With housing affordability at an all-time low and the spectre of Trump looming large over our region, Australians’ standard of living will be at the heart of the debate from now until election day.

On this week’s episode of Follow the Money, Australia Institute economists Matt Grudnoff and Jack Thrower join Ebony Bennett to discuss the Australian economy in this election.

The PM was interviewed on ABC radio in Melbourne this morning.

He took calls from listeners.

Alan (I’m going to say Alan is from Allansford because I loved footy talkback on the Coodabeen Champions on the same station) is our caller of the day.

ALAN FROM ALLANSFORD: A few years ago we upset our French colleagues by cancelling a submarine contract. Why don’t we cancel the US submarine contract and go back to France again? If that means scrapping AUKUS as well, then so be it.
RAF EPSTEIN, HOST: PM?
PRIME MINISTER: Because we believe that AUKUS is in the interest of defending our
nation. We think it’s in Australia’s interest. And whilst we regard this as an act of self harm
by the United States when it comes to their economy, what I’m not prepared to do is do
anything that is not in Australia’s interests.

For what it’s worth, we agree with Alan from Allansford … but not as an act of revenge against the little orange man’s tariff nonsense.

AUKUS is a dead set dud.

The brilliant Allan Behm (different Allan) lays it out chapter and verse here.

The ABC’s Greg Jennett has just broken the news to ABC viewers that the ABC will host the second leaders debate … on April 16. On the ABC*

It will take place at 8pm at the ABC’s new Western Sydney studios and will be hosted by the ABC’s Political Lead David Speers, who is also host of the ABC’s Insiders program.

Next Tuesday’s first debate, hosted Kieran Gilbert on Sky News, will also be held in Western Sydney.

*SOURCE: ABC News

The United Kingdom has launched a parliamentary inquiry into the AUKUS partnership, led by Labour MP Tan Dhesi, chair of the House of Commons Defence Committee.

Mr Dhesi said the committee “will examine whether the partnership is on track and will consider the impact of geopolitical shifts since the initial agreement in 2021.”

An inquiry into AUKUS back home would not be unwelcome, although as Allan Beam wrote in The Australian last year, “there is still no compelling argument, strategic or otherwise, for Australia’s acquiring eight Virginia class nuclear-propelled submarines.”

Let’s not forget that, as Dr Emma Shortis pointed out last month, US President Donald Trump has already made it clear he does not care about Australia’s values or interests (as today’s tariff news also proves).

When Mr Trump was asked about AUKUS earlier this year, he responded “what does that mean?”.

Ok, neither leader has been speaking about poverty.

But they should.

Specifically about the impact of poverty on Australian children.

There’s some pretty amazing work being done in this space by the Valuing Children initiative, which runs the End Child Poverty campaign.

They’re campaigning both sides of politics for a legislated end to child poverty.

That doesn’t mean poverty would end with an Act of Parliament, but it would set targets and – for the first time – actually define and measure poverty in Australia.

It would be much easier to implement meaningful policies with accurate, local, up-to-date data.

How would it work?

Reporting to Parliament every year, governments are held accountable to targets, while providing transparency to the community about the extent of child poverty. When considering initiatives in the Budget, Governments of all levels would then be required to give greater focus to the wellbeing of children in Australia.

Here’s what we know about child poverty:

• More than 820,000 Australian children are living in poverty and that this has increased by over 100,000 since the pandemic. The authors state poverty is expected to be even higher given increased essential living costs since 2022 when the data was collected.
• The report confirms that single parent families face more than 3 times the poverty rate of couple families (more than 1 in 3, compared with less than 1 in 10)
• Children who experience poverty and housing stress are significantly more likely to suffer nervousness or feel unhappy with their lives for up to ten years after leaving home. “Poverty scars people. It gets under the skin. Children growing up in poverty often carry these scars with them for life.”

The Australia Institute released a discussion paper – Ending Child Poverty in Australia –  which included some pretty conclusive polling that found Australians want genuine action to end poverty.

