Comparing Bill Shorten to Jeremy Corbyn - proof that politicians live in their own little irrelevant world

The Australian today:
Finance Minister Mathias Cormann has accused Bill Shorten of plagiarising the “socialist, populist playbook” of British Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, arguing his “anti-business” agenda would see Australia go backwards.
Senator Cormann yesterday attacked the Opposition Leader’s “left-behind society” speech ­delivered in Canberra on Tuesday, arguing he had adopted the same themes used by Mr Corbyn in the lead-up to last year’s British election. The government Senate leader said Mr Shorten was ­appealing to populism rather than creating policy that would ­improve the economy.
“Bill Shorten clearly thinks he can coast into the prime minister’s office on the back of cynical, lazy plagiarism of the socialist, populist playbook of Corbyn Labour in the UK,” Senator Cormann told The Australian.
“He knows that this politics of envy and his anti-business, anti-opportunity agenda, if imple­mented in government, would leave Australia worse off.”
Not much point in comparing Bill Shorten to a Pommy bogey man no one in Australia knows. If two percent of Australian voters have heard of Jeremy Corbyn I would be surprised. If half that number had any idea what the British Labour leader believes in would surprise me even more.Which makes me surprised that our Coalition ministers and their media supporters keep raising the Corbyn name in connection with Shorten's as if that will do them some kind of electoral good.
Yet another example of the political class living in its own Canberra parliamentary cocoon.

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