Key events
Dan Jervis-Bardy
We’re off and running on day five of the federal election campaign, with Anthony Albanese in the seat of Boothby in Adelaide’s southern suburbs.
The prime minister will visit the Flinders Hospital precint this morning to commit $150m for a new healthcare centre.
The shadow health minister, Anne Ruston, quickly matched the pledge this morning, as we brought you earlier, continuing the Coalition’s record of going dollar-for-dollar with Labor on health spending promises this campaign.
Albanese is trying to sandbag Boothby with incumbent the Labor MP Louise Miller-Frost under threat from Nicolle Flint, who wants her old seat back after quitting parliament in 2021.
The seat sits on a notional margin of 3.2%.
Julie Bishop: election could result in a hung parliament
Julie Bishop has largely kept herself away from the media pack since leaving parliament, and it seems she’s keen to stay out of the political commentary.
News Breakfast host James Glenday gives it a red hot crack, asking her whether the Coalition has clawed back enough support from female voters.
Bishop says her focus has not been on the election campaign:
If I am to believe the polls – and now that I’m out of politics I can assure you that politicians follow the polls very carefully – it would appear [to be] a close contest, maybe even a hung parliament and there have only been a few of those in federal history. It could be an interesting one to watch.
Julie Bishop: getting foreign aid into Myanmar could be difficult
Former Liberal foreign minister Julie Bishop, now the special envoy of the special counsel on Myanmar, has joined ABC News Breakfast, and described the earthquake that hit Myanmar.
Bishop says she was in Bangkok at the time (1,000km away from Myanmar), which also declared a state of emergency because.
I was in a high-rise building and it was swaying and creaking and you could hear concrete cracking. It was terrifying. I, along with thousands of others, evacuated all buildings in Bangkok and gathered in a park until the aftershock passed so you can just imagine the impact in Myanmar.
It’s been really challenging getting humanitarian aid into the country, Bishop says, and that’s not been made easier by the freezing of foreign aid by the Trump administration, before the earthquake occurred.
I was in Bangladesh about two weeks ago when the USAID freeze was announced and the impact on the refugee camp, Cox’s Bazar, where there are about a million Rohingya ethnic refugees, I know the impact was profound.
So I understand that the Trump administration has provided a couple of million in support but I don’t know how easy it will be for the administration to get it into Myanmar.
Health promises roll in from Labor and Coalition
Speaking to Nova Adelaide, Anthony Albanese says Labor’s announcement in Adelaide this morning is a “cracker”.
What it will be able to do is to have 1,300 work-ready graduates each year. So, 490 nurses, 250 social workers, 100 paramedics, physios, more than 50 midwives …
What we need is more health professionals, and we need more facilities for people to be able to get that care. This facility will be able to treat 100 patients at any [one] time.
Over on News Breakfast a short time ago, shadow health minister Anne Ruston promised the Coalition would match the $150m commitment from the federal government for the facility, and partner with Flinders university.
We were always prepared to support it so we will absolutely commit to supporting the $150m of the $300m to build this health hub precinct. It’s a great project.
Jason Clare: Dutton’s nuclear plan will take funds from critical infrastructure such as trains
A little earlier, Labor education minister Jason Clare was asked about the Coalition’s plan to scrap federal funding for Victoria’s suburban rail loop if it wins government.
I think you ask anyone in the country, do we need to invest more in critical infrastructure? And they’ll say yes. I think what this tells you is that Peter Dutton has already begun the task of cutting to help fund the $600bn that he needs to build nuclear reactors. It won’t just be rail loops, it won’t just be roads.
But host Sally Sara pointed out – more than once – that there’s still uncertainty on how the whole project will be paid for, and that Infrastructure Australia has low confidence the project can be delivered.
Clare skirts the question and sticks to why the government should be investing more in infrastructure and how the Coalition is pulling money out of it.
What we should be doing is investing in the sort of key infrastructure that Australians need to get around their cities … and the fact that Peter Dutton wants to cut funding to infrastructure, whether it’s road or whether it’s rail, gives you just a small insight, Sally, into what’s ahead if he ever becomes prime minister.
Dutton says mortgage serviceability buffer too tough
Staying on housing, Peter Dutton has promised to change the ‘serviceability buffer’ to make it easier for first home buyers to enter the housing market.
What’s a serviceability buffer?
