Paul Murray Live | 1 May

this thing getting behind us as fast as possible. Now, I've got to say, when it comes to elections, I do have a little bit of a saying that everyone around me gets a little bit bored of saying. And it's a version of a quote that you've heard many times before. But the message is pretty simple. Expect the worst, but hope for a surprise. That way, you are not going to be a blubbering mess if the exact opposite

of what you want to happen happens. But there's always a moment well you can say, you say that was interesting, Thank goodness. This is the feeling that I had in twenty nineteen. It's a feeling I had in twenty twenty two, and it's a feeling I have going into twenty and twenty five. Eighteen million people will make their decision about which way we are going to go as a country. Every piece of data and all information would suggest that we are about to see the reelection of this government.

The question is not whether they are re elected, but will they have their own majority as they currently do, or will they have to negotiate with somebody else to get the majority to be in a minority.

that matters because she's been around for thirty years. She hasn't mucked about it at all. We all know how she stands. We all know how she feels, and she wants you if you vote one Nation to put the Liberal Party second. As I have said, if you are going to go a minor party, then you have to choose a government with what you do at number two.

Also arm yourself with the information. So in the case of one Nation, it is vote dot one nation, dot org, dot au, or you can go searching for how to vote Labor, how to vote Liberal, how to vote Green, how to vote Okay. You can go to a website like vote dot one nation, dot org dot au. You can get your how to votes and it doesn't matter

whether there's a volunteer there or not. It means you don't have to engage with the people who say vote for your local doctor, cart immigration, all the stuff that they say as you're walking in think of the children. You've made your decision, you've got your information, download how to vote before you go and vote tomorrow or of course on Saturday, where the majority of people will at

this election. Meantime. Of course, in terms of the things that we've got to talk about here is again if those internal polls are correct, then again we're going to see this quite Australian's effect. We'll all see what happens. As for Albow, and if he wins, well, he's got one hell of a machine around him. In my view, it's going to be one that's built on lives. But if it is what the majority of people have gone for,

as Richo says, the mob is always right. Tonight, State of the Race tonight, Kroger, Conroy Murray, no one holds back all of it hardcore politics Tonight on the show. I think we may all not feel great after Saturday, but you'll certainly feel good tonight as we start to get a bit of an indication, including even into the betting markets, about which seats they think are going to

be changing at this election. Those blokes in a moment or two time, as we like to do at the start of each and every show, two days to go. We've basically been on an election footing since the start of the year. The super long campaign is almost over according to the in An Electoral Committee Commission. Sorry, five point four million people have already voted. Now I thought that we're on our way towards half of all people voting. There's eighteen million people on the register, so that'd be

nine million. We are well short of that. Let's add another million once today's numbers come in. Because this is all a bit of a lagging number. I don't think we're going to get anywhere near the nine million, which means has this sort of two election campaigns. There's one that crests the two weeks before in order for early voting, and then there is the one that goes all the

way up to election day. When it comes to the locations that have been voting early, the seat of Griffith, which is currently held by the Greens, has the most

number of people turning up to one of their prepole locations. Bowman, Dawson and Fadden all LMP seats in Queensland where are are which again on a good night for Libbs is competitive, but whether the Poles are correct that things have gone back Labour's way in New South Wales means something's going on there that there's a certain amount of vote that's

being banked there. Maybe a bit sick of how many door knocks they are getting in Flinders in Victoria, a Liberal Party seat in Macon in South Australia, a Labor Party seat Capricornia in Queensland as well as Herbert in Queensland, both with the LNP and Gorton. So it's rare fulle fifty to fifty, but a little bit more when it comes to the LNP, but certainly massive overrepresentation of Queensland.

