Anthony Albanese has been on an absolute FM radio blitz this morning. The election campaign has already begun (it’s been going since the beginning of the year) but it is now being turbo charged.

Dolly help us for when the campaign officially, officially starts.

The other news floating around today is the announcement of exactly where the LNP Queensland government is going to hold the 2032 Brisbane Olympics.

The Greatest Nation on Earth won the Olympic bid under the Palaszczuk government, but since then there has been quite a bit of pearl clutching going on about where to hold the events. The LNP said they wouldn’t follow through with Labor’s plans (which was to expand the existing Gabba and redesign the surrounding precinct) after residents protested, so now at lunch time we will get the third Brisbane Olympic plan.

Time is running out, so this one will probably be the one that sticks. It is most likely to involve a new stadium at Victoria Park, despite the LNP originally saying they wouldn’t build a new stadium, because it turns out in government there is not a lot of options.

So Victoria Park will get a new 60-000 or so seat stadium and the games are likely to be spread further across Queensland. Premier David Crisafulli and prime minister Anthony Albanese spoke about the plans over cannolis, so you know it is legit.

Former Newman era Queensland minister turned radio host turned political strategist Scott Emerson told the Nine network:

Well, I think the problem for Premier David Crisafulli is he did say repeatedly before the election that there wouldn’t be any new stadiums. What everyone is expecting today is that there will be a new stadium at Victoria Park. I guess his argument will be we’ve got to do it right. We’re going to be on the world’s spotlight in 2032. We’ve got to have appropriate stadiums. All the previous Labor government had a was all over the shop. It was three years of wasted planning. So, today is the big day, the D day. What will be interesting is if they scrap the Brisbane arena, which is going to be funded by the Federal government, and get that $2.5 billion reallocated to the other stadium and other facilities.

You’ll be seeing this ad in the papers and around this week, ahead of the government introducing its amendments to environmental laws which will not only weaken them for the benefit of destructive industries (like the salmon industry) they’ll also make it harder for communities to challenge environmentally destructive projects.

How? Well they limit how third party civil society groups (like the Australia Institute) can use its research and expert advice to assist groups in their challenges, leaving them at the mercy of multi-million dollar consultancies. Not exactly a fair playing field. Or democratic.

The prime minister is asked where its environmental protection agency is and says:

“The environment protection laws that which we inherited from John Howard, they’re not fit for purpose. We need to make sure that we have a proper Federal Environmental Protection Authority, we need to make sure that we ensure that industry can function, but also that sustainability occurs.”

So why hasn’t that occurred in the last three years?

Albanese blames the senate.

“We’ve got 25 votes in the Senate, Sally, and 25 out of 76 doesn’t give you a majority. Legislation passed the House at any time it could have passed the Senate over the ensuing period.”

(The government wanted to negotiate with the Coalition, not the Greens and the crossbench, which is one of the main reasons it didn’t pass.)

Albanese then denies (with a bit of bite) that he has overruled Tanya Plibersek as environment minister twice (once on salmon and once on making a deal with the Greens on the EPA)

That’s just not true. That’s a characteristic which is completely not true.

He again says there were not the numbers in the senate to pass the EPA bill:

We did not have a majority for the Senate for the environmental legislation that we put forward. It’s been in the Senate since the middle of last year, at any time, a majority could have emerged to support that legislation. It simply wasn’t there.

(The Greens have said they were willing to negotiate, but that Albanese stepped in and stopped it)

Albanese is asked if it was his decision to walk away, or Plibersek’s.

Tellingly, Albanese won’t say.

No, it’s the numbers. It’s called having a majority in the Senate, which we did not have.

Anthony Albanese is also up early this morning and riding the media carousel. He is speaking to the ABC’s Sally Sara, where he is also asked about the gas reservation policy the Coalition is considering.

