Tomorrow is the first of the debates, which will be enough of a punish for us all, so you should switch off now and go live your life. Which is important!

We will bring you all the blow by blows of Day 11 on the campaign trail – we are in the midnight zone of the election campaign, which is when campaigns kinda go a little bit quiet because they don’t want to overwhelm you before the final flurry of activity in the last week. Labor is taking its foot off the accelerator to make it all about the Coalition, which is not exactly enjoying having the spotlight at the moment, given the lack of policy direction.

WHO KNEW YOU WOULD NEED MORE POLICY THAN ‘THE OTHER GUYS SUCK!’

Anyways. It’s all very Auspol.

Thank you to everyone who came by today – we do truly appreciate it. You are the reason this little project is even here, so we truly value you – and your questions have made us better. So thank you.

We will be back tomorrow early, and over caffeinated. And we will also take you through the debate. B But until then, take care of you. Ax

You only have a little over four hours to enrol to vote in the May 3 election. The rolls close at 8pm local time TODAY. You can check where you are enrolled to vote and even if you are on the roll and if not, it takes just a couple of moments.

The AEC says so far, 48,000 have added themselves to the electoral roll and we are looking at about 98% of eligible voters enrolled to vote. So huzzah for democracy.

The Coalition will also make its way back to Sydney at some point before tomorrow afternoon, given that the first debate (the News Corp People’s Forum) will be held in western Sydney.

Fun. Fun. Fun.

AAP has taken a look at Day 10 on the Liberal party campaign:

After stumbling on a key economic policy, Peter Dutton hopes turning attention back to the cost of petrol will fuel his path to victory.

For the fourth time in as many days on the election campaign trail, the opposition leader on Monday visited a service station to spruik plans to halve the fuel excise for motorists.

This time he went a step further, turning up to the Adelaide servo in the passenger seat of a fuel tanker.

Mr Dutton then helped to fill up a campaign car for Liberal candidate Nicolle Flint, who is running in her former seat of Boothby as the coalition look to reclaim ground in South Australia.

Adelaide is a Labor heartland but the opposition is confident it can win back Boothby, with Labor holding the marginal seat on a 3.3 per cent margin.

It wasn’t the only road-related announcement for the day, with Mr Dutton earlier announcing an $840 million freight bypass in Adelaide.

“It provides a safety corridor, and it provides just something that every other state takes for granted,” he told reporters.

“We can’t have trucks coming down through one of the most dangerous intersections and road corridors in our country and pretend that nothing is to be done about it.”

The infrastructure announcement was made in the car park of a Sikh temple, with Mr Dutton also meeting worshippers from the community.

The temple sits in the electorate of Sturt, the only Liberal-held seat in Adelaide, which it maintains on a razor-thin margin of 0.5 per cent.

While campaigning alongside Ms Flint, Mr Dutton rejected suggestions the coalition has a problem with female voters after he was forced to backflip on a proposed work-from-home ban for public servants.

“We have the same number of women in the shadow cabinet as Labor does, exactly the same number,” he said.

“We have, I think, demonstrated in our policies that we want to help families, we want to help women, young women, and we want to make sure that we can do that in a vibrant economy.

“Are we going to be a better government for women and families? Absolutely.”

While the back flip on work from home has been getting all the attention, there are other problems with the Coalition’s plan to cut the public service by 41,000 workers.

The Coalition have confirmed that the cuts will be achieved through natural attrition. But this conflicts with its claims that there will be no cuts to front line services. If a future Dutton government implements a hiring freeze, some of those that will leave the public service will be front line services. If the freeze doesn’t apply to front line services and they’re able to replace staff, then it will take far longer for a Coalition government to reach its 41,000 target.

The hiring freeze also flies in the face of the original justification for the cuts. The Coalition has been claiming that these cuts are about efficiency. But cuts aimed at improving efficiency would involve carefully analyzing where to cut public service fat. A blanket hiring freeze is the very opposite of that. What if the most efficient parts of the public service leave? What if the most inefficient parts stay?

This is an ill thought through policy. It will either save very little money or will degrade government services. Or both.

In case you missed it, the Coalition questioned whether Abbie Chatfield posting clips of her podcast interviews with Anthony Albanese and Adam Bandt on her social media platforms needed election authorisation. Most things involving political candidates do, except for media interviews. The Coalition was trying to pretend that new media, podcasts and social media influencers who may interview politicians for their content, might need those authorisations.

The AEC looked into it and found – no, in the case of interviewing someone for a podcast (where no payment was made, as was the case with Chatfield and other big players in this space like Hannah Ferguson) there is no need for an authorisation – that it is just like a media interview.

