Well. That was A day.

Now that I have my day’s straight again, I can tell you that tomorrow is WEDNESDAY and that is the second leaders’ debate (I would have sworn on my favourite Dolly t-shirt that today was Wednesday if you asked me at 5am this morning) and then everyone starts to live their lives away from the campaign.

Of course you’ll still be seeing bits on social media, but it’s not going to be the insanity we have seen for the past two and a half weeks.

So thank you to everyone who joined us today – we hope to see you back here for more fact checks, explainers and a bit of snark, along with the election campaign news. You are a wonderful audience and we are very grateful to you.

Until then – take care of you. Ax

Peter Dutton then continues to say that the government needs to say whether they knew about it ahead of it becoming public (Richard Marles said that they did), without challenge.

Dutton:

There’s public reports in relation to the claim that’s been made. There’s been a lot of activity between Russia and China and Indonesia, et cetera. That’s a matter of public record. So, I think the government, if they claim they’ve got a good relationship with Indonesia and countries in the region, that should be two way and there should be an engagement.

The Prime Minister should be standing town say this issue has been raised with us, we appreciate the Indonesians raising it with us, we expressed our concerns.

But it hasn’t happened. I think the Prime Minister and the foreign minister, if they’re being honest, would say this came as a surprise to them, which by their own standard, would be a catastrophic failure. Similar to what they accused the previous foreign minister of. And the double standard that operates here is I think on display for all to see.

There was a meeting in February between Indonesia and Russia about increasing their defence and security relationship. The relationship between Indonesia and Russia is not new. There were Russian planes and ships at Indonesian bases in 2017. Richard Marles has said the government was aware of the request before it was public.

It is plainly obvious this is a distraction grenade, but is it too much to ask that politicians going off about ‘catastrophic failures’ actually be challenged with some facts?

Q: But it hasn’t been made public by the Indonesian government yet.

Penny Wong:

Let’s hear from Penny Wong as to what she knew and when. Penny Wong is someone who has criticised others and her predecessors. If the negotiations are taking place, then surely Australia would have been consulted. If that’s not the case, there’s a catastrophic failure according to Penny Wong’s standards.

Q: Have I missed that, has the Indonesian president announced this? That’s not my understanding.

Dutton:

There’s commentary I have seen reported from the Indonesian spokesperson. That’s obviously come from the administration. There are reports of negotiations or discussions that have taken place between Russia and Indonesia. And, if the government has the functioning relationship they claim they have, then they should have engaged surely with Indonesia, or if Indonesia had that view, then they would have expressed, you know, some words of comfort to the Australian public or to the Australian minister. It just hasn’t happened. Let’s have a look at Penny Wong’s track record.

Q: I cannot wait to get her on the show and ask her, and you know I will. Where have you seen the Indonesian president confirm this? Aren’t you verballing him? He hasn’t talked publicly about it.

Dutton:

There’s comment that’s come out of the administration, out of the Prabowo administration. The Prime Minister knew nothing about it, neither did Penny Wong. But Penny Wong has set a standard here she hasn’t met herself. I hope she’s able to explain exactly what’s taken place.

Q: If it’s confirmed, we’re in the infancy of what this may be, if it is, what do you expect the Australian government to do in return? How should we respond?

Dutton:

Well, we should make it very clear we don’t think it’s in our security interests to have Russian assets based not too far from our border. We don’t think it’s in the interests of stability within the region to have those assets based in Indonesia.

Q: Now, Indonesia is a sovereign nation, they make decisions for themselves. But, should they be giving us a heads-up? If you say they’re a sovereign nation, what is their responsibility to us?

Dutton:

Well, there would be engagement if that was the case. If it was being considered. If they had a relationship with the Albanese government. Again, Penny Wong made great claims about how well connected she’s in South-East Asia.

The government has said there was engagement before this story was public. I have not seen any comment from the Indonesian administration about this.

Q: So, just to be clear – what are you criticising? The Prime Minister is seeking information about what is going on. We still don’t know the full details. Shouldn’t we wait before we criticise?

Dutton:

If it there was a functioning relationship with Indonesia, as there must be, because Indonesia is an important ally and friend, there we’ve been contact at a departmental or ministerial level.

Penny Wong has set the standard very high in terms of what the engagement needs to be. And the expectation that she’s put upon others is that if there’s a decision that is taken without engagement, without some, some foreshadowing with the Australian government, that’s a catastrophic failure. I think by her own standards Penny Wong has failed here.

Of course we don’t want Russian planes or other military assets in our region, based here, it’s not in our country’s best interests.

It’s not in the best interests of South-East Asia and Russia has demonstrated its capacities, and president Putin’s standards in relation to the conflict with Ukraine. Not someone we would welcome being permanently based here in our region.

Q: You said the Indonesian president announced this. When did he announce it?

Dutton:

Well, the Indonesian government, there’s detail they need to provide to the Australian government, surely the relationship is so good under Penny Wong that the relationship would have demanded that we be given notice before this was made public.

Indonesia has not announced this. There was a US media report this request had been made.

Richard Marles has said:

We have a very close relationship with Indonesia. We have a growing defence relationship with Indonesia. We have already been engaged with Indonesia on this request.

I’d note at this point, Indonesia has not responded to this request [from Russia]. We will keep engaging with Indonesia in a way which befits a very close friend and a very close friendship between our two countries.

