Shorten preferred in debate
Australian Labor leader Bill Shorten has won the first leaders’ debate according to a count of the audience’s undecided voters.
According to news.com.au Shorten got the nod from 25 of the 48 undecided voters, while Prime Minister Scott Morrison only got 12 votes. However, there were still 11 people undecided after the debate.
Both leaders were given three minutes for an opening address with Morrison winning a coin toss to speak first.
He spoke about a strong economy, lowering unemployment and promised to fix the GST in Western Australia.
Shorten promised to deliver health and education funding and action on climate change.
Morrison demanded Shorten answer a question truthfully, saying he couldn’t “slink away” like before.
One of the most contentious polices from Labor has been its crackdown on franking credits and audience member Ron asked Shorten about its impact on pensioners.
“Our policy doesn’t apply to people who receive a pension or partpension,” Shorten said.
Morrison said the franking credit policy did hit pensioners who created self-managed super funds. “It is not true to say that pensioners don’t get hit,” he said.
Shorten said he wasn’t talking about pensioners with self managed super funds but the PM said he hadn’t qualified his response.
“You don’t get to slink away from it like you did at the press conference the other day,” Morrison said.
When Morrison tried to interject again, Shorten dismissed him saying “you had a good crack”.
The leaders were asked about what they admired about each other.
Morrison said he respected all MPs and anyone who served their country, which includes Shorten.
Shorten said he respected Morrison for those reasons, as well as his work on mental health. He praised the Prime Minister for being a man of “deep conviction”.
Meanwhile, One Nation leader Pauline Hanson has stormed off from a press conference after her Queensland leader was forced to resign over leaked strip club footage.
One Nation’s Queensland leader Steve Dickson was caught in a video in a US strip club appearing to grope and proposition exotic dancers and making racist remarks. The footage, secretly filmed in a Washington club by broadcaster Al Jazeera, was screened on Channel 9’s A Current Affair, which broadcast it for the first time.
Hanson said she was “both shocked and disappointed at the vision I was forced to watch”.
The press conference quickly turned heated when Hanson was again asked about Dickson previously being caught on camera trying to get funds from the NRA.