A journalist just asked what appeared to be Coaliiton talking points “you appear to be asleep at the wheel” in a question about Trump’s tariffs.

Why is the fall back position always that we should go begging to the United States? Do these people have any national pride at all? These tariffs are insane, they are tanking the world economy and the answer is apparently that we go and give the mad man what he wants in the hopes that he might not go nuclear insane?

Honestly.

Albanese:

We had direct contact with the United States administration and we’ll continue to do so. We’re in caretaker mode at the moment but we’ll continue to engage as we are through our officials. Jim Chalmers travelled directly to the United States, met with the US treasury secretary, there have been documentations going between our two countries as I have said before.

The Greens have put out what they would expect negotiations to centre around in the case of a minority government.

The Greens’ policy to end tax breaks for wealthy property investors would:

• Grandfather negative gearing and the 50% CGT discount to one investment property, protecting ‘mum and dad’ investors. People will be able to keep existing negative gearing and CGT discount benefits for one investment property they already own (purchased before the policy commences). 
• Scrap the 50% capital gains tax discount for all other assets. The asset base for non-housing assets would be indexed by inflation.
• Any properties purchased after the policy commences, or the second and subsequent investment properties already owned, would not be eligible for these concessions.
• The changes only apply to investment properties.

Adam Bandt is at the press club today where he will expand on that.

Albanese is asked and says:

Adam Bandt is trying to make himself relevant, I don’t blame him for that. That’s up to him. All the minor parties will try to do that. I’m a member of a party of government and I sit with his fine friend of mine here, in a cabinet room. That makes decisions. We will, I expect to be re-elected as the member for Grayndler. I’m not taking that the granted. I was in Grayndler yesterday with all of you. The member for Sydney, I’m here in Sydney today, she does fantastic work as the local member. We’ve been – there’s nothing new about the Greens talking themselves up. Because sometimes the media follow that up for whatever reason. It makes things a bit more interesting. But the truth is, that our objective is to hold onto the 78 seats we have and currently build on it.

Chris Minns comes to his rescue:

What I would say is that New South Wales government has got to be clear and consistent about this. We want public service to spend the majority of the work in the workplace.

Now, that’s not cut Dutton’s policy or his updated policy or his reversed policy or whatever it is today. It’s very different.

And I’m not going to pretend to all of you here that our policy is exactly the same as the Commonwealth government’s. They’re different.

What you would argue is the workplaces are very different. 85% of the public service in New South Wales are front-line workers. Corrections officers, police officers, firefighters, nurses. The cohort that works from home during COVID, most of their responsibility is to provide expert help and support for front-line public sector workers.

And the only way to do that is to spend some time in the office. So we’re not going to change our policy. And the Prime Minister is being clear and consistent about his policy.

And I think that’s very – a key choice for voters in the election campaign. You know where I stand? You know where the PM stands. You have no either where Peter Dutton is on what used to be a fundamental part of his election pitch. One day he’s for it, the next day he’s against it. I think at the end of the day voters will say to themselves, how can we trust this bloke if his policies have got the life span of warm yoghurt? There’s a use by date on everyone he says. In uncertain times, with the world at a hinge point, we need the certainty the prime minister is giving us.

Anthony Albanese is standing next to the NSW Labor premier Chris Minns who has ordered state public servants to return to the office. Albanese is asked how that is different to what Peter Dutton just backflipped on.

Albanese says it is different. But it’s a bit of a mess in explaining HOW it is different. It is very obvious that Albanese is very tired today:

If it you give me a chance, I’ll explain. Peter Dutton’s policy, Peter Dutton’s policy was for – to change the way that – the only way they can do it, is to change the Act. We introduced the legislation at the same time as part of our two tranches of reform. Same job, same pay. He said he was against that. Then he’s for it. It’s not clear what his position is.

Casualisation, he was for it, then against it. It’s not clear where they stand on that issue either. On the right to negotiate over working from home, what we argue very clearly is that for a range of public service jobs, you can’t do them remotely.

But ironically, his policy of attrition of 41,000 public servants is precisely those front-line services such as Centrelink employees, the people helping the victims of floods who are on the ground right now in western Queensland, they are the ones who have a higher rotation through the public service than people such as foreign affairs and trade, or treasury.

