Q: Are you saying you wouldn’t go ahead with certain elements of AUKUS pillar two until your secured that?

Dutton:

No, I want to go may head with more. I think there is more opportunity in the relationship. I made the point yesterday about the surface fleet. When you are looking at what the Japanese are doing with the Americans, they’re able to provide sustainment of their fleet because the Americans can’t keep up with – with their service fleet servicing.

So there are so many opportunities, the Government’s missed every one. The Prime Minister hasn’t spoken about this at all. I spoke about critical minerals last year. I spoke about it in January again this year. We are a reliable partner for the United States but the Government hasn’t done anything in this regard. So you need to look at off-take Agreements, you need to look at stockpiles, look at every opponent component of what that deal looks like. This Prime Minister hasn’t been able to do that. So I think there is upside in the relationship for both the United States and Australia, I want to get the 10% tariff off because there are small businesses.

You know, mums staying at home who created small business from nothing in their garage or in their back bedroom, they’re exporting to the United States and other companies that are much bigger and I spoke to some of those yesterday. I want to make sure we can expand our economy and that’s why a Liberal Government and a Coalition Government will always be better for families and for our economy.

Would Peter Dutton commit to buying American F-35s to get him to drop the trade tariffs?

Dutton:

Well, just to be clear in relation to where I think the opportunity is: I’ll give two examples.

One is the international agreement that we arrived at that we negotiated with the US and the UK for AUKUS, which is going to be underpinning our security for the next century, that – there’s been a lot of concentration on the submarine element of that, but there’s a lot that’s been done – or needs to be done in pillar two, certainly we envisaged that would happen.

And there’s opportunity there for us to purchase more from our allies including the United States, and for them to purchase more from us.

In relation to the guided weapons explosive ordinants, the program we had, that’s about keeping our country safe.

The government has defunded that program and there are components in the assembly line that can be purchased from Australia, from Australian companies, and there are weapons systems obviously that we can purchase from the United States.

So that’s why I think there’s a mutual interest to be found in the discussion with the United States. But you can’t have that discussion if the Prime Minister of the day can’t get a phone call or a meeting with the President of the United States.

The Prime Minister and his colleagues have been, you know, talking a big game, but why haven’t they been talking this game from January 20? It was well-known to the Albanese Government that there was going to be a tariff imposition. When we were in Government last, we negotiated for Australia to be exempt and this Prime Minister has failed that test. The precedent was there for it to happen. It hasn’t happened. I think that’s the difference between the two parties. We have a lot that we can bring to the table to enhance the relationship and I think that’s what Australians would expect.

So Dutton is promising to cosy up to Trump even more. WHAT COULD GO WRONG

Peter Dutton is the first up today. He is at Parramatta where he is going on about choices and the fuel excise (which has been already been debunked as being overstated in savings)

Asked whether he is disappointing the business community by not committing to repealing the same job same pay legislation (which prevents companies from hiring labour force hires for less money than staff) Dutton says:

We’re the party of making sure we can manage the economy effectively (what does that even mean) and we want to create an environment where people are able to expand their businesses and where families can afford to live again.

I want to make sure that small businesses and bigger businesses but pensioners and families as well can get a 25 cent a litre cut in the fuel price that they pay at the bowser every time they fuel up. And that’s what we’re offering at this election.

The Prime Minister’s offering 70 cents a day. It’s – it’s just not going to cut it. Families have gone back by $50,000 under this government. There’s – I think there’s more pain out there than what Australians realise and that’s what we’re focused on at the moment.

Meanwhile, the Guardian’s Sarah Basford Canales has taken a look at the Liberal candidate for Whitlam who appears to have shaped his entire identity around looking like Joe Rogan was drawn from memory:

From the story:

Benjamin Britton, who has been praised by Peter Dutton as an “outstanding candidate”, ran unsuccessfully for the United Australia party at the 2022 federal election.

He has since claimed “diversity and equity quotas, Marxist ideology and woke ideologies” have weakened the country’s defences, singling out a 2013 change allowing women to be recruited into frontline combat positions.

Among Britton’s other claims expressed on the podcasts are:

• Exposure to pornography leads to gender dysphoria and “transgender desires”;
• Labor intentionally keeps some electorates poor to have a better chance of winning them;
• Australia should “look at the Isle of Man” for lessons on introducing a flat tax rate to attract billionaires;
• The education system has “brainwashed” young Australians with Marxist ideology.

Can someone please ask one of these people to actually define what they mean by ‘Marxist ideology’? Do they have any idea what any of the words coming out of their mouths even mean?

I mean let’s go through this bullshit one by one.

If exposure to pornography leads to gender dysphoria and transgender desires, then why isn’t every teenage boy since about the 1800s or so experiencing gender dysphoria? Trans people make up about 1% of the population.

If Labor is intentionally keeping some electorates poor, than what exactly are the Nationals doing? The Nationals represent the poorest electorates in the country. At the last election, Labor electorates, on average, now outstrip Coalition electorates on earnings.