The buffer sits at 3% and requires banks to consider whether a potential mortgage holder could continue to pay their mortgage repayments if interest rates rose.
The Coalition says the system is “locking” Australians out of home ownership, and it said it will tell APRA to consider the impact those rules have, especially on first home buyers.
It would also require the regulator to adjust the capital treatment of loans backed by mortgage insurance by rewriting the statement of expectations.
In November last year, a Senate committee report made a recommendation for APRA to prepare guidelines for a lower buffer just for first home buyers that could be adjusted based on the economic cycle. It stated:
Australian Prudential Regulation Authority to prepare prudential guidelines for a lower first home buyer serviceability buffer that can be adjusted responsively to the economic cycle and to support financial stability settings within APRA’s prudential standards.
The report was chaired by Liberal senator Andrew Bragg, but a dissenting report by government senators said the recommendation to change the buffer would be “asking those who are more often in a financially insecure position to take on increased risks”.
Homeowners hold their breath ahead of today’s RBA cash rate decision
After interest rates were lowered for the first time in almost five years in February, mortgage holders might look like April Fools predicting a second cut, AAP reports.
The Reserve Bank will hand down its latest decision about the cash rate today – the first time the board has met since it reduced interest rates to 4.1% in February.
While economists have forecasted mortgage repayments to be lowered by the central bank several times in 2025, the April meeting is unlikely to shift the dial.
The two-day meeting, which began on Monday, will be the first time an interest rate decision will be made by the Reserve Bank’s monetary policy board as part of reforms to the central bank.
Real estate advertising company REA Group’s senior economist Eleanor Creagh said while conditions showed future interest rate cuts were on the cards, there would not be a further reduction in April as the central bank was being cautious.
Inflation is moderating, with both headline and underlying measures easing further, reflecting the significant progress in bringing domestic inflation back under control.
Butler: Coalition’s plan to increase subsidised psychologist sessions will create bottlenecks
Despite Labor’s big health-focused campaign, mental health hasn’t receive much attention in the budget and on the election campaign trail, so far.
Butler says increasing the number of subsidised psychologist sessions from 10 to 20 (like the Coalition is promising) would create bottlenecks in the system.
The problem is, you can’t double the number of sessions without doubling the number of psychologists … You create bottle necks that mean a whole lot of people go without care. We’ve been busy training more psychologists.
It’s always had a cap on 10 sessions. Generally, the average is about four to sixsessions that people use. The former government introduced a higher cap for a fixed period of time, for the Covid lockdown periods, that’s all.
Mark Butler: Labor making it easier to recruit doctors from overseas
The health Minister, Mark Butler, has been right beside Albanese so far in the campaign, with the strong focus on health and hospital funding.
He’s on ABC News Breakfast this morning spruiking more hospital fundingin his home town of Adelaide.
Earlier this year, the government announced $8.5bn in funding for bulk billing, to raise the rate to 90% by the end of the decade. But how will Australians get to see a doctor if there’s a shortage of GPs?
We need more doctors. We added 17,000 new doctors to the system in the last two years … But we need more. This year, we’re training more junior doctors to become GPs than we have ever done in Australia. But we need more.
We’re making it easier to recruit doctors, in particular, from jurisdictions we’re very confident in – UK, Ireland, New Zealand – where we know their training regimes are pretty much exactly the same as ours.
Dutton only thinking about ‘putting our positive plan on the table’, Bridget McKenzie says
There’s more reaction this morning to Peter Dutton’s comments yesterday about living in Kirribilli as PM (I mean, who wouldn’t want a waterfront Sydney home … sigh).
Marles repeats the “measuring the curtains” line and says, sure Sydney is nice, but it’s no Geelong, is it (where Marles resides)?
I mean, it’s no secret, he’s been wandering around measuring the curtains. On any given Sunday, you’ll see Peter sneaking around the ministerial wing, working out where he’s going to put his pot plants. And he’s been doing this for a while now, and now he’s worked out which house he’s going to live in.
Over on the Today show a bit earlier, Nationals senator Bridget McKenzie took a slightly different tack …
We’re focused each and every day on actually getting out in front of the Australian people and putting our positive plan on the table … So that’s all Dutton’s thinking about. It’s all I’m thinking about, it’s all Angus is thinking about.
We’ve just got to get in front of the Australian people with our positive plan for their future, not where we’re going to live after the election.
(But there’s been at least some thoughts on where they’re going to be living after the election …)