Who knows which way they are going to vote. Now, there's another little factor here that I need to tell you about, which is there are about three million postal votes. Now, these will not be automatically counted on election night. You are able to make sure that it is posted by but me election day and then yes, there's a couple of days for the mail to get there, but put simply, you basically have to have it in the mail by Friday. But there's three minion votes on top of all of

those others. So maybe we can start to say about that nine million number. But the postal number is about three. Now, the pre pole votes, they all get counted on Saturday night, the postal votes some and then and there's that little bit of a lag. Remember, because we live in a bizarre system, there's not a lot of counting. In fact, I don't think there's any counting on the Sunday, but I'll double check for you before I'm done. So we

have to wait a few days. So there will be places like previously been along at the previous election Herbert a couple of elections ago. Although Herbert is certainly strong LNP territory. Now with the great Philip Thompson, they're a great hope of the site and a great future, very much front row performer for the Lnp's a wonderful bloke.

He's turned what was a couple of one hundred seat majority for the Labor Party into a big thumping lead for himself and there's no expectation that will be anything but that in and around Townsville. But let's have a look at where people have asked for the postal vote. Now, this of course could be for a whole collection of reasons, but put simply, this is a lot of people, say

a nursing homes disability, meaning they can't go to the polls. Now, we went and had a look at this today that in a lot of these seats you can see that quite a few Labor, quite a few LNP, a lot more in Victoria, kind of a fifty to fifty game between Victoria and Queensland. There you can see that already half of the postal votes in Carwell, in Bonner, in Dunkley, in Aston have all been returned along with Deacon and Casey. There's still more than half of the postal vote to

come in in Blair, in Goldstein, in Fadden and in McEwen. Again, I appreciate that the AAC updates these numbers each and every day, so again on election day we'll have a bit more of a picture about just how much is out there, apart from what has happened early. That, of course, all happens on the day when you go to the local school, democracy, sausage, all the rest of it. That's all on the day. Postals a little bit of a bleed. After the election will be able to start to do

the numbers on all of that. There are some big and complicated computers that do all of that, which means Tom Connell is able to make the call and he is best in the business. He shoot away the competition, Let's be honest. He has absolutely stepped into his own his best in class. He in my view, is the single reason why you have to be watching Sky News on election night. Now we have a great panel and I'll be part of things and there'll be a great conversation.

But Tom and the way that he reads the numbers, he is deeply just passionate about this stuff and he hates when I pile the pressure on. But he is that damn good all right, So he will have all of those calculations in his head. As what the leaders were doing today, well, unsurprisingly, they're all making their final pitches. No more big announcements, no more policies. It's all about pretending I'm the underdog. No, you're the underdog. I'm the underdog. No,

I'm the underdog. So the bloke who a pole came out today, by the way, saying they would win eighty three seats, the same newgu poll that told us earlier in the year the Coalition would win seventy three seats. And I do love this Labor Party trick. Whien you turn up with TV cameras to a school, they all go nuts because it's the TV cameras, not the Prime minister. But it's a good old fashion trick and people always fall from it. Looks good a couple of days out

from an election. But he's elbow pretending he's not confident about what everyone But maybe you think is going to be the winner.

is not the normal. The normal is multiple terms for one prime minister. Before Howard it was Hawk, and before Hawk, you know, this is the way Australia generally works. So it feels like if there is the return of this government, there is a sort of a return to normal in

terms of the expectations. The X factor in and around this election was that for a very significant amount of time in this first term they've been behind in the polls, and unlike as I've explained to you before, unlike the Libs who got ninety seats in twenty thirteen and then they pissed that away with Malcolm Turnbul in twenty sixteen, and unlike Rudd again in and around ninety seats and they pissed that away with Julia Gillard in twenty ten.

This guy doesn't have a massive backbench. So what will be interesting for us to talk about tonight is if the Labor Party takes a couple of steps forward. Okay, they might win some seats, but they're not going to end up going back to the sorts of margins that previous elections have been fought on. But again that's zero some game you either win or you lose. The rest of it is just analysis. As for Peter Dunnam where he was, he is absolutely confident he has the data

that he has been given by the Liberal Party. Remember that he is informed by the Freshwater Organization who have been polling in the Australian Financial Review, and their last public polling, which was a couple of weeks ago, now it says they could win as many as ten seats. On top of that, there's whole bunch of fifty to fifty calls, which is why he is saying, if you are a Liberal supporter, do not give up. Do not vote for somebody else back in the bloke you'd want

to be the prime minister. Don't make the assumption about what your neighbor is going to do.

