Key events
Monique Ryan ‘very open’ to work with either party but wants more information on the table
Monique Ryan, an independent backed by Climate200, says she was “concerned” by comments made by Peter Dutton on climate change last night during the leaders’ debate.
Look, I thought [it was] a bit concerning… the leader of the opposition saying he wouldn’t commit the existence or the reality of climate change.
On ABC News Breakfast she also said it was concerning that neither leader would look more critically at the relationship between the US and Australia on Aukus. Ryan has called for a parliamentary review into the agreement.
People are just saying they’re concerned about their the unpredictability of Donald Trump… they’re saying, ‘Are we ever going to get Aukus? Are those submarines going to be delivered to us?’ If they’re not, if the US decides to pull out on that deal at some point down the track, what’s the backup plan?
Asked who she would negotiate with in the case of a hung parliament, Ryan said she’d be “very open” to work with either party, but had worked most with the prime minister over the last three years to get some pieces of legislation through the House.
I’d be very open to working with either the political leaders, or whoever the leader might be of the political parties after the election, but we do need more certainty about what they’re going to actually commit to.
…[but] they haven’t put on the table as yet the information that we [independents] need to have to make a decision.
Stephanie Convery
Pocock to host press conference with head of Down Syndrone Australia
Following from our last post…
In announcing his support for the abolition of the $3 wage, David Pocock will deliver a press conference with Down Syndrome Australia’s chief executive Darryl Steff this morning at 10am AEST.
DSA launched a campaign in March to encourage politicians to commit to abolishing the subminimum wage and help people with disability into meaningful jobs.
DSA-commissioned polling showed that 85% of respondents did not know about the subminimum wage, and once they did know, 82% thought it was unacceptable.
Steff said on Thursday that the subminimum wage forced people with disability to live in poverty their whole lives:
It also puts strain on family members who often then have to support them financially. You can’t even buy a cup of coffee for $3 these days.
It’s not that people with down syndrome can’t work or don’t want to work in open employment – it’s that they’re not being given the opportunity …
Ahead of the federal election, we’re urgently calling on all parties and politicians to commit to breaking down the barriers [to] allow people with an intellectual disability to get access to the decent jobs they deserve. Phasing out $3 wages should be the first cab off the rank.
You can read more about the issue of subminimum wages here:
Stephanie Convery
David Pocock to campaign against $3 per hour wage for people with disability
Independent ACT senator David Pocock will today announce his support for a campaign to abolish the $3-hour wage for people with disability and urge the major parties to do likewise.
Under the supported employment award, companies are legally allowed to pay staff with disability a fraction of what they pay everyone else – currently, as little as $3 an hour.
There are around 20,000 people employed under these conditions – mostly workers with intellectual disability in what were once called “sheltered workshops”, now known as Australian disability enterprises (ADEs).
The Disability Royal Commission recommended the complete phase-out of the subminimum wage by 2034, but no steps have been taken on it to date and the government has not responded to the recommendation.
Pocock said on Thursday that it was “common sense” that people with disability should be paid a fair wage for the work they do and that the major parties had failed to make meaningful commitments to people with disability during this election campaign. He said:
Everyone should be paid a fair wage for the work they complete and it is time for the major parties to commit to this meaningful change for people with disability.
People with disability are being overlooked and left behind in the major party policy promises this election campaign.
… The answer to getting more people with disability into work is not to allow cheap labour, it’s to ensure we are funding employment services that actually work, which allow people with disability to connect with work they find meaningful and also gives them the opportunity to build their capacity to perform those roles.
Million-dollar house now the norm in five capital cities, report shows
We have a story this morning on new data showing that million-dollar houses are now the norm in five of Australia’s capital cities after Adelaide passed the seven-figure mark. It comes despite unaffordable costs and high interest rates that saw home prices grow at their slowest rate in two years and unit prices fall.
Read the full article here:
Plus, while we’re at it our Full Story podcast today is with the economist Saul Eslake and why he thinks the two main parties’ policies to ease the housing crisis could make it worse:
Listen here:
Gen Z men have more traditional gender beliefs than older men, data shows
Emily Wind
New data shows that gen Z men – aged between 13 and 28 – are more likely to hold traditional gender beliefs than older men, and far more so than their female peers.
