DEAR News Of The Area,

THE election campaign so far has done little to encourage our attention.

Mr Albanese more or less offered a direct bribe to vote Labor via the budget’s tax cut offer, then adopted the policy of not doing or saying anything which might frighten the horses.

Meanwhile the opposition leader has been reminding people that he is Peter Dutton.

In quick succession he made contributions which unkind observers could interpret as homophobic (calling the PM “limp wristed”), dishonest (alleged insider trading), unethical (numerous times in the train wreck interview with Kyle and Jackie O) and deluded (doubling down on fossil fuels).

Meanwhile at a local level, our member for Cowper Mr Conahan has broken cover via an email on the government’s budget which could be described as quite negative.

In short order he was against the ALP in general, public servants, potholes, tax cuts and more.

Emotive terms such as “slashes”, “burden”, “struggling” and “frustration” abounded.

The only positive he could find was for the coalition’s energy policy, promising “clean and efficient” nuclear energy (provided of course they can find somewhere to store the resulting waste for the next 20 or 30 thousand years).

His opponent Caz Heise doesn’t have this problem.

Her campaign is relentlessly upbeat, with earnest locals promoting the message that Caz “listens, cares and knows how to get things done.”

The only thing I could identify that she was against was cancer – perhaps this was a dig at the coalition’s energy policy.

The upshot of all this is that the unthinkable could happen – latest polling shows Cowper may ditch the Nationals. Stay tuned readers, something interesting might happen and you’d hate to miss it.

Regards,
Michael TRIST,
Urunga.