Q: My question is… ..why you have to exaggerate in this campaign. Why can’t you win this election by telling the truth?

Albanese:

We are absolutely telling Australians – as Peter Dutton did on Sunday night in the Channel Seven debate, to give them a free ad to match Channel Nine’s ad – that, when asked about Medicare, he said the reason why he tried to abolish bulk-billing and introduce a GP tax every time people visited the doctor was he wanted it to be sustainable. He belled the cat. That’s still his view. In saying that, just days ago, he was saying that Medicare is not sustainable. Sussan Ley has stood up in the parliament and spoken about the Liberal Party doesn’t value things which are free. Medicare’s free. Free TAFE. A whole lot of things are free that are important, that Australians value.

Q: So he’s going to abolish Medicare?

Albanese:

He tried to abolish bulk-billing. He tried. He tried, and then he tried, also, to introduce a tax – a payment – every time people visited a hospital: He tried to increase the costs of pharmaceuticals by $5. When he couldn’t get his way, he froze the Medicare rebate for six years. He ripped $50 billion out of hospitals. This is a matter of record. And Peter Dutton said that, if you want to look at future performance, look at past performance. Look at past performance. What I did on income taxes was to come here, front up, say, “I have changed our position.” Why? Because there are cost-of-living pressures on people, and it wasn’t sustainable to, on 1 July last year, to say that you and I get $9,000 and the people who’ve served this meal, the people who’ve cooked it out the back, the people who’ll clean up after us in this room when we leave, get a big duck egg. That is not the Labor way. I fronted up. I had the argument. I won the argument. And they voted for it.

The Labor people in the room give him applause for htis.