The Coalition is promising to reduce the safeguards that the financial regulator requires for people to get a mortgage. This will allow people to borrow larger amounts and, they reason, more of them will be able to buy a home.

But if everyone can borrow more then everyone shows up to the auction able to bid up the price. All that happens is house prices rise even faster.

Those that thought they might finally be able to buy a home realise they’re still locked out as prices race away from them. Those trying to save up watch as house price rises mean the deposit they need grows at a faster rate than they can put money away.

Just like the idea to let people access their super to buy a home, these kinds of ideas only help people who already own houses. They don’t help people trying to buy their first home.

Rather than pumping up demand for houses the Coalition should instead announce reforms to negative gearing and the capital gains tax discount which would reduce investor demand for housing. This will make housing more affordable and lift home ownership rates.

The Auditor-General has released a “performance audit” for the last three years of government advertising. This is taxpayer-funded advertising – and could be anything from life-saving public health and natural disaster awareness campaigns to barely-disguised boasting and self-promotion.

Government advertising is distinct from the party-political advertising that political parties and candidates pay for, which you’ll be seeing a lot more of during the election campaign.

Over the three years July 2021 to June 2024 (around one year of the Morrison Coalition Government and around two years of the Albanese Government), government advertising cost $769 million. That makes the government a major advertiser, on the scale of companies like Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, Amazon, Pepsi and Qantas.

And as you can see from the Auditor-General’s graph, some election years (2015–2016 and 2021–22) see high spending on government ad campaigns. Some of this spending is to make the government of the day look good, not to genuinely inform the public.

So how did governments do? The Auditor-General looked in detail at three advertising campaigns and concluded they were “largely compliant” with the rules that government advertising must follow. Unfortunately, the rules are pretty limited. When The Australia Institute looked at this topic in 2022, we wrote:

“The current regulatory model for government advertising is clearly insufficient. A box-ticking exercise by chief executives and sign-off from an independent committee that does not see the actual materials (just the overall strategy) has failed to prevent controversial campaigns from proceeding.”

We recommended a greater role for the Auditor-General in reviewing government advertising – and polling research at the time showed three in four Australians agreed.

The acting AEC commissioner, Jeff Pope, told ABC news breakfast this morning that part of the Commission’s role is to educate voters about how to cast their vote accurately (or rather, not to accidentally vote informally).

There’s good reason to be thinking about this as a problem. On average, informal votes (the technical term for votes that are invalid and therefore not counted) have been more common in recent elections than in the 1980s and 1990s.

The highest informal vote in recent years was in 1984, when new voting rules for the Senate had the unintended consequence of producing a much higher informal vote for the House of Representatives. (Informal votes shot up from roughly 2% to nearly 7%.) Informal voting tended to sit between 3% and 4% for much of the 1990s, but it has steadily increased in this century. Informal voting hit 5.9% in 2013 and was roughly 5.2% at the last election.

Some of these informal votes are deliberate – when an informal vote is defaced or has a message written on it, this is clearly intended as a kind of statement about their political opinions. But some informal votes are accidental, and showing those voters how to cast a valid vote ensures they are counted.

The best way to ensure your vote gets counted is to number every box in order of your preference.

Peter Dutton is in Victoria – we will hear from him very soon.

He left Brisbane early this morning – he returned to his electorate for a Sky News event, where he had a bit of a whinge about Labor ‘throwing mud’ at him this election.

Meanwhile – everyone deserves someone who looks at them like Paul Murray looks at Peter Dutton.

But don’t worry, Aukus is set. in. stone. (upside down face emoji)

Albanese:

I will not negotiate over coalitions over our values, we will stand on our own two feet.

That is our position and it does not have to be theoretical – to quote someone else, ‘look at past performances’, my past performance in 2013 was to become Deputy Prime Minister of Australia, we did no deals, we went onto the floor of the Parliament, and for our position and then we called an election later after that.

I am very determined to win an absolute majority, we currently hold 78 seats, I think that when Australians focus on what the choice is at this election, the choice is not whether the Government has been perfect in everything that people would like, the choice is, at an election, it is between the Labor government, committed to building Australia’s future, committed to strengthening Medicare, committed to providing homes for Australians, committed to our schools package getting fair funding for schools, something talked about 15 years ago delivered by my government, a government that is seeing wages growing, inflation falling, interest rates are starting to fall, tax cuts for all Australians and Peter Dutton, a Coalition leader, who will cut everything except for your taxes because he has to pay for his $600 billion nuclear plan which will not provide anything until the 2040s and when it does it will provide 4% of Australia’s energy needs.

Peter Dutton and his team, his team, most of whom have run hiding, has anybody seen Angus Taylor in this campaign? – Peter Dutton is not ready for government and his team are not ready to be a fair dinkum opposition.

Q: The leaders will get on the phone once it is agreed between the teams, is that the wrong way around? Should you not be going directly to Donald Trump and trying to convince him that Australia’s position is the best?

