The day on the campaign trail: Clive Palmer says nickel refinery reopening announcement no election ploy – as it happened

Now, like the good birds, I must fly. Thank you very much for your company today. Let’s follow our tradition and take stock of Thursday.

The prime minister made his final pitch at the National Press Club with the confident delivery of a politician who thinks Saturday night is going to be a good night for the Coalition. Never mind that a radio host earlier in the day told Malcolm Turnbull he’d better win comprehensively otherwise colleagues would have him for Sunday brunch. Details, details.

The opposition leader hit the hustings in Brisbane to declare that Labor was ready to govern. Bill Shorten shrugged off questions about post election scenarios that would see him lose the Labor leadership and said he would fight for every last vote until 6pm on Saturday night.

Greens leader Richard Di Natale finally delivered a straight answer about whether the Greens would negotiate with Labor on offshore processing in the event of a hung parliament. No, the Greens would not negotiate was the answer (which followed a suggestion yesterday that they might).

The end is in sight. We will be back with the live coverage from first light tomorrow. Until then, go with your God, and have a hot whiskey.

From the newswire service AAP.

Clive Palmer insists his announcement just days before the federal election that his collapsed Queensland Nickel refinery will reopen isn’t a political ploy to attract votes for his party. The Palmer United Party (PUP) leader, flanked by two Senate candidates and surrounded by party branding, revealed on Thursday the Yabulu refinery, near Townsville, would reopen on March 31 after regulatory and commercial requirements were met.

Palmer claimed he called the press conference to discuss Labor leadership rumblings, despite his media team earlier advising it was about the refinery reopening and a press release handed to journalists upon arrival indicating the same thing. “My speech was about politics, it wasn’t about the refinery,” he said.

Palmer insisted it was “purely a coincidence” that he made the announcement two days before Australians go to the polls. “It’s not of concern to me, because I’m not in politics - I’m in business. I’m more concerned about business,” he said.

Palmer, who isn’t recontesting his seat of Fairfax but will stay on as PUP chairman, has a history of outrageous political statements during election campaigns. In 2012 he claimed the Greens were conspiring with the CIA against Australia’s resources industry, only to later admit he didn’t believe those claims but said them to help the Liberal National Party get elected in Queensland. When that was put to him, Mr Palmer reiterated his announcement wasn’t “a political thing”. His party is running candidates only for the Senate and the lower house seat of Herbert, where the refinery is. Palmer said an increase in world nickel prices had made production feasible again.

From tricky to bloody difficult. I gather there’s been a significant Telstra outage in Victoria today, leaving various campaigns in the state without reliable internet access within 48 hours of polling day.

Obviously an internet outage is an equal opportunity problem impacting all campaigns, whatever their stripe: Coalition, Labor, Greens, others – but of course Melbourne is the home of Labor’s CHQ.

We could make an NBN joke but that might be unseemly.

I’ve said quite a few times that it’s seriously odd that we’ve seen no comprehensive industrial relations policy from the Coalition (or from Labor) in this campaign, given whole campaigns have been fought over IR in my reporting lifetime. The ACTU smells a rat.

ACTU secretary Dave Oliver.

Despite subjecting Australia to a record-length election campaign, Malcolm Turnbull has not offered any long term vision for job creation or industrial relations and has instead left the door open to further attacks on worker’s rights. This is a critical failure of policy and leadership and leaves a re-elected Liberal government with absolutely no mandate to implement the kind of anti-worker reforms that so many of their big business backers have been demanding, such as weakening unfair dismissal laws or the introduction of individual contracts. Malcolm Turnbull’s silence can only be interpreted as a sign he is not planning any significant changes to industrial relations should he win on Saturday – anything else would represent a massive breach of trust with the Australian people.

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A little jewel of frustration from Greg Jericho

Greg Jericho

One of the problems with an election campaign is whenever talk turns to fragility in the economy the solution presented is always one of stability. The government has sought to present itself as stable (after all, it has nearly been a year since it has changed its leader and treasurer), while the ALP sought to present itself as the stable party, given its role during the global financial crisis.

And yet both sides were not all that eager to talk about what they would actually do were mere stability not enough to prevent an economic downturn.

The lack of eagerness to talk about what they would do is a consequence of the relentless criticism by the Liberal party and sections of the media of the stimulus measures put in place by Labor during the financial crisis, and also the Labor party’s complete inability to use the crisis to challenge the myth that a budget surplus is prime evidence of good economic management.

Last Friday, when he rushed with barely disguised joy to speak on ABC’s 7:30 about the impact of the Brexit vote, Malcolm Turnbull dismissed once again the measures undertaken by the Rudd government during the global financial crisis.

He told Leigh Sales, that “I think what shepherded Australia through the GFC successfully was the Chinese stimulus and the large amount of cash that John Howard left in the bank”.

It requires an odd sense of logic to suggest that the stimulus measures here didn’t work, but that the Chinese ones did. It also is a tad odd to suggest the “large amount of cash” helped get us through the global financial crisis.

