Shorten hauled over the coals

Election looms

An interesting election coming up. 

You pretty much know what you're getting with the Coalition, which is to say more of the same.

The government has brought the Federal Budget all the way back from a thumping deficit into a looming surplus, aided much by buoyant commodity prices, an unexpected stroke of fortune.

The unemployment rate has been brought down from almost 6½ per cent to about 5 per cent, although the housing downturn stopped the improvement in its tracks. 

Labor is pledging a spectrum of higher taxes, and broadly speaking a campaign calling for greater fairness and equality. 

Export prices surging

Today's trade price indexes showed further improvement in the terms of trade, with export prices surging +15.3 per cent higher year-on-year, to be up by more than +50 per cent over the past 3 years. 

Import prices ticked down -0.5 per cent in the March quarter. 

The anti-mining movement had an apparently strong case for no further coal mining investment as prices fell sharply until the middle of 2016.

But then, to almost everyone's surprise, coal prices have ripped higher for both thermal and coking coal (export prices are up +123 per cent from the nadir on the below index, which is astonishing). 

Aside from a brief spike when China poured stimulus into its economy during the financial crisis our bulk commodity export prices have never been as favourable for national income as they are now. 

All of which brings the Adani Carmichael coal mega-project into focus for the election.

The Prime Minister's position is clear enough: he's the guy that brought a lump of coal into parliament, after all, so there's no ambiguity there.

Pro-coal. 

Opposition leader Shorten has a much trickier path to tread, since he simultaneously has to appear to be against the project to maintain the official line for environmental activists, yet at the same time supportive of the project to keep the mining union onside (though McManus refuses to back the project).

It's an unenviable and all but impossible task, leaving evasive or ambiguous answers as the only available option.

Some interesting debates to follow, if Shorten agrees to go on the national free-to-air channels.

Who'd be a pollie?