LIVE

Tue 8 Apr

Australia Institute Live: Day 11 of the 2025 election campaign. As it happened.

Amy Remeikis – Chief Political Analyst

This blog is now closed.

Key posts

The Day's News

21.00 AEST

Good night – see you tomorrow? (The undecided voters gave the debate to Albanese 44 to 35, with 21 still undecided)

Sky is yet to post who the winner of the debate was, according to the audience. I don’t think I have it in me to listen to Ray Hadley and Bronwyn Bishop and now Sky is saying that the result will be on the Paul Murray show and no one deserves that punishment. (We came back and updated this for you. Because we love you.)

I am going to take a punt and say that it might have narrowly gone to Dutton, who seemed to have his messages (even if they weren’t all true) refined more than he has this campaign. (Update – the Sky viewers gave it to Albanese. Albanese 44, Dutton 35 and undecided, 21)

But also it doesn’t matter. The world was not set on fire by either leader there. What was interesting was the questions the undecided voters went with – many of which fell outside of the Coalition’s campaign. Australia is having an entirely different conversation than its leaders at the moment and that is worth noting.

The Daily Telegraph is reporting Peter Dutton’s father suffered a heart attack and is in hospital, and that the Coalition campaign are not giving out any further details. No doubt it will be a long night for the whole Dutton family, so we hope they are OK.

We will bring you all the events of Day 12 early tomorrow morning, so we hope you get some rest!

Thank you to all of you – and until we see you again, take care of you. Ax

20.52 AEST

Coalition energy plan targets existing gas fields, proving we don’t have a shortage of gas

AFR Political editor Phil Coorey has the gas modelling the Coalition are using for their new gas plan.

You can read that story here.

Coorey reports:

Announced as the centrepiece of Dutton’s budget reply, the plan would effectively create a domestic gas reserve by forcing exporters operating out of Queensland to divert more of their uncontracted gas to the domestic market and away from the Asian spot markets.

Their foundational export contracts to countries such as Japan and South Korea would be quarantined from the plan.

Currently, about 450 to 500 petajoules of gas are directed to domestic use. Under the change, that will have to increase by 50 to 100 petajoules, or up to 10 per cent to 20 per cent, depending on seasonal demand. One petajoule can power about 45,725 homes for a year.

The aim is to decouple the domestic price from the international price by creating a glut of domestic gas and forcing down the price from $14 a gigajoule to $10 per gigajoule or less.

The policy was controversially altered to target existing gas fields because Dutton wants to be able to deliver price relief from as soon as the end of this year. If it depended on the development of new gas fields, that would be years away.

The modelling, prepared by Frontier Economics, confirms that gas exporters will be hit with a “gas security charge” to ensure they direct the requisite amount of extra gas into the domestic market to drive down the price.

So yes, it is agreed – we don’t have a gas shortage, because as the Coalition has worked out, we can target the gas in existing fields.

20.47 AEST

Peter Dutton probably got the most time in that debate there, and both were allowed to run off with their answers.

But these questions were from undecided voters who live in western Sydney. And the questions were mostly in areas that are weak for the Coalition. Migration. Gaza. Energy. Health.

Listening to the News Corp commentators break this down, and they seem a little shocked at the questions, with the Daily Telegraph editor (the newspaper which is co-hosting this with Sky) was wondering about the slant of the undecided voters.

Or, could it be, that these are just major issues for voters that News Corp, particularly Sky and the Daily Telegraph, has ignored.

They all agree that Dutton won the debate and it was the best performance they have seen from them.

20.41 AEST

The debate wins. And the winner is – anyone who didn’t watch.

The closing statements were exactly as you would expect and Dutton is now repeating his lie that Jim Chalmers was saying we might go into recession next month.

Which is just another dire level of this election campaign.

Chalmers was talking about some economic commentators saying that the RBA might have to cut by .50 points because of the global impact of the Trump tariffs. Dutton is trying to spin that as you will go into recession under Labor.

Just absolute bullshit really.

20.36 AEST

Some quickfire questions from Kieran Gilbert.

No cuts to health care?

Dutton:

No cuts and we’ll legislate it. We’ve been very clear about it

Will the AUKUS alliance continue?

Albanese:

Absolutely, I have never said that we should link our defense arrangements, which are in our national interest, with the tariff issue

(The implication here, is that Dutton has. Which he has. Except it was to buy even more in the second pillar of Aukus)

Dutton won’t change his mind (again) on work from home.

Albanese won’t go in to a coalition with the Greens.

20.33 AEST

Greg Jericho
Chief economist

As both leaders sort of ignore talking about rural and regional areas, it is worth remembering that the further you live from the city centre, the worse your life expectancy is and the more disadvantaged you will be

20.32 AEST

Winston wants to know why the tax cuts were for everyone and not just those who really need it?

Albanese:

To put really clearly, there were tax cuts legislated under the former government. They went primarily to high income earners. I would have got $9,000 so would Peter instead, we got four and a half, and we gave it to everyone by lowering that bottom marginal tax rate.

Now what we’ve done is we’ll lower it by a cent and then a further cent over the next over the next term of government.

Of course, we wanted to make sure that every Australian got a tax cut. And the way that you make sure that low and middle income earners benefit is to target that first marginal tax rate that kicks in, of course, $18,200 and goes up to $45,000

20.31 AEST

Anthony Albanese on the public service says:

Well Peter hasn’t been able to stand up for his own policy, so I don’t know how he can stand up for Australia. Working from home is a really important component in modern families.

I was in [I missed it] just the day before yesterday, which is a similar distance from Tarmore, but outside of Melbourne, that family four days an IT consultant goes into the office on a Friday, and the mum stays at home on the Friday. She’s a TAFE teacher. She works for the public sector, and the truth is that public sector work conditions often then flow through to the private sector. And the truth is as well that every public servant isn’t in Canberra. They’re all around Australia, helping people in Centrelink offices, around here, helping people with assistance right around the entire country

20.29 AEST

On the public service cuts, Dutton says:

our policy applied to public servants in Canberra, the Prime Minister wanted people to believe that it was applying across the economy and it was going to affect every workplace, which was never the policy at all. So what we’ve said is that if there is an arrangement that you’ve got in your workplace, your boss, and you could work from home, or whatever the flexible arrangement. So that’s fantastic. That’s a decision between you and your employer in your workplace, and there’s no issue. We’ve never had any issue with that whatsoever.

Our argument in relation to Canberra was that we wanted to make sure, and we do want to make sure, that taxpayers who are working hard providing their taxes to the Commonwealth Government, that that money is being spent in the most efficient way. The government’s increased the public service in Canberra by about 20% and we want to make sure that we have flexible arrangements in place. That’s fine, and we’ve made that clear. Hopefully that stops the lies from being told,

It is not a lie to say that the public service influences the conditions for the private sector as well, and that Dutton can not just cut 41,000 public services, through natural attrition, with no frontline cuts, within five years. It can’t happen. One of those parts of the commitment has to be broken.

20.25 AEST

Yes, Greg Jericho. Peter Dutton just suggested that people put solar panels on their roof because they couldn’t afford their electricity bills.

And not for the feed-in-tariffs, which in places like Queensland, were, at one point, actually giving people a lot of money back. And then governments changed the feed-in-tariff rate.

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