We have been very focused on developing our bilateral relationship with Indonesia, including our bilateral defence relationship with Indonesia. Last year, we signed a defence cooperation agreement with Indonesia which really is the deepest-level defence agreement we’ve ever had with Indonesia. And we are seeing increasing cooperation between Australia and Indonesia at a defence level. And I expect all of that to continue.

In respect of this particular issue, we are already engaging with Indonesia at a senior level, and will continue to do so about the request.

Peter Dutton is now speaking to Afternoon Briefing.

Q: Peter Dutton, the Prime Minister has voiced concern about reports that Russia requested access to Indonesian air force base. He has said we obviously do not want to see Russian influence in our region. Very clearly. Do you agree with the Prime Minister?

Dutton:

Well, of course, but I think the question here is whether or not the government had any forewarning. This would be a catastrophic error in the government’s systems if DFAT, under Penny Wong, didn’t know anything about it. If the Prime Minister hadn’t spoken with the president, obviously the government was very critical of the former government in relation to engagements in South-East Asia. So, by the government’s own test, by the government’s own standard, if the government knew nothing about this, then I would be very surprised and I presume the Prime Minister will answer those questions.

Richard Marles has said there was prior warning – he said that there had been previous discussions on this.

Penny Wong was asked about the Russian request to Indonesia to park some planes and said:

I might just take the hypothetical out, but I would say to you, we know Russia is a disruptive power, and we know that President Putin seeks to play that role, which is why some of the comments we’ve seen over the years from the Coalition, including from one of their senators belittling President Zelenskyy, are so contrary to Australia’s national interests.

Scott Morrison’s former advisor, turned gas industry shill Andrew Carswell is speaking to Afternoon Briefing about he doesn’t believe that voters, or ‘soft voters’ align Peter Dutton with wealth.

I don’t think voters are fully aware of Peter Dutton’s wealth, and frankly, Anthony Albanese’s wealth as well. I don’t think it cuts through. I’m sure it does in media land and those that are engaged in politics day to day. Soft voters wouldn’t align Peter Dutton with someone who is significantly wealthy.

So it might come as a surprise for Carswell to learn that this has come up in focus groups – people do understand it, even if they don’t have the numbers.

Scott Morrison is advising on this campaign, which might be why you are also seeing a lot more of Dutton’s family – Morrison was a true believer in bringing family in to his work to present himself a certain way – and suddenly, you are seeing Dutton the Dad everywhere. That’s entirely by design.

And May’s final point is on supply. And how it is not being targeted properly:

The problem we have in Australia is that we’re not building things that people can afford to buy. We’ve actually built a million new homes over the past ten years. And the problem with that, we’ve never actually had more homes per person than we have now. It’s not making housing more affordable because we don’t have the government in there building things and working with the private sector to build things that are actually affordable.

When you look around the world, at the countries that are doing this well, the countries that have either avoided their housing crisis altogether or managed to turn it around, they are countries where the government is actually not just leaving it to the private sector.

They are providing quite a bit of housing themselves. So we need to see proposals that go beyond just subsidising people to, to buy homes.

Just providing some incentives for the private sector to build and actually building things that are affordable, mandating them to be affordable, making sure there are things that people can afford to rent and to buy.

May Azize continued:

Our campaign calls for limits to rent increases, not freezes per se. You know, we’ve got this working. We don’t need to look to overseas. We’ve got this working in Australia here in the ACT, in the ACT, there are limits on how much further than CPI landlords can increase the rent by. And we think that’s a pretty good model.

It’s actually pretty modest by international standards. In most other countries it’s really not possible for landlords to raise rents further than about 2% of CPI in Australia in just about every other part of the country outside of the ACT, landlords can hand down an unlimited rent increase.

So, you know, it’s really not surprising that we’re seeing annual rent increases every single year in the order of 5 to 10%. Young people are much more likely to be renters.

There’s a generation of people who are locked out of home ownership, and these proposals are not going to do anything for them. So I’d be really surprised and disappointed if we didn’t see something for the hundreds of thousands of people who rent.

But most importantly, the 640,000 people who are in really, really extreme rental stress with absolutely nothing that they can afford to rent, hanging on to unaffordable rentals with, with, you know, bloody fingernails.

So we need to see proposals that go beyond just providing some incentives to the private market. We’ve seen from the Labor announcement over the weekend, a proposal to build 100,000 or to give some zero interest loans to states and territories to incentivise them to work with private sector, to bring new homes online.

That’s all very indirect.

The very smart and incredible May Azize, the spokesperson for Everybody’s Home, has spoken to the ABC about the lack of policy, and thought, for renters in this campaign:

More and more Australians are going to be renting for life, and 640,000 renters across the country are in really, really extreme rental stress.

There’s just nothing put on the table for them at this election, which is really disappointing to see. So what we’re seeing from major parties is proposals that might seem, on the surface, like they’re going to put a bit of extra money in the pockets of people when they go out and compete for housing.

But the problem is, when you put a couple of extra thousand dollars, a couple of extra tens of thousands of dollars in people’s pockets when they go out to auction and bid for homes, is that everybody else has that money as well.

And what it does is push up the cost of housing. It’s not really helping anybody get ahead. So it’s not just not helping renters. It’s not helping people get into home ownership necessarily either. It’s just pushing up the cost of housing for everybody.