Peter Dutton is trying to defend why he won’t support Labor’s tax cuts (in fact he has promised to repeal them) while also talking about a cost of living crisis and only putting his fuel excise cut policy in for a year. Which is a pretty tight line to walk and one entirely of Peter Dutton’s creation.

The tax policy that Mr Albanese’s thought about and won’t start for 15 months is not going to provide the support, the structural change, that we need to fix this problem.

He then moves on to the gas policy:

And the gas for Australians’ policy is going to provide that short- to medium-term relief. The next part of our plan, as you know, is to bring in a zero-emissions technology being used by 19 of the top 20 economies in the world.

The only reason the government’s opposed to nuclear energy is because they’re worried about Green voters in inner city Sydney and Melbourne, and they’re happy to hang the rest of the country out to dry. So we have a short-term plan, we have a medium-term plan, and we have a longer-term plan which will get this country back on track. It is about economic management, and it’s only through good economic management that we can deal with what is coming at us from the United States, from China, from the rest of the world in relation to tariffs.

All of that is going to be a huge economic shock. The Treasurer’s already talking about a recession under Labor in this country. I want to make sure that we can help families and, unfortunately, the bad decisions of this government over three years have really left people in a very difficult position. Australians can’t afford three more years of Anthony Albanese.

A big-spending Labor-Greens government would mean higher interest rates for Australians, as well as higher electricity and gas prices. And that’s not something that we’re going to tolerate.

Meanwhile, here is the big boss on gas:

Meanwhile, yes – there are major issues with bulk billing in this nation

The Greens call for to grandfather negative gearing and the 50% CGT discount to one investment property and to scrap the 50% capital gains tax discount for all other assets echoes our call in our “Raising Revenue Right” report.

It is pretty clear that the John Howard/Peter Costello introduction of a 50% capital gains tax discount turned the housing market into a speculators’ dream that benefited investors. It destroyed housing affordability. Before the discount came into being property prices usually went up in line with household income. The only time it didn’t was during the 1980s boom where asset prices soared at unsustainable rates … and then everything went to hell in the 1990 recession. But even that was nothing compared to what has happened over the past 25 years

So getting rid of the CGT discount is a smart idea. And grandfathering it for 1 property is politically smart because around 72% of all negative gearers only have 1 property.

Bandt will no doubt have figures on how much these changes would raise but in our report we had some estimates for how much a variety of changes would raise.

Given both the ALP and LNP are essentially doing bugger all on hosing in this election other either blaming international students or talking about some small increases in supply from the Housing Australian Future Fund, it’s good that there will at least be some discussion of the biggest problem.

To retain one’s sanity these days, it’s important to remember the world is more than the United States, whose administration seems to be doing everything it can to destroy America’s global pre-eminence. In contrast, China’s formula seems to be ‘do nothing and win’ – is President Xi Jinping perhaps a reader of Lao Tzu in his spare time? Since Donald Trump’s re-election, which was supposed to Make America Great Again, again, China has had several ‘Sputnik moments’, at a pace which stretches the usefulness of this analogy. Often, the Chinese companies and research teams are not thinking about winning against America, but competing against their domestic counterparts.

China is effortlessly scoring soft power victories as well. Early this year, the Western netizens discovered Xiaohongshu and were amazed at the living standards enjoyed by the Chinese middle class, as well as their general goodwill towards ordinary Westerners. Now, the wildly popular American online streamer IShowSpeed has just concluded a two-week tour on the Chinese mainland; his livestream brought millions of Gen Z (or even Gen Alpha) Americans up close to a vibrant and often cosmopolitan society, not some dystopic, totalitarian menace that their elders constantly conjure up. The only thing threatening he ran into was the spicy foods which, in southwestern China especially, foreigners attempt at their own peril.

In fact, anyone who has visited China recently would have been impressed by the scale and quality of its infrastructure, the prevalence of EVs, and the affordability of consumer goods (although they still have a long way to go when it comes to barista coffee).

So, China has been doing things, but for the most part they aren’t doing thing against others. Having climbed out underneath a real estate bubble and still with a home ownership rate of about 90% (please, God – may our bubble looks like this as well), they continue to invest in their own education, research, healthcare, and manufacturing capacity – to build more things for themselves and, if there are leftovers, sell abroad. In fact, the China’s economy is less exposed to foreign trade than Australia’s, though they will need to continue pivoting away from the American market. They are wasting no time doing it: in response to Trump’s wide-ranging trade war, China, Japan, and South Korea are accelerating talks on a trilateral trade agreement. 

As long as they avoid losing, they will win by default. Here in Australia, we can keep jumping at shadows whenever China makes a move, or grasp at the straws of our ‘special relationship’ with America that never was. Or we could start investing in ourselves and deal with China pragmatically and calmly, like its (and our own) neighbours do.

Have you met your local member of Parliament during this election campaign – or ever?

As Australia’s population grows but the number of politicians stays the same, MPs are stretched thin – making it less likely that you will meet your local member or be able to share community concerns with them.

Increasing the number of parliamentarians is one of the 10 reforms in the Australia Institute’s Democracy Agenda for the 48th Parliament.

