Reading The Australian has become something of a chore. Now that I have stopped doing sudokus, there is almost no reason to have the paper delivered every day except out of life-long habit. Let me however start with Van Onselen and his efforts to back his puny judgement about our PM. He starts with a statement that absolutely no one in the world could disagree with:

Both Malcolm Turnbull and Bill Shorten have underwhelmed voters.

Shorten has, however, lived up to expectations. Malcolm, on the other hand, was brought in because he was the one-man rescue party for a floundering party. Instead, the certainty is that there will not be a single additional Coalition vote because Malcolm is PM and there will be many others lost that might even sink the party on the final day. But here is that same columnist at the end of a different story also in today’s paper

There is a feeling within the Liberals that Abbott would have been more effective on the hustings, attacking Shorten, shifting media focus to Coalition strengths beyond the economy. And he certainly would have exhibited more energy than Turnbull has.

And as for an out and out deranged judgement, since we all know that Turnbull made his move just before the by-election in WA which the Libs were going to win hands down with Tony as the leader, what can one say about this?

The Coalition research that shows marginal seats holding up, is in contrast to research before the change of leader. That certainly wasn’t the sense marginal seat MPs had of their electorates back then.

You have to cringe reading such stuff. The only thing Malcolm has going for him is that he doesn’t have Malcolm inside cabinet shafting the leader. So I turn to this interview with Tony Abbott where we find:

With less than two weeks until election day, Abbott’s immediate concern is seeing the Coalition re-elected. He thinks Labor can win the election and issues a warning to disillusioned conservatives who may be thinking of parking their vote elsewhere in protest over the leadership change last year.

“Think again, because it’s absolutely essential that we have the best possible government and that is a Turnbull-led Coalition government,” he says. “If they are thoughtful conservatives, even through gritted teeth, they will put the Coalition ahead of the Labor Party.”

Funny he should say that. What sort of feedback do you suppose he’s been getting? Gritted teeth isn’t the half of it. Where I am it’s a choice between Labor and the Greens which makes it easy since the only thing that will matter is which order I put them. Where the Libs go will make no difference. As for the Senate, on this there will have to be some deep consideration before the evil day arrives.

The winner gets to vote early and often.

I have let myself think the thought on occasion that there is a tacit agreement between the ABC, the ALP and Turnbull that the Libs win this election under Malcolm, implement as much of the left agenda as possible and then allow Labor to win in 2019. The only problem has turned out to be that Malcolm is such a dud that he is apt to lose the election even with the others lying dead. These thoughts have again crept into my mind reading Terry McCrann via Andrew Bolt: Shorten goes back to Labor’s disastrous past.

OPPOSITION Leader Bill Shorten has now officially committed to embracing two of the three policies that defined the Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard governments as the two worst in our history…

Yesterday, Shorten committed to go back to the ‘Rolls-Royce’ version of the National Broadband Network that Rudd signed off on during a VIP flight with then communications minister Stephen Conroy.

This joins Shorten’s earlier commitment to bring back the carbon tax which Rudd’s successor Gillard imposed on Australians in her squalid deal with then Greens leader Bob Brown.

That would leave just the boats and the 50,000-plus illegal arrivals and the 1200-plus deaths at sea.

But does anyone doubt that if we got a Shorten-led government in three weeks that the boats would start coming again? And once they did, that Shorten would cave on the Abbott government’s tough-love turn-back policies?

This has now been more than reinforced by the lead story in today’s Oz: Federal election 2016: Bill Shorten veers left on treaty, boats.

Why would Labor do this since it can only alienate everyone but the rustidons? Labor has even gone so far as to promise to do some serious cuts to public spending: Federal election 2016: Labor locks in $33 billion of cuts.

And not even that seems to scare enough voters towards a Malcolm-led Coalition even as the Coalition’s own traditional voters continue to seek alternatives. There is no doubting that Malcolm is the worst leader of any major party in Australian history. Not just a tin ear, but an arrogance so unearned it is hard to see how he ever came to think of himself as the moral conscience of the nation he clearly thinks he is. He really is thick. This from Andrew Bolt has such a sense of unreality about it that it is hard to believe it’s actually true. The heading from Andrew is Turnbull: whites “invaded” this land. This “always will be Aboriginal land” and this is what it said:

I have warned conservatives about what Malcolm Turnbull would be like once elected.

