Sussan Ley is speaking first:

Today we are announcing a suite of new measures that build on the work that we have done in coalition in government. New bases amounting to $90 million for further initiatives for the prevention of family, domestic and sexual violence.

The scourge of family violence reaches into every corner of this country and into every cohort of Australian society. Every time we recommit with new funding such as we are today, we make the statement that enough is enough. Because when you know that women are calling helplines every four minutes and police are responding to callouts for domestic violence incidences every six minutes, you can see the scale of the problem.

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton is in Hobart today, speaking alongside Deputy Liberal Leader Sussan Ley, announcing $90 million in additional funding to combat domestic violence.

Frank Yuan

Postdoctoral Fellow

Australians are rightfully proud of compulsory voting, which ensures widespread participation in elections.

However, since the 1950s, federal elections in Australia have seen a decline in the share of adult residents whose votes are counted.

At the last federal election in 2022, 14.6 million Australians cast a valid vote. A further 800,000 made it to the voting booth but cast an invalid or blank vote – either deliberately or by accident. 1.8 million were on the electoral roll but did not turn out. 650,000 Australians were missing from the electoral roll. Taken together, over three million Australians entitled to vote did not have their vote counted. By contrast, the Labor Party only won the two-party preferred vote by 600,000.

Thus, despite voting in federal elections being compulsory, only about four in five eligible Australians (82.5%) cast a valid vote in the 2022 federal election. Compulsory voting is responsible for that number being as high as it is: New Zealand’s rate of effective participation in the 2023 election was just 69.6%.

In addition, millions of people live, work and pay taxes in Australia, but are not citizens and therefore not entitled to vote. Taken together, the share of people of voting age who cast a valid vote in the last federal election is just 72%, far below the 89.8% official headline turnout figure.

Uruguay, the United Kingdom, New Zealand and several smaller countries in the Commonwealth of Nations allow permanent residents or Commonwealth citizens (which Australians are) to vote in national elections.

Nor is electoral disengagement inevitable. While New Zealand, the United Kingdom and Canada record declining voter participation, in the United States, Germany, and India, voter participation has seen an upward trend in the past decade or two.

ABC News has an interactive graphic demonstrating how the major party vote has declined since 1972 – and is now at a tipping point where more independent and minor party crossbenchers are getting elected.

It strikes a chord with a paper Richard Denniss and I wrote last year about how power sharing in Australian parliaments (like minority and coalition governments) is common and can be very productive.

One consequence of the rising independent and minor party vote is that there are no safe seats – a sentiment echoed by Labor and Liberal politicians in the ABC article:

“Safe seats are a myth in 2025,” Labor MP Jerome Laxale says. “I’ve learnt throughout my time that people will back you if you work for them, if you’re honest and genuine, regardless of your political party.”

Liberal MP Keith Wolahan agrees: “When I speak to colleagues in Canberra, even those on really healthy margins, they’re looking over their shoulder thinking, is my seat facing a contest that hasn’t happened before?

“It’s a healthy thing because it forces members to never take their seats for granted.”

Meanwhile, things are going really well with Australia’s great ‘ally’ the United States, in terms of how it is handling the Russia-Ukraine ‘peace deal’.

As AAP reports:

President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy have clashed again on efforts to end the three-year-old war in Ukraine, with the US leader chiding Zelenskiy for refusing to recognise Russia’s occupation of Crimea.

Trump’s Vice President JD Vance said it was time for Russia and Ukraine to either agree to a US peace proposal “or for the United States to walk away from this process”, echoing a warning from Trump last week.

Speaking to reporters in India on Wednesday, Vance said the proposal called for freezing territorial lines “at some level close to where they are today” and a “long-term diplomatic settlement that hopefully will lead to long-term peace”.

“The only way to really stop the killing is for the armies to both put down their weapons, to freeze this thing,” he said.

A former Western official familiar with the US proposal said it also called for the recognition of Russia’s annexation of Crimea.

Since taking office in January, Trump has upended US policy toward the war in Ukraine, pressing Ukraine to agree to a ceasefire while easing pressure on Russia, which launched a full-scale invasion of its neighbour in 2022.

Zelenskiy on Tuesday reiterated that Ukraine would never cede Crimea to Russia, which seized control of the peninsula in 2014 in a move that was condemned internationally. “There’s nothing to talk about here. This is against our constitution,” he said.

Trump, who argued with Zelenskiy in a disastrous Oval Office meeting in March, called this an inflammatory statement that made peace harder to achieve. He said in a social media post that Crimea was lost years ago “and is not even a point of discussion”.

Zelenskiy acknowledged later in an X post that the London talks among US, Ukrainian and European officials were marked by high emotions but expressed hope that future joint work would lead to peace.

He pledged again that Ukraine would abide by its constitution and said he was sure Kyiv’s partners, in particular the United States, “will act in line with its strong decisions”.

He attached to his post a 2018 Crimea Declaration from Mike Pompeo, Trump’s secretary of state during his first term, which said: “The United States rejects Russia’s attempted annexation of Crimea and pledges to maintain this policy until Ukraine’s territorial integrity is restored.”

Independent Wentworth MP Allegra Spender wants some more information on the investigation the AEC carried out into illegal pamphlets which were distributed in her electorate. The AEC reported last night that it had identified one of the people responsible for distributing 47,000 of the unauthorised election materials. Spender wants the person identified and says:

Last night, the AEC announced it had identified one of the persons responsible for distributing 47,000 unauthorised and illegal pamphlets in Wentworth.

I am writing to the AEC today to request more information about its decision.

