What is Anthony Albanese’s plan to hold Victorian seats, given that Labor is in trouble in its former stronghold state? Albanese then turns to the Labor attack line which is gaining some traction in focus groups – the Liberal party is too right wing.

Albanese:

I want to not just hold all our members here in Victoria, I want to win seats like Menzies and Deakin. That’s why I was in Deakin last week.

I hope Michael Sukkar is door knocking. I really hope he is. The more media appearances, the better. I encourage you to do interviews and to lift his profile with voters in Deakin. Because I think his whole way that he conducts himself is not what we need in 2025. What we need is effective local members who stand up for their communities.

This guy here, Daniel Mulino, is standing up for this community here in Sunshine. He’s standing up for Libby Coker in Corangamite and Richard Marles in Corio, standing up for the members in Ballarat and Bendigo, standing up for those people who want to get on the metro and get seamlessly through to the airport, right throughout Melbourne.

That’s what my members are doing.

I mean, Peter Dutton lost another candidate overnight. I think the women of Australia will be asking themselves what is going on when Peter Dutton can endorse a bloke who has the views he put forward, over a long period of time, was a former candidate for the UAP, this is a part of – a part of the take over of the Liberal Party by the hard right.

When you look at Alex Antic being number one in the ticket, he has his Shadow Health Minister at number two. A woman, Anne Ruston, who I would have some policy disagreements with on Medicare, but, she’s the Shadow Health Minister. She’s been a senior minister in the government, dumped by Alex Antic in South Australia.

Jacinta’s opponent got hunted down by the right wing of the Victorian Liberal Party. In WA, all sorts of strange people with some very far-right views, who had to get dumped. There was a candidate every week going out. Roger Cook was – it was hard for him to keep up during the state election. Goodness knows who they’re returning. Ian Goodenough, he’s running as an independent. He represented his local community for decades, the father of the house, I think, or maybe Bob Katter, but they knocked him off in pre-selection. His views weren’t right wing enough. I’m pretty confident, we’ll be arguing not just to hold seats but to win seats here in Victoria.