Welcome to the best of Crikey for the week,

Victorians take time out for a democracy sausage today, and Crikey has covered the election from all angles. The week saw both genuine highs for some candidates (Labor’s polling as covered in William Bowe’s preview piece) and memorable lows, including a trainwreck Sky News interview with the Liberal candidate for Frankston, which we’ve all been rewatching ad nauseam.

Meanwhile, Scott Morrison has been out in all his former-hardline-immigration-minister glory, promising to fix congestion by cutting the permanent migrant intake. But would that even make a dint in our traffic? Jason Murphy crunches the numbers.

Elsewhere, our top stories included Helen Razer on the unsatisfying nature of apologies from banks and Emily Watkins revealing why Nine’s Wide World of Sports buried the big Tennis Australia scandal.

As ever, we’re keen to hear what you think. Write to us at boss@crikey.com.au.

WILLIAM BOWE 3 minute read

From Ripon to the Latrobe Valley: the places around Victoria we expect to be most hotly contested in Saturday's Victorian election.

BERNARD KEANE 3 minute read

Labor and the Greens in both NSW and Victoria have forfeited their right to the support of progressives.

GLENN DYER and BERNARD KEANE 3 minute read

Contrary to the clickbait peddlers, there's no property crash. If anything, our financial sector, and the surrounding economy, have become more resilient in recent years.

ALANA SCHETZER 4 minute read

The Victorian Liberal leader has a bad reputation of blocking people on social media. It may be satisfying at the time, but it raises some important broader questions.

KISHOR NAPIER-RAMAN 3 minute read

Tasmania has a notoriously bleak history with LGBTIQ rights, now the state's latest proposal is so progressive it's angering the PM. A lot has happened in the past 20 years.

KURT JOHNSON 5 minute read

Nationally, the war over climate change may have frozen, but in the Valley it runs hot. This is one to watch at the Victorian election.

EMILY WATKINS 2 minute read

An online editor at Nine's Wide World of Sport has told his staff to steer clear of a major business story.

BERNARD KEANE 3 minute read

The Australian government continues to do and say nothing on Assange, but this is just one of many ongoing attacks on press freedom.

CHARLIE LEWIS 3 minute read

We like to think we're a nation of hard-living larrikins. So why can we be fined for naughty language?

BERNARD KEANE 3 minute read

A new conservative group promises to take the fight to progressive activists GetUp. The only problem: it's been tried, over and over and over.

EMILY WATKINS 2 minute read

Sky News anchor David Speers has produced another all-time political interview, this time with Liberal candidate for Frankston, Michael Lamb.

GUY RUNDLE 3 minute read

News Corp's ranks are so stuffed with the children of existing and former journalists as to resemble a stately home on Christmas Eve.