Anthony Albanese wants to debate Peter Dutton. Dutton has not yet responded to the agreement Albanese has put forward.

Q: It’s been reported this morning that a Chinese research vessel that doubles as a spy ship is currently circumnavigating off the coast of Western Australia inside our Exclusive Economic Zone. What’s your reaction to that? Are you concerned?

Albanese:

It’s been in New Zealand on a joint research operation, and this isn’t the first time that a similar vessel has been around the Australian coast. It occurred in 2020, for example, just to give one example. Australia, as you would expect, is monitoring this

Q: Prime Minister, Peter Dutton has said that, if he were to be elected, he would live in Sydney rather than Canberra. What do you make of those comments?

Anthony Albanese:

A fair bit of hubris behind that comment, I think. [He is] measuring up the curtains. I don’t take Australians for granted. As Australia’s Prime Minister, my job is to represent the country. One of the frustrations I think that was felt by people in the West was that previous occupants of The Lodge, of the prime ministership, saw themselves as being Prime Minister for Sydney.

It’s extraordinary that I’m a Sydneysider who’s lived there my whole life, but I’ve chosen to work and live in the national capital – I do spend time in Sydney, obviously. My electorate is there. But I believe the Prime Minister should live in The Lodge.

Secondly, I believe there’s been a lot of hubris from Peter Dutton. We’ve seen that. I’ve seen the comments. He says he likes the harbour. You know, everyone likes the harbour. But your job is to be close to where the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet is, where meetings happen almost every day – almost every day when I’m in Canberra, I’m in a meeting.

I’m in the Cabinet Room, I’m in the secure room working away. So it’s up to him to make those declarations, I guess. But certainly I don’t take the privilege that I have of being Prime Minister for granted. I work each and every day to make sure I can continue to be there.

And as Dave Richardson pointed out earlier, it is not just about moving addresses – it is also about moving the public service and the infrastructure for all the briefings, cabinet and the rest of it. It costs MONEY for the prime minister to live in Sydney, that wouldn’t have to be spent if they were in Canberra.

What is Labor’s plan to address youth mental health after the Coalition offered another $400m for it?

Mark Butler:

Well, we’ve done a range of things, really, in mental health. We know there’s a very significant pressure in the community around this. The most important thing we do, first of all, is to expand bulk-billing access to GPs. GPs do more mental health work than any other part of the health workforce. The investments we’ve made in bulk-billing cover mental health items for GPs to be able to do that work as well. We’ve also expanded Headspace – only a short ago, we announced a range of expansions to Headspace, including modernising the model of care there, working with a whole bunch of people who set that model up after all.

These Medicare mental health centres the Prime Minister talked about – they’re bulk-billed, importantly, available on an urgent basis, like Urgent Care clinics. We’ve already opened 61. We’re opening over 35 of them. On 1 January, we will open for the first time an early intervention service available to every Australian without a doctor’s referral on the phone or on digital. This is something that operates in the UK and most other countries to which we compare ourselves and. It will provide much better, free-of-charge access to mental health services early when people need it.

While we wait for the press release section of the press conference to wind up (we are not sure if Mark Butler has taken a breathe here) let’s revisit one of the claims Peter Dutton made in his press conference that sounded immediately suss.

So in the Hunter and elsewhere to be honest people realise if there is not a replacement industry for coal, then these jobs go, and that’s the reality, and there is a much higher in these communities then we see in the cities, and as we have seen in the UK, the US and Canada, there is about almost an 80% transfer of jobs from the coal sector across to the nuclear sector, so our plan underpins the economic success of our country for the next century.

First of all – this is a moot point. As we pointed out earlier, Australia’s coal fired power plants all close before 2040 which is when the CSIRO believes is the most feasible timeline to open one nuclear plant. They mostly all close before 2035 which is closer to when the Coalition think they can get one up. So the Coalition is literally telling you coal fired power will have to continue for longer, or those workers are supposed to just sit around and wait.

Rod Campbell has more:

Peter Dutton claimed in his earlier press conference that “in the UK, the US and Canada, there is about almost an 80% transfer of jobs from the coal sector across to the nuclear sector”.

To put it mildly, this claim is not easy to find evidence for:

·         Canada’s Task force on just transition for Canadian coal power workers and communities doesn’t use the word “nuclear” in it’s final report.

·         Here’s a feature piece on the closure of the UK’s last coal-fired power station – zero mentions of nuclear.