• 83% of those polled want the government to regularly measure and report poverty rates in Australia.
• More than 4 in 5 (81%) agree that income support payments should be set at a rate that does not cause any child to live in poverty.
• Australians are highly concerned about the effects of poverty on children’s education and employment (85%) and their health and lifespan (83%).

Peter Dutton was asked about his team editing a comment out of the transcript of an interview he did with Mick Molloy on FM radio.

These days politicians’ media teams send out transcripts of their media appearances each day.

They know journalists are time-poor and benefit from (fall for) a bit of spoon feeding.

But the temptation to edit a stumble or cut something out all together – as Mr Dutton’s team did yesterday – is sometimes too great for protective spinners.

For what it’s worth, the line which was cut was a light-hearted line about Australia’s Collins Class submarines, where he said “You can hear them rattling down the coast”.

Hardly controversial. Hardly worth removing.

Dutton:

I haven’t seen the transcript. It shouldn’t be edited out. It was a jovial conversation

The Bureau of Stats has just released the latest job vacancy data:

Job vacancies fell by 4.5 per cent to 329,000 in February 2025, according to new figures
released today by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS).

Sean Crick, ABS head of labour statistics, said: ‘The drop in the number of job vacancies
reversed the recent rise of 17,000 vacancies in the three months to November 2024. As a
result, there was a similar number of vacancies to what there had been in August.’

Compared with February 2024, the number of job vacancies in February 2025 was down by
34,000, or 9.3 per cent.

“There were 146,000 fewer job vacancies in February 2025, which was 30.7 per cent lower
than the series peak in May 2022,” Mr Crick said.

“However, despite the falls in job vacancies over the last two and a half years, the total
number of vacancies was still 44.5 per cent higher than before the COVID-19 pandemic in
2020.

Hey everyone, this is Glenn Connley, taking over while Amy hosts a webinar on media reform. Stay tuned.

Continuing coverage of Peter Dutton’s media conference, where Sky’s Political Editor Andrew Clennell has just asked the Oppo Leader if he’s kowtowing to Trump. Good gear.

Q: It sounds a bit like kowtowing, frankly. It sounds like you’re trying to offer the Americans more. Albanese and Farrell tried the critical minerals deal. They couldn’t get it off the ground. Why are you going to make a difference?

Dutton:

Andrew, again, if you look at what we were able to do in government, we were able to negotiate an outcome with Trump mark 1. A Coalition government got access to the administration, able to talk to key players and the people of influence in the sphere of the West Wing and that achieved an outcome. This Prime Minister hasn’t been able to do that. We need to look at the decision which has been made which is bad for our country and I condemn it. The question is what do we do now to rectify the situation and turn it to a positive? There’s no doubt that we can do that. The Prime Minister has it surely in front of him to be able to do over the course of the next few weeks and that’s an outcome that will be in the better interests.

This is what Peter Dutton has been left to argue:

Frankly, the US requires Australian beef. It’s not just that we’re, you know, great producers of beef, and that we found an export market. They can’t produce enough beef to satisfy domestic consumption.

So this is why I say it’s a negotiating position, and we need to approach extensively, but we need to have a position here in Australia which is going to be taken seriously by the President and by the Americans.

And at the moment, I think, as the Prime Minister, frankly, has demonstrated over the last three years in economic decisions and the reality of life for Australians that it’s been a bad government, and a bad government here in Australia is not going to be able to negotiate a good outcome on this free trade agreement when they can’t even reduce the cost of groceries or electricity.

Everything has gone up for households and for small businesses under this government, and they have been bad government, and nobody believes that this prime minister could negotiate the best possible outcome with the United States.

Except, comparatively – Australia does have a good deal?

Which even the chamber of commerce essentially agrees with?

Meanwhile, a Texas congressman just openly quoted Goebbels in the chamber. And not in the ‘Goebbels was bad’ way.