Politics

The Daily Tele Accidentally Made Bill Shorten Look Incredibly Inspirational And Popular

Bill Shorten will deliver marriage equality, fund education and improve housing affordability? Sounds pretty good tbh.

by Osman Faruqi  5 July 2017

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By now most of the country is pretty used to The Daily Telegraph’s wonderfully absurd and hysterical front pages, often designed to whip up outrage about a particular marginalised group. Who could forget last year’s infamous “New breed of bludger” story?

Today the Tele has managed to outdo itself with a front page from the year 2019, in a world where Bill Shorten has become Prime Minister and is wreaking havoc (at least from the Tele‘s perspective) on Australia.

It’s very weird:
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RIP The Daily Telegraph’s iconic masthead font in 2019, apparently.

What compelled the Tele to take this extraordinarily strange step? It seems to be some kind of message directed at the Liberal party, who have spent the past couple of weeks fighting over policy direction and leadership, with Tony Abbott helpfully popping up again to annoy Malcolm Turnbull. The paper seems be saying that unless the Liberals sort out their drama, Shorten is going cruise to victory at the next federal election.

And what would the victory look like that? The accompanying article sets the political scene in 2019: “A chuffed Bill Shorten celebrated his first 100 days in power yesterday, marking the milestone with a rousing party at ACTU headquarters… With the Coalition still in disarray since bitter infighting broke out in July 2017, and with Anthony Albanese named Governor-General, a triumphant Mr Shorten quickly moved to lift personal and company taxes, scrap negative gearing, introduce a 50 percent renewable energy target and force businesses to pay more for hiring works on Sundays.”

Ok first up, why would Bill Shorten as Prime Minister host an anniversary celebration at the ACTU headquarters, located in an office block on Melbourne’s Queen Street, when he lives at the official government residence of Kirribilli House, a lit as hell mansion on Sydney Harbour? It doesn’t check out. And why is Anthony Albanese the Governor-General? That seems very weird.

But as for the rest of it? It all sounds… pretty damn good tbh. Taxing the rich, scrapping negative gearing, a stronger renewable energy target and protecting penalty rates? Sign me the hell up.

The paper goes even further, listing more policies that PM Shorten would apparently introduce in his first 100 days:

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Increasing funding for schools! Marriage equality! Scrapping the current government’s terrible youth internships program! The Tele might be terrified of future-Shorten’s agenda, but it sounds genuinely inspiring.

Now you might be thinking “Well of course you support this lefty Jeremy Corbyn-esque nonsense, you’re Junkee’s politics editor and a bit of a communist! But to Daily Telegraph readers this is horrifying stuff.”

The paper prides itself on being in touch with the real Australia, and representing ‘mainstream values’, so let’s see what the public really thinks of Shorten’s wild policy agenda.

When it comes to renewable energy, a poll from earlier this year found that 81 percent of Australians want the government to focus more on investing in clean energy, even if it’s more expensive.

Penalty rates? Turns out more than 60 percent of Australians support them.

Marriage equality? Strong majority support, even amongst voters in Liberal seats.

Most Australians also don’t think companies pay enough tax and a majority want a banking Royal Commission, another key Shorten policy according to the Tele. 

So the paper tried to make it look like a future Shorten government would lead to some kind of dystopian nightmare, but instead all they’ve managed to do is collate a list of Labor’s most popular policies. Good hustle.