By Darryl Mason
The Daily Telegraph ramps up the mockery of opposition leader Tony Abbott as the last week of the 2010 Federal Election campaign begins.
Ex-Australian Rupert Murdoch's Sunday tabloids, reaching more than one million Australians, carried front pages and lead editorials endorsing coup prime minister Julia Gillard to be officially elected PM this Saturday.
From The Australian's Media Diary :
Tony Abbott doesn't back a carbon tax, Julia Gillard, like Rupert Murdoch, does.Australia’s top-selling newspapers yesterday went for Julia Gillard, with Sydney’s Sunday Telegraph (circulation: 630,000) saying every government since 1931 has been given a second chance, so why shouldn’t the ALP get one, too? Melbourne’s Sunday Herald Sun (circulation: 597,000) said “the best interests of Australians are served by the re-election of Labor”.
It's going to be an ugly week for Abbott in most of the Murdoch tabloids.
Unless, of course, Tony Abbott agrees, by Thursday, that a carbon tax "of some kind" may be necessary, after all.
UPDATE, August 18 : Both Tony Abbott and Julia Gillard have denied they plan to introduce a carbon tax in their first term. I'll wait and see on this one, but it's rare that big business doesn't get what it wants. The pressure on Gillard and Abbott to make a carbon tax part of their first term government agenda is not simply localised corporate pressure from those who stand to gain the most from a CT, it is also coming from international banking and investment institutions.
I'll be both pleased and, frankly, amazed if Australia doesn't have a carbon tax by 2013, regardless of who wins on Saturday.