So, what we have now from Peter Dutton was a big announcement about 41,000 cuts, he now says there will be attrition. There’s no difference, he says, in fiscal policy. He says – he says the savings would be – the Premier is here – and he’ll answer the question – the – the 41,000 – he’s gone from saying we’re going to sack them immediately, then we’ll let it natural attrition over a number of years but there’s no change in the savings they have. It’s just another hole like the $600 billion hole in their nuclear costings. I asked Peter Dutton last night where will the cuts come from? Because when Peter Dutton cuts, you pay. That is going to be the position going forward. Peter Dutton last night as well said remarkably that there weren’t cuts to health and education. They’re there in this little document. This little document here, budget 2014-15. The cuts are there in the budget. $80 billion. $30 billion from education, $50 billion from health. His economic policy doesn’t add up. On work from home, he said he’s against it, then he said it’s just about Canberra as if all public servants work in Canberra, they don’t. Public servants are at the Centrelink office up the road here. They’re in offices right around Australia. They help. They help people on the ground.

OK, we get to the Coalition’s gas policy. Asked about it, Anthony Albanese says:

Well, the only gas policy that the Coalition has is gaslighting the Australian public. Gas prices were $30 when we came to office, they’re now 13 to $14. They’re now $13 to $14.

How much would a Labor government’s energy policy rely on gas prices and what about its environmental reforms? Albanese blames the senate:

Well, if we have the numbers in the Senate, we’ve deliver reforms. We have 25 out of 76, there’s no lists that includes 50% plus 1 from the Senate. I say this about gas policy – they had – these people think the Australian public are like gold fish. They don’t remember. They went around at the time when they were in government, when 24 out of 28 coal-fired power stations announced their closure, they said they would have a gas-led recovery. Remember that? Josh Frydenberg time after time after time and nothing happened. All that happened was the gas prices reached $30 when we came to office, they’re currently $13 to $14.

But the great admission in the Coalition’s plan is that not only does Australia HAVE ENOUGH GAS, it’s that the government should be taxing the gas giants who export Australia’s gas for the benefit of Australians. And we can maintain existing gas export contracts and build an Australian domestic gas reserve WITHOUT OPENING UP NEW GAS FIELDS.

Fair to say investors did not like Trump overnight putting a 104% tariff on China – given China is far and away Australia’s biggest trading partner.

In the first 8 minutes, the ASX200 fell nearly 1.5% in value. Grim.

Anthony Albanese is then asked if he would take a call from Trump if he won on May 3 (honestly, what are these questions)

I would welcome a call from whoever wants to call. But we’re not getting ahead of ourselves. May 3 is a long way away. We are not halfway through this election campaign. Elections are hard to win. So I’m not thinking about what happens post May 3. I’m focused on May 3, I’ve been focused on it for some time. My opponent is focused of course on measuring up the curtains at Kirribilli House.

After it was made very, very clear in last night’s western Sydney leaders’ debate that multiculturalism and protecting people was a massive issue for a lot of Australians – and not just those with migrant backgrounds – Labor is holding a press conference today talking up migration and the input migrants have had in shaping modern Australia.

DEIDRE CHAMBERS.

Albanese is at the opening of the Hay Street markets where he opens his press conference with:

I pay tribute to the Signorelli family. It’s such an enormous privilege to know Paul and his family. They’re great people who make a contribution with literally many millions of dollars of investment in a sign of confidence in this city. But they also make a contribution in so many other ways through philanthropy. This will be a place celebrating our multiculturalism.

We have a great privilege in this country of sharing this continent with the oldest continuous culture on earth, but also being able to experience the food, the music, the dancing, the culture, the language of all around the world. This here will be a centre of it. This is about job creation, it’s about boosting our economy, it’s about boosting tourism in this beautiful city. Bringing jobs and opportunities is what will thrive here, and it was a great honour for me with the Premier to be opening this centre and I congratulate once again Paul and his family on the contribution.

On the meeting Jim Chalmers is holding with financial heads today, Jason Clare said it is all about just being a good government (which is also what former LNP senator Arthur Sinnodinos said)

Clare:

This is about discussing the outlook, making sure that we’ve got everything that we need in place. We do have the settings right. We’ve got inflation coming down. We’ve got wages going up. And this is a Government that has created more jobs in our first term than any Government in Australian history.

Australians weren’t wrong three years ago to kick out the Morrison Government. They were sick of the cuts and the cock ups, right. And they were in for ten years. It takes more than three years to clean up that mess.

But you can see from the fact that when we came to office, inflation was going up, now it’s coming down, wages were going down, now wages are going up, that we’ve created all of these jobs, that we’re making real progress. But there’s more work to do.

Jane Hume was then asked if there was any update on Peter Dutton’s father, Bruce, who suffered a heart attack late yesterday and was taken to hospital. This happened just before the first leaders’ debate.

Hume said:

This was incredibly sad news that Peter Dutton’s father had had a medical emergency just before the debate last night. I’m sure that there will be updates throughout the day, but I think you can rest assured that you know the fact that Peter fronted up to the debate, after hearing that news, performed exceptionally well is demonstrative of you know just how dedicated he is to the job that he has and the kind of Prime Minister, that he will be okay.