In terms of postals. Now, one thing that has been despicable, and it has been despicable this entire campaign, which has been the obvious attempts of the media to continue the arrangements that they have enjoyed for the past three years. I think one of the most corrosive forces in news reporting, or sports reporting, or business reporting or showbiz reporting is access and the need to be nice to the people who you are reporting on in order to continue to

be able to report upon them. When it comes to things like federal elections national politicians, it should be not necessarily an aggressive or totally adversarial relationship, but there should always be a year but that exists in the media.

But as we have shown you night after night after night for the entirety of this election campaign, and in and out of most of the time that we've been on air for the past fifteen years, we just show you the tapes that are freely available each and every night. And now let's look back at the soft questions the Prime Minister has received from a media who seems pretty comfortable with the way the country is being run.

God forbid, he was in advocacy of what proved to be one of the most popular policies of this election. Showed you those numbers last night coming from the Red Bridge organization. Compare that to the daily dance between the

media and Peter Dutton. Now again, it's not all meant to be cuddles all the time, But compare the tenor of the garbage that you've just heard being asked of the man who wants three more years after three pretty difficult years for the average Australian to the bloke who is saying he wants to put the country back on track. This seems just personal.

Donald Trump. This has been the way that it has worked every single day, in part because those people know that if Dunton was able to get onto defense, well that means the government's going to have to you know, sorry, get onto offense. Then the government's going to have to be on defense. And we know that Albo when he's on defense in the past couple of years, has been terrible. It has been unbelieved Ball and I have no doubt you've been yelling at the television like I have been

for the past few days. But it is the way that it is. And this is a generation of journalists who think this is the way that it is done. But there is a hall of shame of those who deserve to be called out specifically for some of their behavior and some of what I believe to be some pretty low hits that they took, including of course Tim Lester from Channel seven the day after we learned that

Peter Dutton's father had had a heart attack. I interpreted this question as him basically blaming Peter Dutton for his father's heart attack.

This is the way that he again tried to bend a moment in the campaign where it was all about Trump and when you sent a nampaginper Price, a spectacular woman who deserves to have all of the attention and at some point into the future, all of the power that the Australian government can have because she wants to help people that most people in the media would step over if they saw them on a Friday night. This was the story from a few weeks ago.

we can get Australia back on track. We're hearing from students that they are learning in doctrination as opposed to education, that they're being forced to have to provide a welcome to country within their essays for crying out loud, and they if they don't don't provide an appropriate form of welcome to country or acknowledgment of country, that they will be marked down. We have announced policies around the fact that we will conduct them audit into the spending in

Indigenous affairs and the Indigenous Affairs portfolio. We will establish a rule commission in the sexual abuse in Indigenous communities because we know that Indigenous children experience the highest rates of exposure to domestic and family violence.

dealing with Donald Trump. Now I get it. There's a show on Channel two that's done this for a long time that no doubt will turn around and have the greatest hits of things that I've had to say. But the difference between me and the people who go to those events is that they are the independent journalists. It's pretty obvious that they weren't in all of this, maybe because they ideologically prefer one over the other, but more likely it's because they didn't want to upset the apple cart.

They didn't want to do anything that would hurt their proximity to power, because if they have the closeness to the power, then the power will reward them with a little pat on the head, a little bit of news here and there, an exclusive every now and then, the chance to interview the Prime minister. Thankfully, there have been

heavy hitters that have pushed back. I highlight my colleagues here at skuy News, and Andrew Clenell with the interviews he's done today and his question at the National Press Club. My colleague Chris Yulman here ats sky News as well, and his unbelievable strength when it comes to calling bs when it comes to power and electricity and the bowen of everything. But is anyone surprised that when most people get their information from places other than this program, this station,

our websites that we're sitting where we're sitting tonight. The polls basically sit somewhere between fifty two forty eight or fifty three forty seven. If it's fifty two forty eight, it's basically a repeat of the last election. Labor wins, but only just if it's fifty three forty seven. They will win clearly and increase the number of seats and all the people who will be there to be rewarded. I think maybe one or two of the media, people who are probably yelling at the TV right now, just

like we have been yelling at them. Now, before we get into state of the race, I want to talk about the fault lines that exist in our community, the fault lines which will decide the election. But simply we know that people under fifty, generally speaking, vote to the left.

