Asked about the Melbourne suburban rail loop and infrastructure, Albanese pivots to Dutton in general:

Melbourne was Australia’s fastest growing city and they got completely neglected by three prime ministers who saw themselves as the Prime Minister for Sydney. You might recall we had an announcement yesterday from Peter Dutton that this Queenslander is going to be the Prime Minister for Sydney as well because there he is, measuring up the curtains at Kirribilli.

I will give him a tip, working from home is what he says he is against – well, the office is in Canberra. Parliament House is in Canberra.

I live in Canberra. You [the press pack] were all at The Lodge on Saturday night, just to out all of you. You were all fair on Saturday night at the Prime Minister ‘s residence and it was in Canberra, not Sydney.

But only have Victorians have to put up with three liberal prime ministers we saw themselves as being just the Prime Minister for Sydney, they are now going to have a Queenslander who sees himself as being the Prime Minister for Sydney as well, if Peter Dutton is elected.

I see myself, a proud Sydneysider but the Prime Minister for Australia. That is why I have been to South Australia more than 20 times, that is why yesterday was my 30th visit Western Australia and that is why Victoria is now getting its fair share of infrastructure investment.

Albanese is asked whether he is taking a leaf out of the SA Labor campaign’s book by focusing on health. Labor always does this though – they break their campaign up into themed weeks. This week is health week.

Albanese:

I am quite happy to be associated with the Premier. We have been friends for a long period of time before both of us were in the position we are in now and indeed, we had dinner I think the night before your election here in South Australia in a pub, quietly, which was pretty extraordinary under the circumstances.

We work really closely together but health is an important priority. That is what Labor governments do. There are two issues the property into public life, being the son of an invalid pensioner who got a rough deal before Medicare existed and housing.

The importance of social and public housing. Bring my experience into public life. I care about health. There is nothing that is more important than healthcare. Labor governments have always made a difference on health.

Just remember this.

When Medicare was introduced by Gough Whitlam, he had to go to a double dissolution election in order to get it up. That is how much they hated the idea that this little card here would be able to give the same healthcare to a billionaire that it gives to an invalid pensioner. They went to an election that they got elected under Fraser.

They abolished it. It took a Labor governments under Bob Hawke to bring it back and it took Bob Hawke to be re-elected and re-elected began to secure it. What is at stake in this election is the same thing.

We will secure these games for health. The increased funding for public hospitals, the support for urgent care clinics, the quadrupling of the bulk billing incentive for GPs.

The training of additional health professionals or Peter Dutton, who had what is a fantastic job as health Minister and chose to use that to try to gut Medicare, gut health funding and to undermine the idea that older people need is this little bit of green and gold plastic.

That is why I am concentrating on health. We will continue, we have not finished yet, we will continue to see a whole range of other issues on health.

My government has had to repair 10 years of disrepair in so many areas, health, education. The education deal, we will have more to say about that as well but my government is a big reforming government and healthcare is front and centre of it.

Two have become a bit more liberal in your language on a Trump over time, DC political benefit in muscling up to US administration on the tariff issue.

Q: Prime Minister, to follow-up on questions about Trump, you have requested a third phone call. Why have you not been able to get it?

WHY OH WHY

Albanese:

What we are doing is putting forward. The US is putting forward a position, we are putting forward a position. What happens is that phone calls come together when things are agreed. I have very clearly indicated Australia is not negotiating over the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme. We are not negotiating over the news bargaining code. We will not undermine our bio security.

On private health companies like Healthscope, Albanese says:

I am concerned about the private hospital sector right now which is why asked the secretary of the department to convene a group of CEOs not just of key hospitals but of their funders and the private health insurers, patient groups and clinicians.

There are some structural issues in the sector more broadly. We have put some quite concrete suggestions about ways to improve that viability and that group is continuing to do its work. Healthscope, the second biggest private provider of hospitals has obviously very publicly had a whole range of issues that they are working through with their lenders and landlords. We are watching that closely.

Ultimately it is a commercial matter between the three parties that we are watching very closely.

We are keen to ensure that we are on top of any strategic fit to the system. For example, in Tasmania we have provided additional money to cover maternity services that Healthscope has closed, which has some relationship to its viability issues.

We work constructively with the Tasmanian government to ensure there is no interruption to maternity services for Tasmanian families and we continue to monitor the situation closely. I’m not going to provide a day-to-day commentary over the ins and outs of these commercial negotiations that are taking place between Healthscope and its lenders and landlords.

For context ahead of this question: lol.

Q: Prime Minister, you have previously said that Donald Trump scares the shitt out of you, what scares you and are you still frightened about those things?

Those comments were from 2017 when Albanese was in opposition. He spoke at a music festival where he said:

“We have an alliance with the US, we’ve got to deal with him (Trump), but that doesn’t mean that you’re uncritical about it.

