalised on another serious blackout in South Australia to defend gas and coal-fired generation while slamming Labor's rush to solar and wind power for the failure.
It is hardly surprising that Malcolm Turnbull has immediately followed up his personal attacks on Bill Shorten with more of the same.
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