People over the fifty will generally vote to the right. Now, sometimes this can become a little bit more or a little bit less, but at this election, I went through the actual electoral role and counted, well, the AAC countered for me, but the number of people in each and every seat. And at this election, there are two fault lines that matter. Are you under the age of fifth or over the age of fifty? Are you male or

are you female? And yes, there are a couple of thousand people who describe themselves as intermediate, But for the point of the conversation, age and gender are going to be the big fault lines.

seven hundred and twelve more women. Now, obviously you can be both female and under the age of fifty, but the point here is that there is a many hundred thousand vote advantage to what we are being told in the polls are sections that are going to vote to the left Labor, Green's Socialist Alliance deals. Why is this election competitive at all, then, Paul, Well, let me explain, because both major parties have got marginal seats. Now, obviously the older you vote, the more likely you are not

to be voting labor. So in seven of the ten seats that are their most marginal seats, people are over the age of fifty. The saving grace, however, could be that there are in nine of the ten seats more

female voters. In these labor marginal seats. In terms of the Liberal Party, they think they can hold on to seats because eight out of ten of those seats have people over the age of fifty that are the majority voters, but they may lose to tels or outright to labor because there are more female voters in every single one of those seats. In fact, in some of those seats there is a ten thousand vote difference between people under the age of fifty and over the age of fifty.

When you come down to one percent seats, two percent seats, guess what that really matters? All right, stay to the race. Let's get to it right now, deep dive into data. It doesn't matter what you kind of think is going to happen. It is important to go and have a look at all of it. We will do it right now, all right, or we need to do Send me an email to poultsgudews dot com dot A you thanks for watching,

Thanks for the journey. I'll be there on Saturday night, and you know what, I'll be here on Sunday night, and I'll be here in three years time, and I'll be here in six years time. You get the point. We're not going nowhere. Fight fight, fight baby all day, every day.

Crowd gentlemen, both are in Melbourne. I wish I was there with you now, but alast the man cave it does not take care of itself. Lads, how do we feel apart from results all the rest of it? Right? This is the time where rubber hits the road. What's it like when you are either in head office or sitting around a cabinet table a couple of days out, regardless of all the information. What's it like just before an election? Michael?

aren't we magnificent? Those advertisers adds were great candidates, magnificent, best candidates we ever had, policies, fantastic state directors, wonderful, The leader's a genius. So the answer is to your question, it depends whether you're winning or not, mate, And it's a very different response that Stephen.

phone down and you just forget about it. That is that is an absolute normal in all parties, not just label in all parties, because to run, you've got to have a genuine sense of self belief. Otherwise you couldn't put yourself out there. And so that sense of self belief really takes over during a campaign. And you know, I've got on people for doing it. And now I was lucky enough to stand a few times, but it really there has some very funny phone calls.

those early months. Which one is going to be most potent going into this absolute final run And now that we know that the majority of people will be voting on election day, yep, super Scare hasn't been running for weeks and weeks and weeks, but Jesus running hard and the next couple of days, Michael, but.

I mean the dishonesty, the lies that Albani's in charmers have told, the appalling mistakes they've made on budget figures. They make things up, they repeat them, they keep repeating them. Phil Coury and others know right and say this is wrong. They just keep repeating them. The six hundred billion, it's a blatant lie. So I don't think Labour can be proud. It's a dirty If they win, it's a dirty victory. It's a very dirty victory. And when that happens, you

will get clobbed at the next election. So one of the reasons Short lost in nineteen wasn't just because of the tax rises. He proposed, but because people felt badly that they'd been conned by him in sixteen.

these things. So medicare is very effective. But you know, if you win an election by praying on the elderly, the infirmed and the sick, by basically scaring the living daylights out of them that their healthcare is going to be affected by Peter Dutton, you shouldn't very feel proud of yourself, mate, you really shouldn't. That's a race to the political bottom and he should be ashamed. Albanize.