Change is happening peeps. Whether you like it or not, each generation is going to make their mark on how they use media and it’s always going to look different to what you grew up with.

The AEC has published published additional guidance about authorisation statements required for social media content:

Influencers / podcasters / content creators

With the increased involvement by influencers, podcasters and other content creators in political commentary during the 2025 federal election the following provides additional information and guidance.   

Electoral communication distributed by individuals or organisations that are not political entities (e.g. candidates or political parties or otherwise required to register with the AEC as disclosure entity), does not require an authorisation unless:

• the material is paid advertising, or
• payment is involved to produce/distribute the material, or 
• gifts-in-kind are provided by a political entity that are conditional on certain material being distributed, or 
• the material is communicated by or on behalf of a political entity. 

The factors outlined above are consistent with electoral authorisation requirements that have been in place for many elections and remain outlined in the AEC’s authorisations better practice guide.

Cross-posting

Today’s additional guidance material is specific to the cross-posting functionality available on some social media platforms. 

Video content originating from an individual or organisation that is not required to authorise their unpaid communication could, if cross-posted by a political entity (e.g party, candidate or associated entity), introduce an authorisation requirement on that content, but only on behalf of the political entity. 

The AEC is communicating with political entities directly to ensure this technical aspect of electoral authorisation requirements is understood. 

The Labor campaign has left Victoria and moved on to Sydney, where it will stay until tomorrow morning from the looks of things.

The Coalition campaign has spent the day in Adelaide

The Migration Institute of Australia is also pushing back against the Coalition’s cut in international students policy:

All sides of politics should be supporting genuine international students and our higher education sector. International education is Australia’s fourth largest export industry bringing in around $50 billion to the Australian economy annually. On a more human level international students bring great vitality and skills to Australia and enrich our culture”, said Mr Peter van Vliet, CEO of the Migration Institute of Australia. Many studies have shown that international students are not responsible for the rental crisis in Australia as they either use purpose-built student housing or share in existing family homes. International students also assist in addressing critical labour shortages in lower skilled areas as they are allowed to work 48 hours per fortnight around their studies.

The Liberal party official spokesperson, Senator James Paterson spoke to ABC radio Melbourne earlier today where he was asked what other policies the Coalition might dump through the election campaign.

Paterson said:

we’ll be up front and honest about it with voters before the election. And we’re being up front and honest about this. You know, politicians from time to time get things wrong. We are human, and we
should acknowledge when we get it wrong. We should admit when we get it wrong and we should correct course. I mean, the alternative here, is to proceed with a policy that we know that people don’t want us to and why would we do that?

Which of course begs the question – why was this policy created at all? What was the point of it?

Modelling from the Treasury department on the impact of Trump’s tariff lunacy suggests that Australia will come through relatively unaffected.

The Treasury thinks the USA is about to experience some serious economic pain – with the real size of its economy being 0.8% smaller by 2027 than it would have been had Trump just decided to keep things as is and just gone golfing (instead of wrecking everything and then still go golfing). Treasury also estimates that inflation in the USA will be 1.4%pts higher than if everyone had let Trump keep sleeping rather than wake him up and let him talk.

China as well is going to struggle more than otherwise would be the case – it’s economy is expected to be about around 0.6% smaller.

Against that Treasury expects Australia’s economy will be much less affected. Prices will be about 0.2% pts higher (ie a bit but not much) and this will only be temporary. Our economy will be 0.1% smaller in real terms than it otherwise would be. This to be honest, is basically a rounding error.

The main reason we are not so affected is because only around 4.5% of all Australia’s exports go to the USA. Treasury notes that some sectors here will be more affected than others – agriculture, energy, mining and durable manufacturing the most, because they are mostly affected by world prices and whether or not the world economy is doing ok.

Pretty much all the impact comes from China, Japan, Korea and India likely wanting less of our stuff (because those economies will be hurt more from the tariffs than we are).

The other reason why we might get through this ok is our flexible exchange rate. As Matt Grudnoff pointed out earlier – a lower exchange rate makes our exports cheaper. So the impact of the tariffs will likely be lessened because the value of our dollar will likely fall (this has already happened today).  

This does seem like good news, and it does reinforce that we should not be panicking, nor feeling any great need to do a deal with the USA on our tariffs.

But should things turn out worse – especially for China –  then it will be tougher for Australia to avoid pain. And crucially it would not matter who wins the election. This is a Trump recession. All that matters is how the Australians government responds. Should the global economy all go to hell, no doubt both sides of politics will rediscover that budget deficits can actually be very good things that help the economy keep going when the economic tsunami from places on the other side of the Pacific hits our shores.