At the start of the first full week of the federal election campaign, we are working hard to bring you a fuller picture of the key issues as we all consider the choices ahead of us. To that end, we will post more stories more often over the next five weeks.
Over the weekend we touched on the distortions and misinformation that plague discussions of immigration in elections – as well as the growing role of ‘influencers’ on views and voting patterns.
This week we will look the continued move away from major parties. According to election analyst Kos Samaras from Redbridge, 5.2 million Australians intend to vote for non-major parties at the 3 May poll. Younger voters are telling him they see the policies of both major parties as “band aids”. They want big reforms, serious change.
As the campaign continues, we will be asking a series of distinguished Australians: What would you do if you were minister?
We will also feature articles and speeches from an important forum, “Sovereignty and Security – Australia and the new world disorder.”
We continue coverage of the terrible ripple effects of the USAID cancellation across the globe. This week a particular focus is the withdrawal of funding from the global vaccine alliance Gavi, which the organisation estimates could result in the deaths of more than a million children. It is difficult to understand why, even if based only in self-interest, the US administration would want to undermine the life-saving effects of vaccination. Remember, it was just this month that saw the measles death in Texas, as part of an epidemic that continues to grow.
For me, the most interesting analysis of Trump’s worldview this week came from Justin Wolfers, the Australian professor of public policy and economics at the Gerald R. Ford school of public policy at the University of Michigan in the US. He says Trump sees the economy as a fixed pie: for one person to get more, another must get less. Or, in other words, to be a winner, someone else has to be a loser.
My thanks for your patience this week, as we have struggled with technical glitches. We hope they will be resolved with a website revamp that the small, very hardworking team at Pearls and Irritations are finalising in coming weeks.
Catriona Jackson is the Editor, Pearls and Irritations