could be the difference between majority minority. This could be a giant flip of an awful large amount of seats, because of course it's not just the people who have that three minion, but it's about the younger people who will end up tipping in superannuation for a longer working life, hoping to be able to warn enough money at some point in time that that three million is the number that they'll be able to play a plunk with down

the track. What's either your defense of the MENI scare or what is your fear of the super scare?

losing money immediately in front of their eyes. So I think that's really back in the He's going to run that did is cell?

firing and all cylinders. And I've got to give it enormous credit to someone most of you have never heard of, Paul Erickson, correct, the ALP national secretary and campaign director. So Albou came out. He came out with women's health policy. So he had about three different health policy initiatives that allowed and then to springboard into the Labour's the only party that will protect these. We will protect Medicare, we will protect these new initiatives, and so Labor have brand

equity around Medicare. And if you wanted all these new initiatives, you had to keep protecting Medicare to take advantage of all these new initiatives. So yes, they've run hard. Peter Dutton unfortunately has a track record and one of the great problems you have when you move from government to opposition is you're still carrying the baggage from when you

were in government. It doesn't matter which ministry you have, and it's particularly difficult if you were the minister where people can say, remember he was voted by the AMA the worst health minister they've ever had. He did these cuts and so you know he'll do it again. So often you need to have people leave to allow fresher people who weren't part of previous governments to be able to come through and say we're going to, you know, make changes that was someone else, it wasn't me.

to that point as well? Right that? You know, if it's fifty three forty seven and we're talking about a re elected government with more seats than it went going in, then I think you've got to start looking towards the things like the News World's Labor Party, who only had one one member of his shadow cabinet, was even an MP in the one in the government that Kanely was leading and got flushed because Labour's got their line and length on all of this stuff, and we'll see what happens.

That said, you know, it is rather selective about what the media will let you get away with. And I've got to say here, Stephen is a bloke who you know again tonight looks like he's playing with the better hand. Do you agree with some of my observations of the media. Do you agree with just some that there's just the idea that the bloke can stand there and say things we all know not to be true. But because we now live in this world and it's ever been us,

but still it's more aggressive. Right If the question comes from Channel seven, Channel nine won't report it. If something happens on Sky News, then ABC pretends it never takes place. And that is now happening in the round in terms of these journalists in the previous generation of journalists, where we've still got people like Edrick Lenell and Phil Koury and Chris Human around when they saw that somebody was onto something, you'd step back and let them have a crack.

But it seems like both leaders elbow started it doesn't finish finish off with them as well. This sort of one question a day thing and please don't upset Daddy seems to have been a rather successful tactic. But Father Piss Week for those of us watching on right.

been a fundamental structural change. This is the first campaign where you can say that the Courier, Mail, the Daily Telegraph, the Herald's Son, the advertiser in Adelaide have not been able to control the debate. My daughter eighteen years old, she has never watched the six o'clock news. So it's not just those tabloids in Channel nine, Channel eleven, Channel nine, Channel seven, Channel ten. They are not the leads anymore. You know, if there was a big story, then everyone

else was forced to. Notwithstanding the point you're making, Paul about and which is true that people won't report each other's stories, but they they don't dominate the discourse, particularly for people under the age of forty, because that has really changed structurally.

a disadvantage to you? And again, the picture of this election, more people under the age of fifty than over the age of fifty, more women than men. In terms of the marginals. If Labor's going to lose seats, it's going to be because of the seats that are currently marginal, seven out of ten of them have over fifty percent sorry, over fifty year old. If the Liberals are going to lose seats, it's going to be because in those seats,

ten out of ten have more female voters. What do you think about this as a way of trying to carve up the pie. And again, demographics can be difficult, and that's why we end up with things like that you GOV poll where they go and do a survey and then they mix it in with all the people that are around and you get up a sou flew that says, two months ago the liberal parties winning seventy three seats and today the Labor Party is winning eighty four.