They can’t be taken seriously. We introduced gas and coal caps that included reservations for gas, and they opposed it. They opposed it like they opposed energy bill relief. People will remember. People aren’t goldfish. They’ll remember this Coalition government speaking about a gas led recovery. They said that in the middle of their term, they had years to do something, and did absolutely nothing. All that happened during their period was because their climate denial. There wasn’t investment in new energy that was required. My government has a future gas strategy, we acknowledge that gas has an important role in the future, including on providing firming capacity for renewables along with storage. And My government has been getting on with that job.”

So is boring good now, given all the global uncertainty?

Jim Chalmers:

I think what we’ve tried to do here is to make the right economic decisions for the right reasons. And I say to people who are worried about these global developments, the Australian economy has genuinely turned a corner. We’ve got inflation down and wages up. Unemployment is low. We’ve got the debt down. Interest rates have started coming down, and growth is rebounding suddenly in our economy as well. And so we’re doing better than most countries in this new world of uncertainty, and the budget is about building on that momentum in the interests of millions of Australians.

The Trump administration is calling April 2, the day when its tariffs come into effect, ‘liberation day’.

Asked if there was any money in the budget to help Australian companies who may be financially at a loss because of the tariffs (American importers and therefore consumers pay the tariffs, but the question is about those importers who may lose business because of the Trump policy) Jim Chalmers says:

One of the major themes of the budget is making our economy more resilient in the face of all this global economic uncertainty. You know, we have expressed on multiple occasions, and I will again today, our concern about these escalating trade tensions, we’re a very trade exposed country.

We’re not uniquely impacted by these tariffs out of Washington, DC, but we’ve got a lot of skin in the game. And so what the budget will be about, in addition to helping with the cost of living and strengthening Medicare, it will also be about making us more resilient to these external shocks. There will be a little bit of funding to promote by Australian in Australia, but also, more broadly, the billions of dollars we’re investing in things like green metals, making sure that we are reliable parts of global supply chains as they change in response to these us tariffs, that’s a big defining feature of the budget

Gas is once again the hottest fossil fuel on the agenda, with the ABC reporting that the Coalition is close to announcing a domestic gas reserve.

This is because even the Coalition has to admit that nuclear is not going to happen at some point and needs a Plan B. And gas is stupidly expensive because we export most of what we have and therefore the price of gas is based on the international market, which is obviously volatile and a lot more expensive than domestic gas. Even the Coalition has recognised it, which is why it is promising a domestic reserve. But we don’t actually need any more gas than we already have. We can take what we have already and use it for domestic purposes. And before you ask – Japan exports gas despite having no gas fields. How? It’s importing more than it needs. So yes, it’s absolutely possible to use what we have.

Asked if Labor was thinking of a gas reserve, Jim Chalmers says:

“We’ve made it very clear with our future gas strategy that we’re striking the right balance here and making sure that there’s enough gas at the same time as we invest in cleaner and cheaper sources of energy into the future, so we’ve got our own policies and plans.”

The Treasurer has started the day on the media carousel, which means he’ll be following his tradition of having about two hours sleep during the budget week – he’ll be up again at 4am tomorrow as well for the traditional Sell the Budget Day! (This is not to draw sympathy – it’s his job. Just a small point of the day).

Jim Chalmers is speaking to Sabra Lane on ABC Radio, who gets a bit of a laugh out of him when she asks him if there are any surprises left in the budget tonight:

“You’ll see how it all comes together tonight, and that’s really what the budget will do. It will bring together the progress that we’ve made together as Australians with the plan for the future from here, it will be a responsible budget. It will help with the cost of living, strengthen Medicare and build Australia’s future,” he says.

He also all but confirms that he does not expect the energy rebates to become a permanent feature of the budget (they have been extended to the end of this year)

“Well, what we’ve said really at every budget, is from budget to budget. We do what we can to help with the cost of living, subject to those budget constraints and subject to that responsible economic management, which has helped engineer a pretty stunning turnaround in the budget and got that liberal debt down so that we’re avoiding all those interest costs. So we’ve made good progress in the budget from budget to budget, we review the cost of living policies to make sure that we’re doing what we meaningfully can to help people in the most responsible way.”