I am concerned that the AEC has announced that it will not identify the person responsible and will not decide whether to prosecute them until after the election.

This pamphlet made false and defamatory claims against me and deliberately flouted the Australian Electoral laws regarding the authorisation of election material.

The AEC’s statement also says: “Voters are reminded to stop and consider the source of all messages relating to the 2025 federal election.”

The purpose of the law on authorisation is to ensure voters can identify the source of election messages.

It is not clear to me why, in this case, the AEC will not identify the source of this offensive material, which has already been widely distributed in pamphlet form and widely circulated in community chat groups.

How can voters consider the source if the AEC will not identify that source?

I will be asking the AEC to reconsider its decision or explain what compelling reasons it might have in this case to override its responsibilities to inform the public and enforce the law.

Allan Behm, the special adviser and director of the international and security affairs program, has written an op-ed for the Guardian on the Coalition’s defence policy:

Politicians do not do irony well, especially when they are on the ropes.

How else can one understand the Coalition’s invertebrate media release two days before Anzac Day – commemorating over 100,000 Australian war dead – which outlines a defence plan that could put Australians at risk in the dystopian world the policy is supposed to fix?

The bravery of the fallen is these days outdone only by the bravado of those who advocate significant increases in military capability and expenditure without risk assessment or cost analysis. The Coalition’s braves are barracking for a $21bn increase in spending over the forward estimates to bring our national defence spending to 2.5% of GDP by 2030.

There is no courage in calling for increased spending. Lots of would-be experts do, even though only a third of Australians agree.

But it is clearly a bridge too far in the courage stakes to say where the money will come from. There are only three sources: increased taxation; cuts to existing programs or increased debt – or a combination of these.

In a political climate that favours the path of least resistance, no one is going to advocate tax increases. So, what about cutting aged care, veterans’ services, health, education and social security support? Good luck with that.

You can read the whole piece, here.

Greens senator Larissa Waters is not impressed with the Coalition’s $90m family and domestic violence policy spend announcement:

The LNP are clearly desperate to pretend they care about women.

More than 20 women killed in Australia this year by violence and Dutton’s allotted a measly $90m in the LNP’s ‘domestic violence strategy’, announced just nine days before the election.

$90 million is what Mr Dutton thinks ending FDSV is worth, when frontline services have been saying they need $1 billion a year. Only the Greens have committed to fully funding frontline services. 

DV disclosure schemes are one piece of the puzzle, but not the most important one. 

The LNP’s plan is not about protecting anyone. If Mr Dutton truly cared about protecting women and children, he’d match the Greens $15 billion commitment to fully fund frontline services and prevention efforts. 

The Greens’ plan prioritises survivor-centred policies and if we made the 1 in 3 big corporations that pay no tax contribute their fair share, we could make sure women and children are safe.”

Kooyong independent MP Monique Ryan spoke to ABC radio Melbourne this morning after a candidates’ forum she was at was invaded by three “right wing bullies” who immediately started yelling about immigration as they entered the room.

Ryan helped stop the moment from becoming a physical altercation by moving away a woman who confronted the men.

She told the station:

[The woman] was clearly expressing distress. She was kind of screaming, actually. And then she went over to him, and she sort of threw a punch at him. She was a little lady, pretty frail, and he was not a small man, and I was really concerned about that, and the potential for that to escalate, where he did give her a push or something like that,” Ryan said.

[I] firmly moved her away and asked another member of the audience to look after her. She actually looked a bit taken aback by her own action in doing that … I spoke to her afterwards, and she was a bit horrified by the whole thing.

Ryan said she asked another of the candidates to call the police while audience members and organisers of the Friends of the ABC event moved the men out of the room.

….Eventually they left,” Ryan said.

It was stupid, pointless posturing, basically by these right wing bullies … these people were just undertaking pointless disruption.”

After Hunter Labor MP Dan Repacholi told the SMH’s Matthew Knott he thinks there should be a minister for men (to deal with issues like men’s mental health), Labor has announced a men’s mental health policy.

Here are the official details of the additional $32m policy:

Movember statistics show as many as two in every three men are foregoing health support due to gender sterotypes – and around half believe avoiding health check-ups is normal.

Australian men are three times more likely to take their own life than women, and are significantly less likely to seek mental health support.

Labor will deliver $11.3 million for Movember to provide men’s health care training to primary health care workers, and to develop a campaign to encourage men to visit the doctor. 

Training will be based on Movember’s existing Men in Mind program for mental health workers and will help over 60,000 doctors and nurses support men to get the health care they need.

Labor will also invest $20.7 million for grassroots initiatives that support men’s mental health and wellbeing in community settings, including:

• $8.3 million to support another two years of Men’s Shed Initiative’s National Shed Development Program, providing grants of up to $10,000 to individual Men’s Sheds. It will also support the Australian Men’s Sheds Association to deliver new health promotion and prevention programs.
• $7.4 million to Movember to expand the successful Ahead of the Game program, delivered in partnership with the AFL, that equips boys and young men in sporting environments with emotional resilience and teaches them to seek help when they need it.
• $3.0 million to Healthy Male to support the delivery of Plus Paternal Initiative, a program that helps men prepare for fatherhood and supports the development of good parenting skills during the perinatal period.
• $2.0 million to the Black Dog Institute to research men’s mental health and suicide prevention at the Danny Frawley Centre for Health and Wellbeing – supporting St Kilda Football Club’s annual AFL ‘Spud’s Game ‘at the MCG, which raises community awareness to fight men’s mental ill health.