But as a way of cutting it, have I cut it reasonably well Michael to understand what might be happening here?

was a complete genius. The answer is he was a genius in nineteen, but in twenty five he is not. Listen, that's all nonsense, right, What Stephen's saying is nonsense. Right. You win and lose elections depending on the performance of the Parliamentary Party and the parliamentary leadership over the previous three years. A federal director, a state director, right, whoever they are, the ADVERTI of the agency, the bootstrappers, the candidates.

They can only hang on the performance of the parliamentary party. If the parliamentary party doesn't perform, you can have the state director from or federal director from heaven, you won't win the election. Right in nineteen what happened, Bill Shorten played on our home turf because he had all these four hundred billion dollars of tax increases. So of course we were in a good campaign. We won the election.

He played on our home turf. Everyone told me the federal director was a complete genius, and so be careful about these these these you know, you know Monday morning quarterbacks that say it was this, it was that.

the former prime ministers was Malcolm Turnbull. Second midnight tonight the TV had stopped. All right, now, a lot of people have been sending me he must go, and there's lots of more Labors and liberal eights to look. One of the advantages when you decide when the election is is you know when the first day will be and when the last day will be. There's only so much time and you can book into that time. So surprise, surprise, you're seeing what you're seeing. Its TV stations picking winners.

A rare moment of defense for my business, as I occasionally ignore the hand that feeds. We are here with Steve Conry, with Michael Kroger. It's fun to watch anyway for people it seems to have worked over fifteen years. May be. So for the next look, let's get into some quick, some speed round stuff here. I want to talk about the Polar coaster because someone's going to be

really wrong here. Now, Yes, they're starting to kind of get between fifty two forty eight or fifty three forty seven or margin de vera means we're all technically within six points. Okay. The people that are doing the internal polling for the Labor Party are the people behind the news pole. That doesn't mean Newspole is working for the Labor Party. And the people that are doing the internal polling the Liberal Party the ones doing the freshwater poling

which is turning up in the Financial Review. Now, I have mentioned that they've kind of been shushed for a while at certain points in time. In fact, their last pole said that the Libs would win ten seats at

this election. Well, this is the pole that has just been released tonight in the Financial Review, and each the most generous of the fifty fifty split to the coalition, suggesting that it's more fifty one and a bit to forty nine and a bit as opposed to sorry forty eight and a bit as opposed to the fifty two's and the fifty threes. Thirty seconds from each of you about the polar coaster.

the campaign. I don't know whether in the last week people think I've just I've been conned by Albanizi. I don't want to be a mug And I don't know how much the press differences from the conservative right parties are going to how much that's going to increase. So normally we've got sixty four percent of one Nation, sixty two percent of UOP straight Trumpet, and seventy two percent of libertarian I think they could all be in the eighties. So there's another one or save percent. I don't know

how much that's going to increase. So there are some factors which might mean the coalition vote is quite a bit better. And finally, in some of these marginal seats, I wonder whether our candidates have done very well, and whether the Labor vote is actually increasing in its own safe seats, because there have been big swings against lab particularly in Victoria and its own seats in the twenty two election. Maybe that's come back to labor and not so much in the marginals.

back to where we were. The only games for the coalition would be winning from the Greens in and around Brisbane, winning from Gilmour on the south coast of New South Wales, winning Aston, which of course was the seat lost at a by election, which means you're back to the number basically sort of plus two from the twenty twenty two election. In terms of labor, they would be able to gain a seat from the Greens, and in terms of Labor taking a seat anywhere else, I can't see it in

that list. But again Labor Party suggests that some of this polling might put them in and around and even that positive polling in Freshwater puts them bang on seventy six. So lads, tell me dark horses, weird predictions. Give me your thirty seconds so everyone can replay the tape on Monday. Stephen, Look, I.

Whatever it was, there will be some shock results. There will be some shock results on Saturday night that no one saw coming and we will be absolutely bewilders to how various things happened. So what those are, we don't know, but there will be some absolute shock results which will surprise everybody.

guess what, that's what always happens. We're the first term government. Thank you guys, do appreciate it. We'll see you again and I'll see on Saturday night for the coverage up. Go Yankees.