Q: Just back on the economy – from the briefings you’ve received, can you explicitly rule out a recession?

Albanese:

Look, we have – as a government – continued to see the economy grow. We’ve continued to see now, over the last five quarters, wages grow five quarters in a row. We have, in addition to that, seen tax cuts for every taxpayer dealing with cost-of-living relief. And we’ve seen inflation, importantly, brought down to 2.4%.

It had a “6” in front of it before we were elected. It peaked at 7.8% in 2022. And what happened in 2022? In the lead-up to that election was a March budget which saw a massive spike in the deficit – up to $78 billion.

Not a single dollar of savings in that budget. When we came to office, we had to repair that. And we turned that around.

At a time where we’ve had the largest global inflation issue to deal with since the 1980s and the biggest energy crisis since the 1970s. Higher wages, lower inflation, lower taxes, increased cost-of-living support, economic growth – and, by the way, more than a million jobs created on our watch.

That hard work that we have done, if we had not have done that, we would not have been as prepared for what is happening in the global economy. We’ll continue – we’ll continue to engage. But I’ll tell you what – it’s not the time for cuts in order to pay for a $600 billion nuclear plan.

Q: Prime Minister, the leaders’ debate is tonight, your a first chance to debate Peter Dutton. How’s the prep going? Is it true that Dan Andrews is being used to prep as Peter Dutton?

Albanese:

I look forward to discussing not just with Peter Dutton, but as well to the people who come along to ask questions. I agreed to this, and we put this forward as the first debate, because I believe that Sky – particularly during the day – plays a role in informing the Australian public and certainly it’s something that’s watched around and is important.

And so I look forward to talking with the people of Wentworthville. I’m very familiar with the Wenty Magpies, and I look forward to being back at Wenty Leagues Club tonight and talk about the issues raised by people there.

(You’ll notice he didn’t deny the Dan Andrews part of that question.)

Q: Prime Minister, you mentioned being a responsible economic manager. Treasury is saying now that GDP will contract, revenue will fall. How can you continue to claim to be responsible unless you revisit at least some of your agenda to trim spending?

Albanese:

This election is about a government that has a plan to deal with cost-of-living relief and to assist families at the same time as building Australia’s future, and an opposition that has an agenda for cuts. It’s very clear that they will – if they are successful – rip the guts out of Medicare, like they did last time, with $50 billion of health cuts, take away funding for schools with $30 billion of education cuts.

Across the board, they did all of that and then produced not a surplus first year and a surplus every year, which is what they promised – they delivered, every year, a deficit that just grew and grew and grew. And included in that enormous waste. During a pandemic, governments around the world, of course, would go into deficit, but you didn’t have to give $20 billion to companies that were actually increasing their profits, not being affected adversely.

Q: Prime Minister, in 2022, you said Labor can’t repair all the damage done in the first term. You lamented the state of the books you inherited. Considering the recent budget shows 10 years of deficit and increasing debt-to-GDP ratios and there hasn’t currently been a structural release, have you ruled out structural repair in the next term as well?

Albanese:

I didn’t rule it out in the first term. We turned a $78 billion deficit into a $22 billion surplus under Labor. We then moved it to a $15 billion surplus. We’ve improved the budget bottom line by $207 billion. $207 billion in improvement in our first term. We have been a responsible economic come management government. And we’ll continue to be so if we are fortunate enough to receive a second term.

I am sensing a theme here. “Uncertain times” which was first pushed by Jim Chalmers is very quickly becoming the underpinning of the Albanese campaign. Why? Well, the next message from Labor is – don’t risk change in these ‘uncertain times’.

Albanese:

These are uncertain times. And we know that that is the case. The decision of the US administration, as I said last Thursday, is an act of self-harm.

But it’s also because it’s the world’s largest economy.

It has implications for the global economy. What we are doing is preparing for that. We were the first country in the world to respond to the US decision.

The first in the world.

Because we had prepared, because we are a considered government. Because we want to make sure that Australians – their impact of this is minimised.

That’s why we have, in advance, done the work that we did over the last three years. But that’s why, in particular, we did the work in the not unsurprising announcement – although some elements of it were surprising, I’ve got to say; the Heard Island decision and Norfolk Island – some of it was strange.

But we are dealing with this in a considered, organised way, because that is what a considered government does

To the questions outside health now, what contact has the Albanese government had with the Trump administration?