Anne Kantor Fellow Skye Predavec explains in our latest election entree.

Electorates are bigger than ever

In the 2025 Australian election there will be about 120,000 registered voters per elected MP. This is the highest it has ever been, far above the 25,000 voters per MP in 1903 (the first election where most women could vote). In the intervening 122 years, parliament has significantly expanded twice: from 74 to 121 seats in 1949, and from 125 to 148 in 1984. Both times, the number of people per seat sat at a then record high: 64,000 and 75,000 respectively. While the number of registered voters is nine times that in 1903, the number of electorates has only doubled.

Australia’s voter–MP ratio is higher than Canada’s, the UK’s, and much higher than New Zealand’s. Across the ditch there is a member of parliament for every 30,000 voters, four times more representation than in Australia.

As the number of voters per MP grows, the access any individual voter will have to their member necessarily shrinks – Australia Institute polling in 2018 found that only 13% of Australians had ever spoken to their local MP. The more voters there are in an electorate, the larger a campaign needs to be to make any difference to the result, making it more difficult for grassroots campaigns to have an impact.

Figure 1: Registered voters per seat in parliament

According to a poll conducted by Pew Research in late March and published yesterday, nearly half of Americans (47%) think the tariffs on China will be bad for them personally, and only one-in-ten (10%) think they will benefit. Even for Republican-leaning voters, less than one-in-five (17%) think it would be good for them.

Unsurprisingly, more Republican-leaning voters think it would be good for Americaas a country – just under half (44%) of them think that. But that’s still far from a ringing endorsement. Among the entire public only about one-in-four (24%) think it’s good for America, far outnumbered by those who think it’s bad (52%).

A majority of Americans oppose potential U.S. takeover of Greenland or Gaza; only 23% support the takeover of Greenland and 15% support taking over Gaza.

There is no strong support for ending USAID programs, despite it being touted as ending wasteful give-aways for foreigners. There is even less support for America leaving the Paris Climate Agreement or indeed leaving the World Health Organisation.

Check out Pew’s report here.

Anthony Albanese finishes with his new favourite monologue:

I’m hoping to get the numbers in the Senator this time. We got 25 out of 76 in the Senate.

That’s just a fact. And what we’ll continue to do is to advance our agenda. And what happens is that – I discussed with the WA chamber of minerals and energy, I had discussions with environmental groups and my minister has been leading those discussions, we know that it is in the interests of both the environment and sustainability but also of industry to be a proper reform of an Act that is not fit for purpose. It’s been there since the Howard era.

Now we will deal with that in a second term, in an appropriate way. Can I make this point as well?

I note that Mr Dutton last night, one, refused to acknowledge that we inherited a deficit and turned that into a surplus. Secondly, he refused to find any answers for where his $600 billion that will be needed for his nuclear power plan will come from.

Where the cuts will come from.

Thirdly, I think questions from Mr Dutton today, is how is it the shambles that is the coalition have in New South Wales, members of the New South Wales Liberal Party, taking – taking the Liberal Party to court, seeking compensation because they couldn’t get their act together to put in nominations for the local government elections.

They’ve had to get rid of one candidate in Whitlam because as one of the Liberals described to me, he was a cooker, and he has been replaced by someone else with extraordinary comments as well.

Then you have the member for Leichhardt we may be having some contact with soon in that part of the world, has made the most extraordinary comments, we have Matt Smith in Leichhardt, a distinguished Cairns Taipans champion, someone who will be a fantastic member for Leichhardt.

Warren Entsch, whatever differences I’ve had with him, he’s been a pretty good local member and advocate for his community. His bloke, I don’t know where they’re getting these far-right candidates from, they’re popping up everywhere. In Western Australia, in South Australia, in New South Wales and now in Queensland.

So Albanese is on his way to Queensland.

Labor think they are still a slight chance in Leichhardt. The Courier Mail have run a story today with some of the LNP’s candidates old tweets, which include blaming feminists for Trump losing the 2020 election and just general Trump love in general. Which, in this campaign, is no longer seen as a positive.

Tanya Plibersek is asked about Labor’s environment record and says:

When I door knock in Sydney and I talk about Labor’s record on the environment, I get a fantastic reception. Since coming to government, we have protected an extra 100 million hectares of land and ocean in this country. Since coming to government, we’ve added more than one million tonnes of recycling capacity to Australia. Since coming to government, I have approved enough renewable energy to power every single home in Australia. More than 80 projects. We’ve got a fantastic record on the environment. We’re the only party of government that is serious about acting on climate change. That’s why I get such a great response.

Maybe if they say it often enough they’ll believe it!

I mean I am just asking some people to look at some basic facts.

The question on the “top teams” that Japan and South Korea were sending to the US is because Japan has a 24% tariff on goods and South Korea has a 25% tariff.

Australia has a 10% tariff. The lowest the Trump administration is offering (unless you are Russia, which Trump claims is because the US doesn’t do business with Russia. Take from that what you will)

As Greg Jericho points out, overnight Trump’s US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer made it clear 10% is the floor. The floor meaning – that is as low as the US is currently willing to go. And Australia already has that deal.