(Does anyone understand that diplomacy is not just leaders speaking to each other? That there are whole systems and institutions set up around international diplomacy? Does no one remember the ‘masterstrokes’ that was having Donald Trump play golf with Greg Norman (and that one time with Joe Hockey that he has made an entire career out of) which at the time was GENIUS, but actually happens with countries all the time? And are we standing up to Trump and channeling ‘our inner Mark Carney’ and unbending on what we know is right and our own values, or are we meant to be grovelling? The Australian had a story today about Kevin Rudd “begging” the Trump administration not to put on tariffs, which is apparently what large chunks of the media expect Australia’s ambassadors to be doing, but when it’s allegedly done (Rudd was making the usual entreaties) it’s to be ridiculed. Do you see how ridiculous the whole thing is?)

Albanese:

We have. I have spoken to him. I have put our position very clearly. Consistently. He heard the message and he has commented on it indeed, when we spoke, about tariffs and Australia, put the position very strongly to him, one on one in a 40 minute conversation that for a range of reasons, one, I did not pitch up the theoretical free and fair trade versus tariffs because he has a clear position on that. It is one that I don’t agree with. But it is one that he took to the election and he is pursuing. We have different positions.

On Australia’s position, I put to him that the United States has an interest in that relationship with Australia because it has a two for one, historically since the Truman presidency, twice as much exports from the United States into Australia as the reverse and also the role that Australia plays with our investment in the United States, the Treasurer travelled to the United States after that and President Trump did what I asked of him, to have the Treasury of Secretary and officials attend the meeting held with Australian superannuation funds, I indicated how much investment potentially to the tune of $500 billion, in Australian superannuation funds, can make into the United States in coming years. I reiterated all of that, the president is fully aware of our position, and fully aware of my position.

Q: Labor and Liberal MPs have been forced to cancel appearances at Mosques in recent days, are you concerned about anger in parts of the Muslim community for backlash that might come your way?

Albanese:

I’m not concerned about the policies for this, I’m concerned about social cohesion. Social cohesion is really important. Elections come and go. Do you know what stays? Our commitment to multiculturalism. Our commitment to respect each other. At citizenship ceremonies, my stump speech, has in we can feel about Australia like we can be a microcosm for the world, if you look around the world, conflict in the Middle East, conflict and land war in Europe, wars in Africa, we live in really uncertain times, and I want us to be a microcosm for the world that can show that people of Catholic, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist and no religion can live next door to each other and enrich diversity and by the respect that we show each other. That is what is important.

Q: Earlier in the press conference you asked about the RBA and you listed your cost-of-living relief measures, your progress in lowering inflation, why is this election not a slam dunk for you?

Albanese:

People will vote in an election, and we know that all elections in Australia are close, the only person who thinks it is a is the bloke who has measured up the curtains at Kirribilli House.

I respect the Australian people too much to take anything for granted.

If you look at history…no Prime Minister has been re-elected since 2004, the last seven elections have produced seven different prime ministers, we live in a period of global inflation that has had an impact and place pressure on people, the difference between the two sides of this election in terms of what we have done in the first term, is that Peter Dutton has sought to elevate grievances, to be negative, to talk Australia down – what my government has done is said, people who are under financial pressure, you know what we will do?

We will take measures that reduce the cost-of-living, while putting the downward pressure on inflation while not leaving people behind by throwing people onto the unemployment queue. That is what we have done, that is what Labor governments do, will not sacrifice people because we understand that an economy has to work with people and not people working for an economy, an important distinction

Q: Back to Donald Trump, the latest result, of the strategic Coalition poll would have us believe that Peter Dutton will have the best leadership to handle Donald Trump, why do you think that is and you think you should be channelling your inner Mark Carney to bring to the game?

Albanese:

I am not a commentator, I will leave that to all of you. On Mark Carney I have had the opportunity to speak to the new prime minister of Canada, he is in an election as well and the election will be held before ours. That is a matter for the Canadian people.

Q; An increasing number of Australians believe that the election of Donald Trump is bad for Australia.

Albanese: There seems to be a theme at this press conference.

Q: You can’t get our most important security ally on the phone to talk about tariffs, should there be a consideration to shift our policy towards Washington?

Albanese:

No, we support our foreign policy. As I have set out on a number of occasions, now, what happens is that there is negotiations with the respective side between Australia and the United States. They have put positions to us, we have put positions to them.

Then, things are agreed, then what happens is that the leaders get the grand signature or they get to have that declaration. There is, at this point in time, a lot of cooperation and discussion, a lot of commonality going forward, but I have said in the document that was released by the United States overnight, just to name three, some of the issues raised as well, pharmaceuticals, bargaining code bio security, I will stand up for Australia’s national interests.

Would Peter Malinaukus work with Peter Dutton nuclear? (Apart from the cost, Dutton would need the states to agree)

Albanese:

I have spoken plainly on this on a number of occasions. Why would any premier of any jurisdiction around the country support making electricity more expensive households in business? When we talk about cost of living, there is little doubt that energy is top of mind for all Australians.

Peter Dutton has a plan to make it more expensive. More than that, the plan he has specifically to South Australia is not just a plan to make it more expensive, it is a plan to build a small modular nuclear reactor that has not been deployed anywhere in the world for civil electricity purposes anywhere, ever.

It seems more like a… I can’t be clear about it. His plan would make electricity and energy prices for South Australia is more expensive and there is not a month of Sundays we would support a plan to do that