Having a surplus does not actually do anything to spur economic growth, it is what you spend the money on that does it. Arguing the surplus got us through the GFC but the stimulus didn’t is a bit like arguing that what brings a smile to your children’s faces on Christmas morning is not the presents you have bought them but the money that was in the bank you had saved in order to buy the presents.

Had the stimulus measures been poorly targeted, no amount of surplus would have helped. And the reality is the stimulus measures worked pretty much as they were expected to.

You can read more here.

My colleague Gay Alcorn has written a piece this afternoon about the CFA dispute in Victoria, which you can read here. If you just want the quick version.

If Labor loses this election, especially by a narrow margin, there will be the usual post mortems and blame thrown around. Was it the national campaign office? Was it leader Bill Shorten? Was it the policy mix, or a weakness in the strategy to win crucial marginal seats?

What would have seemed unthinkable a few weeks ago may be another question tossed into the mix: Was it Daniel Andrews, the Labor hero who defeated a first term conservative government in 2014 to lead the most progressive state in the country?

Wouldn’t it be astonishing if the issue that damaged Labor was related to the one that prime minister Malcolm Turnbull used as an excuse to call this double dissolution election – the conduct of some unions? The political purpose beyond that election trigger was the suggestion that Labor was beholden to unions to the detriment of the broader community – the precise allegation against Andrews.

And it would be the final irony if Shorten – the former union leader who has said that what he learned from that job was to be a conciliator, to get people into a room to solve problems and find consensus – was undermined by Andrews who so mucked up the handling of a union issue.

I am multi-tasking a little bit right now, just preparing to record our last podcast episode of the campaign. Incredible really, now I know we are nearly there. A couple of things about our podcast, Australian Politics Live. If you’ve not yet caught up with Lenore Taylor and myself on the Ipod wireless, and subscribed, here’s our link on iTunes. You can listen in to our back catalogue if so inclined.

And good news for regular subscribers, I will push on with the podcast project after the election, because enough of you listen to it to make that worthwhile. Lenore and I are very grateful for your support.

Just in case you missed it.

Time for a quick stocktake before we press on.

Thursday in two dot points.

• Malcolm Turnbull has given his closing address to the National Press Club which called for a new style of inclusive political leadership right before launching a beat down on his political opponents and reiterated all his major campaign themes. Before that he blitzed the airwaves and was told in one interview by the Melbourne radio host Neil Mitchell that he needed to win handsomely on Saturday if he intended to remain prime minister, given, well, colleagues ..
  
• Bill Shorten rose early and pushed out on Medicare and social services in Brisbane. Shorten declared Labor was united and ready to govern. But the Labor leader faced a bunch of questions about leadership post election – had he lost the support of the NSW right, which was now lining up to back Anthony Albanese?
  

Meanwhile, in Perth, Labor’s deputy leader, Tanya Plibersek, on Malcolm Turnbull.

This is a man who has dumped every conviction of his long life to get the leadership of the Liberal party – and you’ve got to ask yourself what is the point?

Malcolm Turnbull finished today at the press club as he started at the beginning of this campaign, by sticking to the plan. The plan has been to be the man with the plan. That’s it. Just be the man with the plan, over and over, every day, whatever question that gets asked, the answer is I’m the man with the plan.

We saw this again today. Whatever the question, smile, look energetic, be charming, look prime ministerial, look confident, and be the man with the plan. Whenever people raise issues with the plan, point out flaws, point out complexities, point out alternatives, just stick to being the man with the plan. As I mentioned to you earlier today, this is turning on the head of a pin on a scale we’ve not seen in an election campaign before. Turnbull’s script is incredibly tight: he can be a glimmer of himself, but not too much lest that annoy all the people in the Coalition who don’t like him. Which is why you just keep talking about the plan. The plan is a slogan, a barrister’s brief, that’s what I said this morning, but it’s also a box to contain the prime minister and make him shine just brightly enough to convey the message the Coalition wants to convey.

Turnbull is incredibly confident now. He’s surging with the notion that he’s pulled this off, pulsing with the energy of the sheer audacity of the months since he moved against Tony Abbott last September. You can see it on his face: I’m going to pull this off.

For a person who isn’t Malcolm Turnbull, the terrible complexity of what lies behind his current beatific victory vision – the party that chafes relentlessly against him, Tony Abbott, mulish on the backbench, the roiling over the marriage equality plebiscite, the complexities of governing, the uncertainties of the world, the anxiety that victory on Saturday mightn’t be comprehensive enough to make anything easier, the fact that he’ll have to continue being patient when patience is a burden lesser mortals have to deal with ... all of that would be enough to send most of us to a diminished place wracked with self doubt and introspection.

But not Malcolm Turnbull.

If you are on your feet you are winning.

That’s over and out at the press club now. I’ll be back very shortly with a few thoughts on that outing.

Final question.

Q: You said: ‘I’ll be leading the government to the election in 2019 if I am returned as prime minister. You can note that down!’ How can you give that guarantee, given your own history in removing a first-term prime minister in 2013?

Malcolm Turnbull flashes a smile.

I am making that prediction, but only time will tell. You can note that down.