Given it is health week, Mark Butler is a pretty busy beaver.

He was in WA with the prime minister yesterday and is back in his home state of South Australia this morning where he tells the ABC that Labor wants to see bulk billing get back to around 90%.

That’s the modelling we’ve done. It’s a very big investment, $8 billion of additional investment into Medicare. But there’s strings attached. Some of the doctors groups said give the additional funding and we’ll do the right thing.

No, I said we want an outcome for patients from this very big taxpayer investment and that outcome is bulk billing. Our modelling suggests once it flows through the system there will be an additional 18 million free visits to the GP. It’s good for people’s hip pocket, obviously, but we don’t want people deferring a visit to the doctor because of cost. It’s why we’re making medicines cheaper and we’re so heavily focused on bulk billing. Affordable free visits to the doctor is a critical to a well functioning health system.

The government is tripling the incentive for doctors to bulk bill, but so far, has not announced a change to the bulk billing rate itself. That matters because there are conditions to get the increased incentive that not all private doctor clinics can meet for a variety of reasons (but the main one is that for some GPs, it would be asking them to work for less pay)

On election misinformation and disinformation, Jeff Pope says:

It’s actually now a feature of life regrettably, and it’s driven a lot by social media. We work closely with social media companies.

But the main thing we’re focusing on is giving the voter tools and resources which are all on our website but you’ll also see our Stop and Consider campaign rolling out again also in multiple languages, to help assist the voter in understanding there is misinformation and disinformation out there, how to disinformation out there, how to spot it and we’re asking people stop and consider the source of the information that you’re hearing or information that you’re hearing or seeing or reading,see if you can verify it.

If it makes you angry or it’s got emotive language in it, it probably is disinformation and misinformation and don’t share it and certainly don’t add to that problem to your algorithm on your social media platforms.

So we’ll be out there with lots of messages but please go to our website if you’re looking for tips on how to counter misinformation and disinformation.

Acting Electoral Commissioner Jeff Pope has spoken to the ABC this morning about the deadline to enrol to vote and making sure your details are correct:

You have until 8:00pm next Monday night and we’ve had over 77,000 people update theirtheir enrolment or get onto the electoral roll , so time is ticking away so time is ticking away so please go to www.aec.gov.au and update your enrolment details

You just need your driver’s licence, or Medicare card to update or enroll.

It is also running one of the largest advertising campaigns in its history to remind people to get on the roll.

This might seem familiar from the SMH and Age today: Worse than Russia? Voters fear Trump’s America.

David Crowe has written up the paper’s Resolve poll which has found “Australians have scaled up their concerns about United States President Donald Trump after his first six weeks in office, with 60 per cent saying his election victory has been bad for Australia – up from only 40 per cent who said the same last November.”

If it sounds familiar it is because Australia Institute polling released 4 March found:

The results show that:

• Three in 10 Australians (31%) think Donald Trump is the greatest threat to world peace, more than chose Vladimir Putin (27%) or Xi Jinping (27%).
• Most women (56%) feel less secure in Australia since the election of Donald Trump; only 13% of women feel more secure.
• More Australians prefer a more independent foreign policy than prefer a closer alliance with the United States (44% v 35%).
• Half of Australians (48%) are not at all confident that Donald Trump would defend Australia’s interests if Australia were threatened, compared to only 16% who are very confident that he would do so.
• Half of Australians (51%) think Donald Trump’s election is a bad thing for the world, twice as many as think it is a good thing (25%).

So there is obviously a trend, which has been identified early by those who are looking. But as the SMH’s Peter Hartcher has pointed out in today’s paper: “As the pincers of Australia’s geopolitical position continue to close in on the Complacent Country, our leadership would rather not talk about it.”

But that too, is not new:

It’s April’s Fools day, which means its going to be even more painful than usual out there, so take care.

Anthony Albanese is in South Australia for another health announcement (Labor likes to break up its campaign by themes so this seems to be health week) while Peter Dutton is in Melbourne where he will talk infrastructure, and according to the Australian, easing the home lending rules the financial regulator has put in place. You know, the ones which were created after the banking royal commission? It’s almost like we have been here before.

Dutton was in Brisbane overnight for a Sky After Dark event, where he accused Labor of “throwing as much mud as they can” which is like Elon Musk having a cry because people don’t want to buy Tesla’s anymore. Dutton, who has a history ranging from accusing asylum seeker women on Nauru of “trying on” rape claims to come to Australia for treatment, calling the opening of migration to Lebanese Muslims “a mistake”, stirring up a fake “African gang” ‘crisis’ for political gain in a Victorian state election, accusing the Labor government of “letting out” “hardened criminals” when it was a high court decision, destroying the Voice referendum with lies and mistruths, who wants to hold a referendum to be able to deport dual citizens and who has a history of just disappearing whenever there are hard questions, suddenly has to face up every single day of an election campaign and is now accusing his opponents of “throwing mud”.

While Dutton has been in the political eye for years, he is largely untested when it comes to facing scrutiny. He’s always had a leader who has cleaned up the messes he made while a minister, and as opposition leader he has mainly stuck to interviews with friendly media. He rarely faces the Canberra press gallery and tends to hold his doorstops outside of Canberra where there is not a lot of institutional memory. When things are on the nose for the opposition leader, he, has Niki Savva and others have repeatedly pointed out, disappears for four or so days and then comes back and pretends there was never any issue. Every time there the Liberal party suffered a mis-step, he would throw up a distraction – nuclear, opposing the voice, won’t stand in front of the Indigenous flag – the list goes on.

This election campaign is the first time he has had to front up every day and face the media and so far, it is not going great. That’s not to say he won’t be successful – a day can be a long time in politics, but in an election campaign it may as well be a month – or that he won’t find a sense of momentum. But the struggles we have seen so far were all predictable.

Dutton is running a campaign on where he wants to take the Liberal party – to the outer suburban seats, which is where he sees the Liberal party’s future. But as a major party, you have to appeal to everyone. And so far, Dutton is struggling with the duality required, not just in an election campaign, but as leader.

Still, there is a long way to go. And while Anthony Albanese has had a better start than last election campaign and has Daniel Andrews helping to coach him on delivering lines and preparing for debates, he doesn’t just have to be across Labor’s election platform, but the world. And with Trump continuing to freak out everyone with pattern recognition, Israel making it clear it’s plan is for the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians with the “Trump” plan, global unrest in general and an Australian public bruised by inflation, the pandemic and dashed hopes, it is not exactly smooth campaign waters for him either.

So let’s get into day four of this mess we are calling an election campaign. Coffee number three is on the stove (I spent last night reading political history and regret many of my choices).

Thanks for spending some time with us today. We promise to try and keep it interesting.

Ready? Let’s get into it.