Hello and welcome to the final sitting week of the 47th parliament.

It’s been a real one. 342 bills passed (so far). 129 still to be dealt with (so far). Seventy-seven rejected. A failed referendum. A handful of byelections, including a historic loss for the opposition, flip flopping polls, a new US president and UK prime minister, an inflation crisis, growing inequality and housing affordability crisis, a failure of international and humanitarian law in the world’s response to Israel’s actions in Palestine – it’s all come to this.

Of course there has been wins for the government along the way. No one is disputing that. There have been long overdue IR reforms, a turn around from inflation without sacrificing jobs (something that plenty of economists was arguing was impossible just a couple of years ago), a blueprint to bring back manufacturing and establish new industries, a serious implementation of renewable energy (if not an equally serious commitment to the environment) and pay rises for crucial sectors within the care economy too long ignored (among others).

But we have also seen a government sacrifice political capital in an attempt to win a centre that no longer exists. Labor has sought bipartisan (read: Coalition) support in reforms to the electoral donation system, environmental laws, the integrity commission (how is THAT going) religious freedoms (that went nowhere) and other bills where crossbench support could have been negotiated, but Labor ignored in favour of cementing the two-party dominance.

So now we are heading into an election where the two parties are uncomfortably close for Labor and pollsters are increasingly tipping a minority government (welcome to the party).

Labor doesn’t look like doing itself any favours in this final week of parliament, as it looks set to gut the environment protection act to look after nature-destroying industries and limit democrat dissent even further.

I’ve seen the amendments to the bill and you’d be excused for thinking we were back in 2021 and Scott Morrison was in charge. These amendments are designed to appeal to outer surburban voters who are toying with the Liberal party, or others – like Hanson, the Blowhards (or whatever it is Palmer has taken over), and others who give permission for anger without any solutions, and to counter the ‘out greening the Greens’ line the Coalition is hoping will stick.

In Labor strategy land, it does not hurt to enter an election having a fight with the Greens (hello, is that 2019 calling?).

It’s a long way from this Anthony Albanese that’s for sure.

If you’re reading this on your phone, here is the transcript:

The idea that we should just trust this government to protect Australia’s natural environment, free from judicial review, would be laughable if was not so very serious

But Labor doesn’t just oppose this legislation because of this government’s appalling record on the environment. We do so as a matter of on principle.

The right of citizens when standing to challenge their governments in court is a fundamental principle of a robust democracy. We must not set this principle aside, simply to provide a drowning prime minister with a headline and a stoush.

That was ten years ago. Today’s Albanese has promised laws to protect the foreign owned salmon industry over World Heritage environment and the survival of a fish that goes back to the dinosaurs. Not just that, but it would limit how third party civil society groups (yes, like the Australia Institute) would be able to use its research and expert advice to assist community groups challenging nature destroying industries. Which is not exactly democratic. And not something the Albanese speaking in parliament a decade ago would have supported.

But this, in the final sitting week of the parliament, is what Labor has made a priority. So yes, all eyes on the budget, but stay focused on what else is happening in the chambers. Election desperation can have political players making very strange choices.
And after all – that is what government is. A long line of choices that dictate what sort of Australia we live in.

So that’s a long introduction to say – STRAP IN. We are in for a lifetime over the next couple of days, before Albanese gets in C1 and directs his driver to Government House.

It is a four coffee morning. You’ve got me, Amy Remeikis with you for the parliament day (I have chosen life, and therefore am not going into the budget lock up) but lucky me, I have a whole team of economists who have no life (don’t feel sorry for them, they are economists – they chose this) who will be going into lock up for me (and more importantly you) so we will be bringing you ALL the news and reaction from the budget once the embargo lifts as well.

But first, let’s get through this morning. Ready? Let’s get into it.