“He (Mr Trump) scares the shit out of me … and I think it’s of some concern the leader of the free world thinks that you can conduct politics through 140 characters on Twitter overnight.”

That was six months into Trump’s first administration. Those comments were rehashed late last year by conservative media (The Oz, Sky and 2GB) but obviously some people have just found them.

Albanese:

I have a constructive relationship with the president and I have had two very constructive phone calls with him.

Q: What scared of the shit out of you? You said this, what did you mean?

Albanese.

As prime minister I have a constructive relationship with the president and I look forward to continuing to engage with him.

Q: The Trump Administration has gutted US 80, leaving a void in terms of foreign aid. The budget did not include a huge optic in foreign aid. Can you explain the thinking behind that and can we expect the Albanese government to fill the void in the next term?

Penny Wong takes this one:

There was an increase in aid in accordance to indexation and it is a big difference between the billions of dollars Peter Dutton and the Coalition took out of eight while in office which created a vacuum in the Pacific for others to fill.

But impacted Australia’s security. We have reshaped the aid budget to reflect Australia’s security circumstances we live in and to reflect the reality of the USA cuts. The vast majority of Australian aid goes to the Pacific and South East Asia because it is in this region of Australia security interests lie.

Q: A new trade report out of the US has updated a list of grievances that the Trump Administration has with Australia, including your attempts to force big companies like matter to pay for news. Are you worried that Donald Trump will expand the tariffs on Australian products and have you been able to get on the phone again?

Albanese:

I have seen this report and the report has three things that are of concern at least. One is the news bargaining code, the second ‘s pharmaceuticals and the third is by a security. Those issues are not up for negotiation from the Australian Government. We will defend Australia’s interests. The idea that we would weakened via security laws is like cutting off your nose to spite your face. In order to defend the exports that total less than 5% of Australia’s exports, you undermine our bio security system. Not on my watch. On my watch, our bio security system is essential. We will negotiate sensibly but we will not undermine the bio security system. These are the issues we have been discussing with the US administration. Those discussions are ongoing. I want to see a constructive outcome but what I will not go is undermine our national protections.

He doesn’t answer whether he has been able to ‘get him on the phone again’.

A reminder that Mark Carney didn’t take Trump’s calls for three weeks.

Q: The Coalition is promising today to loosen the mortgage lending rules to let more younger Australians buy homes. Will you match that? What’s your plan to get younger Australians into homes?

Albanese:

It’s pretty hard to work out exactly what it is that they’re promising. One of the things that we have done is to ensure that banks won’t take into account people’s HECS debt which is really important. In addition to that, the support we’re providing young people is to take 20% further off student dealt on top of the $3 billion we reduced HECS debt by, by changing the indexation arrangements which are there. We’ll give every young person a tax cut.

If you look at the difference that our changes to stage 3 made, 98% of young people were better off because we intervened to changed tax cuts to make sure they got looked after. It is overwhelmingly a much greater proportion due to the number of young people working pardon time who benefit from that tax cut from the first rate up to $45,000.

They benefited from the last tax cut and they’ll benefit from the next one and the one after. Peter Dutton will take that away. In addition to, that we have the series of our $33 billion homes for Australia plan, whether it’s social housing, build-to-rent schemes or whether it is the help-to-buy schemes – All of those measures were opposed by the Coalition.

A Coalition where Peter Dutton sat in the cabinet room for the entire time of the three different prime ministers that were there under the chaotic form a coalition government and he did not once sit there and think to himself, why haven’t we got a Housing Minister? Because behalf the time, they did not even bother to have a Housing Minister and that is one of the reasons why over the period of their government, this became such a major issue.

And to the questions:

Q: The Reserve Bank decision this afternoon, we’ve seen one rate cut this year but the wide expectation today is we won’t see another. What does that say to Australians about where the worst of the economic pain is in the past?

(Just for context, the RBA historically has done more than one cut in a row. That is the USUAL way of doing things. And all the inflation indicators (trend and underlying) is showing that inflation continues to fall. So by holding rates, because it is an election campaign, is the independent RBA being political. But no one likes to talk about that)

Albanese:

Well, Australians know that inflation had a 6 in front when we were elected. It peaked at 7.8% in 2022 and today it’s at 2.4%. It’s in the bottom half of the Reserve Bank band. We have worked hard with the Australian people.

Australians have worked hard to get those inflation rates down because we know that it has been punishing. But what we’ve done is be able to get the inflation rate down to less than half of what we inherited at the same time we’ve provided cost-of-living relief.

Tax cuts for all Australians, not just some, energy bill relief, free TAFE, cheaper childcare, all of these measures together. And importantly as well we have managed to get wages up.

Anthony Albanese is standing next to South Australia’s wildly popular Labor premier, Peter Malinauskas (who is part of the Lithuanian diaspora – labas!) to announce $150m for the Flinders health precinct in Adelaide.

Mark Butler is giving the health week spiel – he has this absolutely DOWN by now.