You don’t actually need to wait that long after today’s presser:

JOURNALIST:

Do you agree that the colonisation of Australia can fairly be described as an invasion?

PRIME MINISTER:

Well I think it can be fairly described as that and I’ve got no doubt – and obviously our first Australians, Aboriginal Australians describe it as an invasion.

And never may people with no Aboriginal ancestors feel an equal right to call this home:

So this was and is and always will be Aboriginal land.

And so the racial division of this country proceeds, encouraged by the party many would have expected to resist.

OK, he’s stupid. But are the fools who line up behind him impervious to the damage he is doing to Australia. Forget party politics for a minute. Everything he believes if implemented would make this country worse. The debts, the super, the spending, the NBN, the Republic, his version of reconciliation, his way of dealing with climate change, his lack of a personal will to protect our borders, and now his actually stating that white settlement in Australia is in some sense illegitimate. Meanwhile he thinks he’s a genius which may be the falsest belief he may have.

Any idea what Andrew Bolt means?

I don’t think voters know quite how vindictive Turnbull is, and what depths his media team have stooped to in trying to intimidate journalists.

When I am permitted to reveal some confidences I will. I am not quite saying Turnbull is a Rudd, but I am saying that the advertising does not resemble the goods and there will be buyers’ remorse. Already many Liberal MPs are worried. The superannuation strife is just a hint of what’s to come.

I know he is shallow, mean-spirited, narcissistic and incompetent. He is a left-wing troll heading a party of what ought to be liberal conservatives. If there’s more, it is pointless to wait till the 3rd of July to let us know.

Meanwhile, we have Malcolm’s father-in-law venting steam on Tony Abbott in his new book just published. Either the author is incoherent or the writer of the article, since I really could not work out from this what he was saying. Ravings of an old man, I suppose. You work this out and get back to me:

The book also republishes a blistering letter Mr Hughes sent to his brother, the late Robert ­Hughes, world-renowned as an art critic and accomplished historian, when Mr Abbott became Liberal leader.

”This is a potentially catas­tro­ph­ic decision,” he wrote. “To elect Abbott in his place is the equivalent of putting the bull in charge of the china shop or the principal ­lunatic in charge of the asylum. Abbott’s behaviour in relation to the risks of global warming may be compared to the oscillations of the weather vane.”

Well, the catastrophe turned out to be that Abbott had a fantastic win at the 2013 election which allowed Malcolm to stage a coup to become the Prime Minister he could never have become on his own. If he meant anything else, I could not work it out.

Let me ask you this. Is the following headline in today’s Oz pro-Labor or anti?

Labor veteran brands Shorten ‘anti-business’

My take from the debate last night was that Malcolm offered sound corporate advice leading to a strong economy and economic growth, while Shorten offered the promise of a just and fair society in which the government will do what it can to ensure equity as well as a strong economy. Malcolm sounded like a CEO speaking to the board. On only one issue did he come out ahead, and that was on stopping the boats. As for the rest, nothing he said made me think he understood that there are moral issues involved in leadership. The Government must stand for something. Even in his ridiculous concern with global warming, his approach is in the form of a cost-benefit study, rather than as a transcendent view of a better world with kindness to Gaia at its core. You may think that is even more ridiculous, but you won’t touch the Labor-Green vote unless you take that approach.

It therefore doesn’t surprise me to see there has been “a significant slump in support [for the Government] in the key election battlegrounds”. I just have to hope that Shorten really means it when he says Labor will protect our borders, because if Labor wins, the boats will start coming again.

Everyone seems to think that a Labor lead in the polls should not be taken seriously. Why worry about this, we are asked: Election 2016: Labor surges in the polls as campaign focus turns to economic credentials. The details:

At the end of the third week of the 2016 campaign, Labor surged to its largest lead of the contest to date in a Seven News/Reachtel poll published Friday night, taking a 52-48 lead in the two-party preferred vote.

Meanwhile, over at The Australian: Labor’s reckless economic strategy starting to unravel, Why Turnbull has a wealth of advantage over Shorten, and Malcolm Turnbull must revel in secrets of his success.

I know that aggregates don’t mean everything, and that it is a seat-by-seat battle. And being ahead only counts on election night. And the only poll I take notice of is when the votes are counted, and etc. Nonetheless, down 48-52 does not look to be such a great place for a team that is looking to sweep to victory, or even to win by a single seat.