PM insists he’s not taking election win for granted
Anthony Albanese says he has “a mountain to climb” – a line he’s used a lot recently – and implored Australians to vote for stability in a time of uncertainty.
This morning Peter Dutton has said he believes tomorrow’s result could be a miracle for the Liberal party, like the 2019 election.
Speaking to ABC AM Sabra Lane, Albanese is asked whether he’s worried this election could deliver a surprise result for the opposition. Albanese says he “certainly take[s] nothing for granted”.
I think 2019 shows the folly of pretending that you know the outcome of an election before the ballots are counted.
While both parties have been saying voters will be better off under their respective parties, neither will promise people will be better off in three years from now.
Lane asks whether Albanese will “guarantee” Australians will be better off by 2028. Albanese says:
As we speak today, Sabra, we have inflation down to 2.4%, we have wages increasing, we have unemployment low, and interest rates have started to fall. Every one of the key economic indicators is improving. Under the former government, we inherited interest rates going up, inflation with the six in front of it, wages going backwards…
Key events
We shouldn’t be making money off getting young people ‘addicted to sugary, sweetened chemicals’ says Gallagher
On vapes, Gallagher says while there are issues around enforcement and compliance to target illegal vapes, it looks like the Coalition has put up the “white flag”.
The Coalition has pledged to put an excise on vapes, which would require a rewind of some restrictions on them.
Gallagher says:
We want kids off vapes, and Peter Dutton wants to make money off them off kids using vapes. I mean, that’s what we saw yesterday with that part of their costings.
Sara challenges Gallagher on the compliance measures aren’t working when we’re seeing such a strong black market in both vapes and tobacco. Gallagher says she “doesn’t accept” that they’re not working.
We accept that more needs to be done in compliance, and definitely that is why we have put that money into the budget. But from a public health point of view, I think it would be a dreadful outcome to say, you know, we’re going to put the white flag up on vapes, and it’s going to be a free for all, and we’ll deal with the problems down the track.
I don’t think we should be making money off young people getting addicted to sugary, sweetened chemicals in vaping products.
Gallagher says Coalition public service cuts would harm economy
Off the back of Taylor’s interview, finance minister Katy Gallagher joins RN Breakfast and absolutely rips into the shadow treasurer.
At the end of Taylor’s interview, he was asked about comments from ACT chief minister Andrew Barr, who says cutting the public service by 41,000 will leave the territory economy in crisis, which Taylor called an “insult” to anyone who doesn’t work in the public sector.
Gallagher says cutting 75% of the Australian public service workforce will have an impact.
I think we just had 10 minutes there of Angus Taylor demonstrating why he shouldn’t be treasurer of this country and why you can’t take a risk on Peter Dutton. He was all over the shop.
You can’t stack 75% of the commonwealth APS in Canberra and not affect the economy. I mean, you just can’t.
Taylor defends planned public service cuts
Now on to perhaps one of the most contentious issues of the Coalition’s campaign: what they’re going to do to reduce the public service by 41,000 over the next five years.
There have been several iterations of this policy, and while the Coalition has promised the jobs will only come from Canberra, that seems to have changed over the past day.
Angus Taylor seems to tie himself up a bit, trying to explain where the positions are coming from.
Natural attrition happens everywhere. I mean, that’s the nature of every organisation, and we’ll make appropriate moves to make sure those frontline services out in regional areas are served as they have been in the past.
We will migrate people around to make sure that we keep our numbers where they are in regional areas.
Sara tries to get some clarity on what that means for workers who leave the public service in other cities.
Sara: So people leave positions in Adelaide or Melbourne, will they be replaced? Or you’ll take those savings as part of the natural attrition targets and not replace those people?
Taylor: Those frontline services will be maintained, as we’ve said throughout.
Taylor defends vape tax plan
Sara then moves to the vaping tax, which she says would require the government to remove bans on vapes and make them more readily available.
Taylor says Labor’s current policies aren’t working:
They will not work, and in fact what they’ve done is encourage a tax on illegal vapes from criminal gangs. There’s already a tax there, and it’s coming from criminal gangs, and we know illegal activity around this is absolutely rampant.
But the government has been facing a decrease in revenue from the tobacco excise, because more and more people are moving to the black market.
In the March budget, Treasury forecasted a $6.9bn drop in the tobacco tax take over the forward estimates.
After some back and forth, Taylor says the tobacco excise has worked to reduce smoking rates, but with vapes:
We’ve only got a black market. That’s what we have right now … What we’ve got with vapes is a market that Labor has tried to make illegal. It has failed, it has failed dismally.
[We’ve promised] $350 million to law enforcement on top of the licensing regime and the safety standards to make sure that we get the criminal activity out of what is right now a rampant black market.
