In one of his last major speeches of the campaign, Malcolm Turnbull took the opportunity to urge the next parliament to “offload the ideology, to end the juvenile theatrics, and gotcha moments, to drop the personality politics”. Wouldn’t that be nice?

Pity the PM’s call for civility has come about so long after Peter Dutton on “illiterate and innumerate” refugees and Scott Morrison on Labor’s “toxins on growth” and “tax bullets”, not to mention Morrison on the “hate speech” he’d received over same-sex marriage and, well, Morrison on plenty of topics this campaign, actually.

The prime minister told the National Press Club in Canberra on Thursday afternoon that Australians want their representatives to focus on “the issues that matter to them”, and that they were “entitled to expect that of their parliament”.

“In these uncertain times, we need to stick together,” he said, in the gently rebuking tone of your favourite high school teacher – not mad, just disappointed.

Turnbull went on to accuse Shorten of “setting out deliberately and dishonestly to fuel fear and division”. By now, you might be picking up on a logical inconsistency at the heart of this presentation.

As Lenore Taylor observed, the call for more mature politics and an end to “division for division’s sake” is quite similar to the speech Turnbull made after seizing the leadership from his predecessor, Tony Abbott.



In his ongoing bid to make himself useful, Abbott told Sky News that this hasn’t been the campaign he would have run, singling out budget repair and border security as two issues that had been in his view overlooked.

But there’s never been a campaign quite like this one before, writes Katharine Murphy, pointing out that the Coalition has managed to do the distance while announcing almost no new policies. If you thought it was impossible to talk about one thing for eight consecutive weeks, well, now we know it isn’t.

Jared Owens (@jaredowens) This is exactly why Australians are being bored to death by #ausvotes. pic.twitter.com/ZsXh949xx4

Speaking of, how much of it can you remember? Test your capacity for punishment with our bumper quiz.

More power to your Albo?

Of course the outcome of the election won’t be known until Saturday, it’s a close-run contest, etc etc – but Bill Shorten is facing questions over his future, assuming a Labor loss.

The Daily Telegraph reported this morning that “key NSW right kingpin Senator Sam ‘Dasher’ Dastyari” is among the “factional powerbrokers” in support of backing a leadership challenge from Anthony ‘DJ Albo’ Albanese. (Dastyari “vehemently denied” the reports.)

The shadow treasurer, Chris Bowen, and the deputy leader, Tanya Plibersek, are among the other names being bandied about.

Shorten was doubtless thrilled to be asked to pick how many seats he’d have to win to ward off a challenge from Albo – sort of like asking someone to take a punt on what distance they could comfortably miss a bullet by.

He said it was a “silly question” and that he was “in this election to win it”, which, well, fair enough. He said Labor had not only “been united for the last three years”, it was “more united now than ever”. Pretty united indeed, then.

Asked whether he was confident Dastyari supported him as leader, Shorten said it had been a “great privilege” to be elected party leader; that he thought Labor had probably exceeded some people’s expectations already; and that there was “not a single member” of his team that he would swap – so he didn’t answer the question, basically, but what’s new there!

Cape of good hope

A hapless election campaign by incumbent David Feeney has fuelled the Greens’ hopes of winning the seat of Batman in Melbourne. The party’s polling two weeks ago even gave candidate Alex Bhathal a commanding lead in the inner-Melbourne enclave.

Melissa Davey (@MelissaLDavey) This man is very excited to get a selfie with Greens candidate for Batman, Alex Bhathal. @murpharoo pic.twitter.com/Myqzpg4oYN

But the Labor powerbroker Feeney might survive – for now. The Greens leader, Richard Di Natale, conceded on Thursday. “You will see the Greens vote increase here in this election and if we don’t get it this election we’ll get it in the next one,” he said.

“I mean, we require a 10% swing. That’s a herculean effort. What we need to do now, because the Labor party and the Liberal party have joined together with preferences that might get David Feeney over the line, the challenge for us is to get over the Labor and Liberal vote combined. That’s a hard ask.”

(For more on Batman, here’s Guardian Australia’s Calla Wahlquist’s feature.)

Melissa Davey (@MelissaLDavey) "I definitely need some jam donuts before my next stop. I'll only have two." -Di Natale

Since he was in the clarifying mood, Di Natale also cleared up – sort of – the confusion around his remarks on Wednesday, saying the Greens would be utterly opposed to offshore processing centres, in any negotiations with Labor, then adding that position was merely a “starting point”.

“Let me be absolutely clear,” he said on Thursday. “Our policy will never change. We want those camps closed. That is a bottom line that we will never negotiate on.”

But he added, in what might be interpreted as wriggle room: “That shouldn’t stop us from trying to get the other two parties to change their position”.

Best of Bowers

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Photograph: Mike Bowers/The Guardian

Mike Bowers captured this moment of Scott Morrison watching Malcolm Turnbull at the National Press Club in Canberra on Thursday afternoon.

Further reading

• Will the most progressive state in Australia cost Labor the election? It is incredible that the Country Fire Authority dispute in Victoria has been allowed to fester in this way, writes Gay Alcorn. The chief officer, Joe Buffone, resigned on Thursday; Victoria’s emergency services minister, James Merlino, said it was because Buffone wanted a pay rise and equal power to the incoming CEO.

• Crumbs from the table: there’s nary a scrap for women in this election Where have been the appeals to the female voter base?



And also ...

We shouldn’t laugh, and yet ... The Chaser has pranked David Leyonhjelm by making him his own Wicked Camper.

Meanwhile, in the rest of the world ...

Parts of a mutilated body have washed up on the sands of Copacabana beach in Rio de Janeiro just meters from where beach volleyball athletes will compete in the upcoming Olympics.

The discovery is the latest to unnerve the city as it grapples with rising crime, a recession and exhausted state finances at a time when it hoped to be celebrating the first Olympics ever held in South America.

And if today was a pop song ...

Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘Where is the harmony?’– Malcolm Turnbull

Oh, look – footage of Malcolm Turnbull’s Press Club address!

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