Australia’s prime minister has used his official campaign launch to warn against a change of government during the ongoing economic fallout from Britain’s decision to leave the European Union.
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Australia’s only two surviving conservative prime ministers – John Howard and Tony Abbott – had front row seats at the campaign launch.
Turnbull said he had ordered the Council of Financial Regulators, including representatives from the Treasury, the Reserve Bank, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) and the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA), to investigate any potential outcome of the Brexit decision.
“The Liberals are asking Australians to reject the cooperative economic model and the social wage that has held our nation together for more than 30 years and delivered a quarter-century of growth, and embark instead upon a radical, expensive experiment in trickle-down economics”.
Bookies give the coalition an 80 to 85 per cent chance of winning, however both major parties are concerned the Nick Xenophon Team may pick up lower house seats in South Australia and the Greens could take two seats.
Mr Shorten, who spent Monday targeting coalition-held electorates in Melbourne, said the coalition was balancing the books by “smashing household budgets” and cutting Medicare and education. Putting the party view first has been a constant in Turnbull’s election campaign.
“The upheaval reminds us there are many things in the global economy over which we have no control”, Turnbull said in a televised speech in Sydney.
Labor’s opposition leader Bill Shorten said last week that they should not be written off and his team was ready to return to Canberra just three years after being defeated by Abbott.
“If we don’t, then beware the next election”, Senator Di Natale said.
The parties have been trading blows over the past four weeks of campaign with Labor saying the Coalition was looking to privatise the Medicare health system and the Coalition hitting back with claims Labor would increase taxes and relax immigration laws.
“I have no doubt that if the plebiscite is carried out, as I believe it will be, that you will see an overwhelming majority of MPs and senators voting for it”, Turnbull said.
“Those Liberals in that party are sharpening their weapons of revenge for the impending civil war”, he said. He was confident a Labor government could keep the promises made because it had done so much work on them in opposition.
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During their six years in government, Labor cut $6 billion from Medicare and medicines.