Taylor insists Coalition costings are ‘improving the position’
A little earlier this morning, Angus Taylor joined RN Breakfast to talk through the Coalition’s costings.
Host Sally Sara puts to Taylor that he and his party have said government spending has fuelled homegrown inflation, but the Coalition’s costings show they’re increasing deficits for the first two years if they win government.
The shadow treasurer responds:
We’re reducing the overall or improving the overall budget position by $14bn over the forwards and reducing $40bn of debt. We know that borrowing adds to interest rates as inflationary pressures, and that’s why we’re improving the position.
PM digs at Dutton over Ukraine
Moving to issues overseas, Albanese is asked if he believes that a peacekeeping force for Ukraine is a step closer, and whether it’s one Australia might contribute to.
He takes aim at the Coalition for breaking the bipartisan stance on defence, having objected to sending Australians to Ukraine on a peacekeeping mission.
I hope that it has … I have said, if there is peace in Ukraine, Australia would consider any proposal to participate as part of a coalition of the willing.
Under my government, we will stand with Ukraine for as long as it takes, we support their struggle for their national sovereignty, because it is also a struggle for the international rule of law. Peter Dutton broke with that bipartisanship by opposing any participation.
PM says Coalition ‘hiding’ shadow ministers from campaign
Albanese takes aim at Peter Dutton and his team, who he says have been hidden away.
The PM says he’s “proud” of the team he captains and that the public don’t hear from the Coalition’s shadow ministers.
They’ve had to hide people who are senior shadow ministers. I mean, people need to think about, I’m captain of a team, it’s a team that I’m proud of.
Can anyone name the portfolio that people have? I won’t embarrass them and people here by doing that again. But there are shadow ministers, I have no idea what their job is, no idea because you never hear from them.
Albanese defends urgent care clinics
Clare Armstrong asks the PM about whether the Medicare urgent care clinics are the best value for taxpayer money.
Reports have showed some clinics aren’t open for the hours they’ve been promised, and they’re far more expensive than the cost of someone seeing a GP.
Albanese says the clinics do more than a GP can.
What urgent care clinics have done isn’t just stop people going to a GP for more acute care. Here, there are x-ray services, there are the full suite of services here that people get when they come in … What they do, importantly, is to take pressure of emergency departments of hospitals… tens of thousands of people who have been to this clinic say that they would have gone to a hospital.
You can read more about the cost and value of the urgent care clinics from Natasha May here:
Albanese swipes at Coalition costings
The prime minister is asked whether he would consider taking a similar measure to the Coalition to introduce a tax on vapes.
Albanese says the vapes are being bought and sold on the “black market”, and then takes a dig at the Coalition’s costings.
These costings are, frankly, embarrassing for the Coalition. They are the shonkiest bit of figures.
PM bats away minority government questions
Anthony Albanese is doing a stand-up pretty early this morning in Brisbane, taking questions from journalists.
The minority government question is one the PM has tried hard to bat away, saying he’s trying to win in majority.
Sarah Ison asks if Labor falls short by just one or two, will he work with independents like Zoe Daniel? Again, he tries to bat the question away.
What we’ll do is we’re striving for majority government. And I’m not a commentator, other people are. My job is to maximise Labor’s vote in the next 48 hours. That’s what I’m intending to do.
“No deals?” the reporter asks.
I’ve made that clear. I refer to my previous 57 comments, to the 57 times I’ve been asked that question.
Another journalist asks “how bad” a minority government would be. Again he says he’s trying to get to a majority government:
I don’t want to lose any, so obviously – we’re on 78 at the moment – that’s my objective.
Dutton ‘not worried’ about criticism his policies aren’t up to scratch
Dutton says his nuclear policy is aligned with “left” wing governments in other major economies like the UK and Canada.
The newspaper editorials are coming in this morning, and there are some major criticisms of both parties.
Lane puts a critique from the Australian Financial Review to Dutton, that “the Liberals are politically estranged from the business community, and it’s described the Coalition’s policy on nuclear plants as fantasy”.
It’s a critique that I don’t agree with … our policy on nuclear is aligned with the Labor party in the United Kingdom, the Democrats in the United States, with the liberals in the United in Canada, certainly with the left-leaning parties in and the right-learning parties in all those jurisdictions as well, including in France.
There’s also growing internal criticism of Dutton from within his own party that his policies aren’t “up to scratch”, says Lane. She puts to him that one insider says it’s been the worst campaign in history, and that another said it couldn’t have gone worse.
Dutton initially sidesteps the question, but Lane pushes harder.
Lane: Do you disagree with that?
Dutton: Of course, insider talk from leftwing journalists. I’m not worried about that.
Lane: I can assure you, it hasn’t come from leftwing journalists. It’s come from within your party.
Dutton: Yeah, well all I’m worried about is how we can help families, and that’s what we’re targeting.
