The Gold Coast Bulletin

History repeats – except at the ABC

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WORDS of well, something, from the ABC’s top political journalist Barry Cassidy.

Speaking yesterday morning Cassidy opined that as far as he could recall, there’d never been a Budget to “virtually launch an election campaign”.

Well, I guess not – apart that is from the very last federal election campaign, all the way back in 2016.

That Budget was brought down on May 3; less than a week later the then-PM Malcolm Turnbull went to the Governor-General to call his double-dissolutio­n election. And the rest, including ultimately Turnbull, would be history.

Indeed, Turnbull had actually announced in midMarch that the budget would kick off an (early) election campaign.

Incidental­ly, it was disastrous enough that Turnbull – a complete political and campaignin­g idiot – would commit to a potentiall­y disastrous overlong two-month election campaign, but by signaling his tactics in March he made it effectivel­y into a near fourmonth campaign.

The 2016 Budget was brought forward just like this one to accommodat­e the election timing; albeit in its case only by a week as against this one coming a month early.

Cassidy might have forgotten, but the 2016 experience of using a Budget to kick off an election campaign was seared deeply, very deeply, into the minds of PM ScoMo – who back then was treasurer – and new boy treasurer Frydenberg.

Back then the dynamic duo thought it would be a good idea to kick off by bashing the government’s base. This time round we got a cash splash.

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