LIVE

Thu 1 May

Australia Institute Live: Day 34 of the 2025 election campaign. As it happened.

Amy Remeikis – Chief Political Analyst

This blog is now closed.

Key posts

The Day's News

09.26 AEST

Dutton still feels like he is learning in the job, even though he has had it for 24 years.

AWWWWWWWW.

Q: You have said you’ll save $7 billion a year by cutting the Canberra APS by 41,000 over five years. Will the costings back that? And will they take into account any redundancies and any additional external consultants?

Dutton:

The costings will include all of the policies that we have announced and we have announced some excellent policies. 25 cents a litre cut to fuel tax is going to save people $14 a week and more than that. We’re going to provide support to Australians by giving $1,200 back through a tax rebate. And we’re going to provide support to young Australians to get into housing. These are the policies which are important to Australians and we’ll do it responsibly and we got savings as you identify as well and all of that will be reflected this afternoon. If you got a big spending you got upward pressure on inflation. This is what the Reserve Bank Governor has warned about. I want to make sure that we can bring down the pressure on inflation and that means we can drop interest rates and interest rates will always be lower under a Coalition Government. That’s something I’m very proud of, it’s something that we’ll strive for in Government.

Except nuclear. And where they will cut. You know, just little thing.

09.22 AEST

Why has the Coalition ignored younger voters? Dutton says it hasn’t:

As we have pointed out for younger Australians, who are interested and really concerned about climate and transition into decarbonisation, the Coalition is the best party for you. (Lol)

We’re the only party with a plan to achieve net zero by 2050. The Government’s plan is not going to achieve their targets and they’re already behind on their targets. That much is obvious. In relation to housing, we’re going to provide support to young Australians who have lost the dream of home ownership because Labor’s had a big Australia policy where they brought in a million people over the last two years which is a 70% increase on any 2-year period in our country’s history. So I think if you have a look at the policies, we got a 5% deposit, the ability to get a deposit together more quickly, including through super if you so choose, making sure for your $650,000 of mortgage, the interest you pay there, that is tax deductible. That’s about $1,000 a month and that’s incredible important. Now, we will continue to support young Australians and older Australians through the 25 cent a litre cut in our fuel excise as well, and I think there are many reasons why young Australians would want to vote for a Coalition this election.

09.19 AEST

Q: You’re the leader of the party. Shouldn’t we be able to ask you questions about the details of the costings? Are they inaccurate because they don’t include nuclear?

Dutton:

They’re absolutely accurate. And as you can see from the Labor Party policies, when Jim Chalmers put it out, the Prime Minister wasn’t there with him. So I’m not going to get into beltway issues. What Australians will see in our figures is our economy is better off under a Liberal Government. We always make sure that we have support for families, 30,000 small businesses have closed over the last three years and behind each one of those stories, somebody’s lost their home, they have lost their savings, lost their dream. I want to make sure we support the families and I think this is what the election is about.

09.18 AEST

Seems Mr Congeniality is feeling a little over it today:

Q: On cost, will you hold another press conference later this afternoon?

Dutton:

No, Jane Hume and Angus Taylor will present the position that afternoon. What it demonstrates is as we have said all along, as Australians know from their own experiences, the economy will always be better managed under a Liberal-National Government. The lower debt means interest rates come down. That’s the reality.

We’re just going to do one each.(qustions)

Q: I haven’t finished the question.

Dutton:

I have answered that.

09.16 AEST

First question is on Paul Karp’s story in the Fin that the Bennelong Liberal candidate Scott Yung has been telling voters on pre-polling booths that Dutton won’t be the leader forever.

Dutton:

I note that Scott’s denied those rumours. What he’s telling and what all of our candidates are telling the Australian public is you can’t afford three more years of Labor. Three more years means higher costs, power prices are up, gas prices are up, you pay $14,000 more for a Ford Ranger, pay 25 cents more a litre for petrol, and this Government has been a failure. That’s what people are concentrating on as we get to the election.

09.15 AEST

Peter Dutton press conference

Dutton is up early today – he wants to get ahead of the costings press conference Angus Taylor and Jane Hume will be holding.

Plus, he probably wants this campaign, which Niki Savva has called one of the worst in living memory, to be over.

He’s going straight for the dog whistle this morning, continuing the trend from the last two weeks of appealing directly to One Nation voters:

Anika Wells, a Cabinet Minister in the Albanese government has now offered another in relation to the Voice as well. Obviously lending her support to Penny Wong’s position. That is that the Voice in some form, presumably through legislation, is going to be a part of the Albanese Government’s next term in power if they’re successful on Saturday. I just ask you Australians to think about that for a second. You sent a clear message to the Prime Minister that you said no to the Voice, and now, the Prime Minister is saying back to you – well, we got this secret plan when we’re in Government to reintroduce the Voice in the form of legislation. Now, whether that’s truth-telling or Makarrata, or whatever it might be, the Government should be upfront and honest and the Prime Minister should be honest with the Australian people on the Voice and what this means for people if they vote Labor at this election.

Wells said that the government would continue working to address Indigenous issues.

09.05 AEST

Finance minister Katy Gallagher has given an early press conference after the Coalition’s costings were leaked and published by Nine publishing and News Corp.

Gallagher:

The Coalition’s costings today will show what a con job this has being. Five million people have voted and we will wait and see what is in there, but we can already see that there will be cuts, savage cuts, secret cuts that they’ve hidden all campaign cuts to Medicare essentially to pay for their nuclear reactor scheme and no dressing that up on the end of the election is going to change anything. We know students will pay more, there’ll be less housing, income taxes will rise, and I think it’s all a fraud, really, to pretend that you’re improving the budget bottom line when you know that you’re going to have to borrow hundreds of billions of dollars to pay for nuclear reactors around the country.

09.04 AEST

Your comments

Robert says:

I’ve known folks who consult to state and federal governments, and they make ridiculous money. The Coalition significantly increased the use of consultants in government. How can they say with a straight face that they will save money by cutting public servants, when they’ll just outsource the work as they did before?

Might also be worth noting that the Coalition has avoided saying whether consultant spending will be lower than Labor’s under a government it runs.

08.46 AEST

Jim Chalmers is in the far north Queensland electorate of Leichhardt, where Labor has a chance to take a seat from the LNP.

He’ll be speaking a pre-polling booth soon.

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