#david speers

[youthchronical]

Just days before his China visit, Albanese is warmly welcomed to Washington — and there's no mistaking Biden's message

Just before the cameras and journalists jammed into the Oval Office were bustled out of the meeting between the US president and Australian prime minister, Joe Biden offered an unprompted observation. “I was asked by Xi Jinping a couple of years ago why I was working so hard with your country,” Biden noted. “I said we’re a Pacific nation. He looked at me and I said, ‘Yeah, we’re a Pacific nation,…

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[youthchronical]

Two sides, six weeks, one crucial question: Prepare for a new type of campaign as Yes and No chase the 'Big Mo'

As Anthony Albanese said in launching the case for “Yes”, a referendum campaign is “very different” to an election campaign. It’s a statement of the obvious, but the differences are worth considering to better understand what the next six weeks will involve and why the Yes camp remains confident, despite the polls. There are similarities between a referendum and an election campaign, to be sure,…

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[youthchronical]

Australia is facing five unstoppable shifts in the economy. The challenge now is to ride the waves

When Peter Costello was about to release the first Intergenerational Report 21 years ago, the then treasurer effusively called it “one of the most exciting documents that we have ever seen”. Then shadow treasurer Bob McMullen, by contrast, grizzled it would be “little more than a cynical attempt to bolster Costello’s image”. Two decades on, it’s a Labor treasurer who will today hand down the…

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[archie-blog]

Barnaby on Insiders

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[aruellelite]

Jim Chalmers is doing an AMAZING interview rn, I've never seen someone smack down Speersy like this and I LOVE IT!

[aruellelite]

Watching Speers interrogate interview somebody who actually IS being evasive is just as frustrating

[aruellelite]

Speers has just spent a full three minutes trying to make Chris Bowen say there's an acceptable level of branch stacking, I miss Barrie 😔

[kim]

At 13:40:

“Is this what you had in mind in the expenditure review committee when you approved this grant scheme?”

“What we had in mind was to support community projects that were in need. What we saw in the first round of this…”

“Did you have in mind that they'd be targeted at marginal electorates like this?”

“Well, we had in mind that they would go to communities that were in need. The programs were initially…”

“But not based on political need.”

“The program was initially 13 times oversubscribed…”

Et cetera, et cetera.

Disregard whether the Auditor‐General was or wasn't correct in his assessments, who wasn't even in the room or in the picture when this scheme was being proposed. I would've thought Speer's question — whether targeting marginal seats was ever considered — would be a very easy “no”. It should be a very easy, straighforward “no”.

Unless it's not a no.