Albanese:

Well, we live in uncertain times. We know that that’s the case. But I’m absolutely certain that, in these uncertain times, now is not a time for cutting. Now is not a time for the sort of retreat from policies that we’ve seen from the coalition.

We’ll continue to engage constructively with the US administration. It’s what we’ve done up to now, and it’s what we’ll continue to do.

Professor Pat McGorry, one of the nation’s leading youth mental health experts is at this press conference. He welcomes that this is a bipartisan achievement for the nation – that both major parties are committing to increasing their youth mental health spend.

McGorry:

I’m very proud of our country that we’ve been built this system to the extant that we have already. Today, this announcement is very strong.

This announcement is very strong from the government. It’s not just covering youth, it’s extending, as you heard from the Prime Minister, the Medicare mental health services, which is in a way an analogue of Headspace for older people.

That’s something that we really needed and the government is building on that too. And also, it’s got a more complex package around workforce and also, as I just mentioned, the research platform aspect too.

….The Yarn Safe program [which is specifically for First Nations People] has operated for years. This investment today takes that to another level. I’m sure we’ll give much better support to that population at that critical age of adolescence in their early 20s.

The official announcement is:

• $225 million for 31 new and upgraded Medicare Mental Health Centres
• More than $200 million for 58 new, upgraded or expanded headspace services
• $500 million for 20 Youth Specialist Care Centres for young people with complex needs
• $90 million for more than 1,200 training places for mental health professionals and peer workers.

Because the first leaders’ debate is this evening, both Anthony Albanese and Peter Dutton are out and about earlier than usual, before they go to ground for debate preparation.

Albanese is making the $1bn in spending for mental health announcement (the Coalition had previously outstripped the government in mental health spending so this is a case of Labor following the Coalition’s lead – obviously because it is a policy that resonates well with people)

Labor plans on growing and expanding the Medicare mental health clinics, which are the first stop for people needing access to the mental health system (and emergencies) but there is no on-going care at these centres. It is also giving a funding boost to Headspace and creating youth mental health specialist centres.

Wondering why you never hear about ‘bellwether seats’ any more? Well Josh Black and Bill Browne have you covered:

Media analysis shows that the decade from 2007 was the bellwether era, but that era has now passed

In 2016, ABC election analyst Antony Green ruefully remarked that it ‘seems impossible to cover an election without referring to bellwether seats’.

A ‘bellwether’ seat is one that predicts the overall election result. For forty years, whichever party won the regional NSW seat of Eden-Monaro also won government as a whole.

But elections – and journalistic fads – change quickly, and 2016 would prove to be the bellwether’s last hurrah. As Green explained, a seat can end up as a bellwether by pure coincidence, not any underlying property of the seat itself. And by the time the bellwether seat is decided, the overall election has usually already been called.

The end of the bellwether seat’s time in the sun is a reminder that what matters are the dynamics in individual electorates, not political cliches or outdated rules of thumb.

‘Bellwether seats’ are so last decade. According to the media database NewsBank, the proportion of metropolitan commercial newspapers using the term ‘bellwether’ to describe political processes during federal election campaigns grew more than threefold between 2001 and 2007. The number of articles was relatively high in 2010, followed by a modest decline in 2013.

References to ‘bellwether seats’ nearly doubled again in 2016.

The turning point seems to be the 2016 election, when Labor’s Mike Kelly won Eden-Monaro while Liberal Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull won a narrow majority in the overall House of Representatives. Over the years journalists have identified other electorates as bellwethers – Robertson (NSW central coast), Lindsay (Western Sydney), Brisbane (Queensland), Makin (South Australia), and Aston (in Melbourne) – but none have held on to the title.

By 2019, the proportion of articles using the word ‘bellwether’ had fallen to its lowest rate since 2004. A brief interest in ‘bellwether booths’ in 2022 did little to improve the overall numbers.
The political decline of the bellwether couldn’t happen soon enough. Even the term is patronising, referring to a flock of sheep following their leader. As the old certainties of bellwethers faded away, so too is the traditional ‘pendulum’ showing which seats are likely to change hands between Labor and the Coalition giving way to a new realisation that two-party contests are not the only game in town.

That’s a good thing. This means that there are no safe seats, and every vote in every seat matters. Just as no ‘bellwether’ seat actually decided a 150-seat election, no ‘national swing’ can decide the seats that matter for the formation of government.  Indeed, the formation of the Gillard minority government in September 2010 shows that seats that return independent candidates can decide governments.