Why does every white man with a podcast want to simp for billionaires? They are never going to love you. We are all closer to becoming homeless than we are to getting anywhere near a billionaire’s circle and that’s not going to change.

Karl Marx helped shaped the Republican party. This was obviously a completely different time, but this idea of ‘Marxist ideology’ “brainwashing” school students is code for ‘schools sometimes explain things outside of the conservative prism and I don’t like it’ but these people who throw around these terms have as much understanding of Marxist ideology as they do female anatomy.

Meanwhile, in Kooyong, where the Liberals are trying to win back the seat from independent Monique Ryan, they have narrowed their entire campaign down to…corflutes.

Every single time a Liberal party corflute is damaged, or someone says something nasty about the Liberal party, someone runs to Sky News to say it was probably Monique Ryan.

In this economy. In this world. With these issues. Fricking corflutes is what has the Liberal party in a chokehold in Kooyong.

The problem with the Coalition’s message on this, which boils down to ‘we would have done everything the same, but also begged’ is that an increasing number of people don’t feel the same way about Trump as they do. Canada’s population has been energised by the ‘Elbow’s up’ campaign against the US. The UK is reviewing AUKUS. South Korea and Japan have united with China in a sign of (extraordinary given their histories) solidarity against Trump’s trade policies.

And in Australia, more people are looking at Trump as a threat, rather than an ally. The Australia Institute polling found that early last month, and the SMH polling found the same thing earlier this week.

It turns out that when the Face Eating Leopard party starts eating faces, suddenly things change.

Jason Clare then managed to get in his favourite line:

The Liberal Party is on Team Trump and we’re on Team  Australia..

Campaigns have spokespeople who say the things the leader, who is supposed to look dignified and sensible, can’t say.

So you can have the Praetorian Guard out the front making the quips and speaking in plain language, and then you have the leader who then says the same thing but in much more diplomatic language. Jason Clare does it for Labor and James Paterson does it for the Coalition.

Who have you heard more from, this campaign?

The Coalition are shouting about how they could have gotten a better deal from Trump, (Trump who campaigned on tariffs, who has made tariffs his identity, and who has imposed tariffs with no rhyme or reason for no other reason than he is an egotistical madman intent on revenge and destroying as much as he can, just because he can) and the way they would have gotten that ‘better’ deal (which would be no tariffs I assume) is by dangling critical mineral deals in front of him (Labor did that), appealing to him about the ‘friendship’ between Australia and the US (Labor did that) and oh, flying to see him in person.

Jason Clare:

Japan did  that, the UK did that, they can’t  get a better deal. Donald Trump put tariffs on an island where there are no human beings, there are just  penguins, so it is just ridiculous for Peter Dutton to be saying this could have happened but that’s just typical of Peter Dutton.

Enter Sussan Ley who looks like she is questioning every life choice she has ever made (which we assume also includes adding an extra S to her name for better numerology results)

Ley:

Can I say, these blows are a real blow to our exporters including the wine producers of western NSW  and in rural areas, where I come  from. But there has been a clear  failure of leadership here. Anthony Albanese has not done everything  that he could possibly do to spare Australians from this economic pain. How can he say that he left  everything on the field when he  didn’t even lace up his boots and  run out onto the pitch. This was a Team Australia moment. The captain of the team did not even turn up. We know that this was the disposition of the US administration from over four months ago. We’ve got a Prime Minister who can’t get a call, an Ambassador who can’t get a meeting. Meanwhile it is our exporters  suffering today?

Honestly.

Labor campaign spokesperson Jason Clare appeared on the Seven Network’s breakfast program where he criticised Peter Dutton for his (based on nothing) claims he would have got a better deal from Donald Trump. Dutton is now claiming that he would have dangled critical minerals in front of Trump (Trump loves himself a critical mineral) but Clare is like ‘duh, of course we did that?’

Clare:

We’ve already offered that to the US and they’ve rejected. What the US has done here is wrong. There is zero tax on American goods coming to Australia so there should be zero tariffs on what we sell to the United States. This is why we  say this is not the action of a  friend.

Peter Dutton was on this  morning talking about this. You  know, we’ve all got mates who are gibberers who could have said, “I  could have done a better, I could  have done something better.” But  they’re not running to be the Prime  Minister of Australia.

He beats his chest, pretending his tough. He’s  talking about doing a deal with the United States. Peter Dutton would  more likely write a book on the art of the kneel. We’re not going to bend the knee.

We’re not going to bend the knee to the States. We’re stand up for ourselves every single time.

It has been a slower start to the election campaigning today – there is a News Corp event in western Sydney, so both campaigns are in the Emerald City today. Both leaders, of course, will appear at the event.

The first debate is next Tuesday, which will also be a News Corp event and will also be hosted in western Sydney.

Then Jim Chalmers and Angus Taylor will debate each other (lol) on the Wednesday of next week.

Then there is another debate between Albanese and Dutton, this time hosted by the ABC, the week after.

Huzzah.