Q: In March, your party unveiled a costed policy for new military programs. Do you intend to make your backing for a potential minority government contingent on cutting military spending and dumping AUKUS?

Adam Bandt:

We have outlined what our priorities are and the priorities that we put on the table in a balance-of-power situation – anti-native forest logging, getting dental into Medicare, making childcare free, and housing reform. We’ll announce more as we go on.

We think we can win the argument about AUKUS on its merits. Now is precisely the wrong time for Australia to be joined at the hip to Donald Trump.

Not only are these AUKUS submarines never going to arrive – because they’re not building them fast enough, and the US government has said they don’t consider giving them to Australia as a priority – but they’re about joining Australia at the hip to a dangerous demagogue in the United States. And they’re not about defending our country – they’re about joining Donald Trump in his next attack that he wants to make on someone else.

Our position should be about defending Australia, not joining in Donald Trump’s next war of aggression. We think we’ve got the Australian people behind us on this. We think we’ve got the Australian people behind us on this, and that this is an argument that we can win.

And with – can I say, with Trump – Labor and Liberal have tied us so closely to Donald Trump’s America over so many years now that it is time to start having a more independent relationship and assessing our relationship with Donald Trump.

At the moment, I get that a lot of people are really worried about what is coming out of the White House. There is a great deal of fear and apprehension. To paraphrase Bec Shaw, we’re watching the world being burned down by powerful men – we just didn’t know they would be such losers. (There is laughter, because Bec is brilliant at putting comedy and heart together to make a point that resonates)

But seriously – people are holding their loved ones close.

People are flicking through news articles in their feeds because it is too distressing. People are thinking about their future. And my message would be – you’re not alone. There are millions of us across this country right now who do not want Australia to go down the US route. Who want to detach ourselves from Donald Trump and to look after us in this country. Trump and the billionaires and those who back him – they will try to pick us off one by one, but they can’t beat us all together. And there are millions of us – there are millions of us in this country at the moment – who do not believe in what Donald Trump is doing and do not believe in what Peter Dutton is doing.

And this election is an incredible chance to say – say no to that big-loser energy that can is coming out of the White House, and we want us to be a country where everyone can afford the basics and, where we are not joined at the hip to Donald Trump the next time he decides to go and press the nuclear codes and go to war.