The e61 Institute has taken data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia survey, to see how attitudes towards traditional gender norms vary by age and gender from 2001 to 2023.
A clear trend emerged – on average, beliefs in traditional gender roles have been declining across generations. But gen Z men are emerging as an exception.
Erin Clarke, a research economist with the e61 Institute, said gen Z men reported more traditional beliefs than both millennials (1981–1996) and gen X (1965–1980) men.
Meanwhile, women’s typical beliefs have declined steadily across generations, with younger cohorts consistently showing less belief in traditional norms.
The data has pinpointed 2018 as the year young men’s views became significantly more traditional. Clarke said more research is needed to understand the drivers of this change.
With the federal election approaching, this data is a reminder that “young voters” are not a uniform group. Whether beliefs about traditional gender norms translate directly into political preferences is unclear. Nonetheless, segmenting by age alone may mask important variations within a cohort. Gender is one dimension where differences are emerging.
Good morning from Krishani
Krishani Dhanji here with you, many thanks to Martin Farrer for getting us started.
As we’ve been bringing you, the leaders’ faced their second debate last night where we got an admission from Peter Dutton that he’d made a mistake claiming Indonesia had announced a request from Russia to base military aircraft.
Early voting opens on Tuesday and with the Easter long weekend quickly approaching, it was a chance for both leaders to get their messages across before voters start putting in their ballots.
Both leaders are in Sydney this morning. It’s now day 21 of the campaign – let’s get cracking!
Dutton wants to end bracket creep as he hails Howard reforms
In his interview with The Australian, Peter Dutton said that he wanted to end bracket creep by indexing personal income rates – though he didn’t say when he would do it if he won government, calling it an “aspiration” rather than a firm promise.
Indexing income tax means that tax brackets rise automatically over time rather than requiring new legislation.
He said
I want to see us move as quickly as we can as a country to changes around personal income tax, including indexation, because bracket creep, as we know, is a killer in the economy.
It stifles productivity and entrepreneurialism and hard work, but we need to do it at a time where the budget can afford to do so. It would be an aspiration of our government to achieve that because it provides equity in the tax system and it is costly to do so.
Much of the interview concentrated on the economy with Dutton invoking the Coalition’s Howard-Costello years by promising not to make major reforms until the budget was in better shape.
The Howard government never promised taxation reform going into the 1996 election. They never promised a revolution around rewriting of the way in which the economy works.
And he claimed the Coalition was a safer pair of hands for the economy.
I think we will always do better than the Labor government when it comes to economic management.
We demonstrated that we could do better than 10 years when we came to government after the Rudd-Gillard wrecking ball.
We also did well in getting the budget back to balance, and we did well going into Covid. We saved the economy through jobkeeper and jobseeker, and we didn’t lock in that recurrent spend.
Here’s a link to the piece but it is behind a paywall.
Welcome
Good morning and welcome to our live news blog. I’m Martin Farrer with the best of the overnight stories and then it will be Krishani Dhanji to take you through the day.
Last night’s leaders’ debate saw Peter Dutton admit he made a mistake by wrongly claiming the Indonesian president had announced a proposal for Russia to base military aircraft in Indonesia. The Coalition leader also declined to state whether the effects of climate change were getting worse. Dutton’s close lieutenant Bridget McKenzie also admitted a blunder yesterday when she had to concede she was wrong to say Russia and China wanted Labor to win the election. More coming up.
Dutton has attempted to fire up his flagging campaign with a big interview for The Australian newspaper. He gave what the paper called an “aspirational pledge” to index personal income tax scales in order to end the process of bracket creep. But he was vague on when this would happen, saying it would be “at a time where the budget can afford to do so”. He is likely to face questions on this today and of course we will be following all the action.
Housing has been a huge issue in the election campaign so far and new data released this morning will only continue to fuel debate. A report by Domain shows that Adelaide has become the fifth capital city after Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Canberra to have a median house price of more than $1m.