·         The USA Department of Energy published a report with a section on exactly this topic in 2022. It discusses how job numbers could increase by replacing a coal-fired power station with a nuclear one, but doesn’t conclude that actual individual coal workers can easily transition to nuke jobs, saying “Changes across occupations show how workers may be able to directly transition between the coal and nuclear workforces while staying in the same occupation although the day-to-day activities and knowledge required may differ…. there is not a perfect match from coal to nuclear workforces…” (p66). Importantly, this is in a hypothetical, modelling discussion. It presents no evidence of anything like an 80% shift of workers from a coal plant to a nuclear plant happening in the real world.

·         The International Energy Agency report on Coal in a net zero transition, makes net zero mention of coal power workers moving to nuclear plants, even though it supports expansion of nuclear generation and discusses siting nuclear reactors at retiring coal generators.

So, Dutton’s nuclear claim is BS. But we already knew that, you already knew that and I’m never getting back the 15 minutes it took to dig this up. Let’s move on!

Anthony Albanese is laying on the I HEART WA love THICK:

This is joint investment. It follows the announcement that the Cook government gave during their campaign that they are adding to. And it’s an example of the partnership I have with my friend Roger Cook. We’ve known each other for 40 years – sorry to give up our age here of both of us! – we’ve been friends for all of that time.

And it is an absolute privilege to be in a position of a bloke that we used to have a beer with 40 years ago, a chat about footy, and a chat about life – to actually be in a position to make a difference for Western Australians.

I regard Western Australia not as an add-on. Not as an afterthought. It’s something that is front and centre, and has been front and centre since I’ve been in public life.

I first came here in 1983-84. I had Christmas Day here in 1983 over at Rottnest Island as a very young man. Lateek, I was a very young man at that time. And I spent a couple of months here. And I came to love this great state and its people. Ever since then, I’ve returned, and returned as a public office holder to make a difference.

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton has confirmed what Australia Institute research has long shown – there is no gas supply shortage in Australia.

However, the Coalition has promised to make a decision on the North West Shelf gas project expansion within 30 days of taking office.

This has nothing to do with the domestic supply of gas and there is no need at all for more gas. 

Australia Institute research shows:

• 80 per cent of Australia’s gas is exported
• Gas exports have tripled Australian gas and electricity prices
• Australia collects more revenue from HECS than the Petroleum Resources Rent Tax
• Nurses pay more tax than oil and gas companies

Here is Albanese’s main message:

This is a choice, this election. It’s a choice between Labor building Australia’s future and strengthening Medicare, and a coalition led by Peter Dutton that wants to cut everything except for your taxes. A coalition that will cut Medicare as sure as night follows day. Because they’ve got to find $600 billion for their nuclear fantasy, including a nuclear power plant down there at Collie. He hasn’t actually bothered to visit that site up close. If he did, he’d see what is the real future of energy in WA – which is renewables, backed by gas, backed by firming capacity – including batteries – that are being built there on site to connect up with the transmission lines that are currently used by the Collie coal-fired power plant, which will close this decade, and which will be replaced by what is WA’s future energy needs, led by the Premier, Roger Cook.

Back on gas, Peter Dutton this morning told reporters that “If we bring more gas into the system and don’t forget that gas is not just used at home, but natural gas is used to generate electricity, and it will be across the economy, not just in households, but in businesses like this one which will benefit.”

A reminder – more Australian gas is used each year to convert gas to LNG for exports than is used for the entire Australian manufacturing industry. We literally burn more gas just so companies can export LNG than is used to produce all the things that is made in Australia!

Dutton is making it clear with his policy for an east coast gas reservation that we do not have a gas shortage.  

 And thus we don’t need more gas.

On Friday, when everyone was distracted, the latest APS headcount data was dropped.

You can find it here.

The key bits:

• The APS headcount was 193,503, an increase of 16,462 or 8.5% from December 2023
• Ongoing employment as a % of total headcount is 92.1%, up from 88.5% in June 2022
• Overall, APS headcount is up 34,313 or 21.6% since June 2022
• 64.1% of the APS headcount is located outside of Canberra, up from 61.7% in June 2022
• The APS headcount in Canberra is 69,438
• The APS headcount outside of Canberra increased by 25,846 or 26.3% since June 2022
• 75.3% of the growth in APS headcount since June 2022 was outside of Canberra
• 24,377 or 12.6% of APS headcount is located in regional Australia, up by 3,229 or 15.3% since June 2022.

Here’s the broad geographic breakdown of the APS workforce by capital city, rest of the state and state