Asked how the Coalition can bank on savings from its public service cuts given it is now saying it will do it through natural attrition (which just means that you don’t replace people who resign) Dutton doesn’t answer the question:

Our country is going to $1.2 trillion worth of debt. We may have a global recession. People will see the value of their superannuation funds really dramatically decrease if that happens. Labor can’t manage money.

They can’t manage the economy is why they always tax. And our policies are about helping Australians – I want to improve the living standards of every Australian – over the last three years, people have gone backwards.

There’s been a household recession in this country. Families are $55,000 worse off. We need to be responsible in the way in which we manage the economy.

The opposition leader is in Adelaide and is trying to mop up the work from home reverse ferret.

How bad was the polling when it came to women if the Coalition have had to drop what was one of its only consistent policies?

Peter Dutton:

The polling objective is to make sure we can win the next election so we can manage the economy well, to support families get through a really difficult period.

People can’t afford three more years of Labor. What we have said clearly is that where we’re collecting taxpayers’ money from people who are working harder than ever, you look around South Australia, people who are working second and third jobs just to pay the mortgage because it’s gone up by, you know, on 12 occasions under this government, they need to be reassured the taxes they’re paying is being spent effectively.

That in part was the point we’re making.

I have apologised for the decision we took in relation to work from home. It only applied to Canberra. Labor’s run this scare campaign and I think we bring an end to that today. And we strongly support flexible workplace arrangements.

An interesting point which was missed over the whole Darwin Port buy back kerfuffle over the weekend (both parties have pledged to take back the port from a Chinese owned company).

Dutton said he had spoken with the Chinese Ambassador about the plan on Friday “out of respect”.

But in 2022, Dutton accused Labor of ‘appeasing’ China after it became public that three years before hand, in 2019, Richard Marles had shared a speech he was delivering in Beijing with the Chinese embassy.

Here is what Dutton had to say then (there was no evidence Marles had given the speech for ‘approval’.

I would never run a speech through the Chinese embassy to get their approval before I spoke,” Mr Dutton said.

“And it shows the culture within the Labor Party, it is not going to keep our country safe… and Penny Wong and Richard Marles and Anthony Albanese out there this week show their naivety, their lack of preparedness to keep our country safe into the future.

“When you talk about border protection or you talk about the defence of our country, they just don’t have the culture within their party, the ability to make tough decisions when they need to be made and to stand up for our country.

“They’re backing China over the United States and that is a shocking mistake.”

And here is what Dutton had to say on the weekend:

This is an important national security issue and we had contact yesterday with the Chinese Ambassador, out of respect, before we made this decision.

I don’t know whether the Prime Minister made a call before he called ABC Radio but we have thought through this process for a long period of time and the Prime Minister jumping on the phone, trying to get in on the announcement that we’ve made today, I think, shows that this Prime Minister is like the fireman who turns up to the fire when the fire has already been extinguished. I mean he’s too late to everything and we’ve made the announcement today because it’s in our national interest and that’s exactly what we’ve done.

Things that make you go MMMMhhhhhhhh

Independent MP Dai Le looks like holding the seat of Fowler against Labor’s Tu Le (Anthony Albanese has said it was a mistake for the party to run Kristina Keneally in Tu Le’s place at the last election, but it looks like it has come too late)

Dai Le told the ABC she thinks she has made a difference in the parliament and her electorate knows that:

Can I say that I’m glad to see that both the major parties, you know, are now focusing on the cost of living. As the first independent to be elected to the federal parliament, I believe I was the first ever to raise the issue on cost of living in May 2022, and 2023.

So, I’ve been driving the conversation in Parliament, asking questions around tax cuts, around HECS reduction, around petrol fuel excise tax cut, about Medicare, so I’ve been, you know, harping on about those issues.

It’s great to see the major parties are now campaigning on those issues. I wonder though it’s a bit too little, too late for our community. Who are still really feeling, you know, the rise in interest rates, the rise in cost of living in particular for food, we have a lot of families here that are now lining up, asking for food hampers. Grocery prices have gone up. For businesses, energy price has gone up by more than 30%, and I hear that daily when I go out there and speak to those communities. Not just small businesses but also families struggling to pay their bills. So, um, I’m glad to see the major parties are campaigning on issues that I have been fighting for. And yeah, let’s see what happens on election day. And whether or not people will feel they’re going to be better off under the current government.

Labor held a campaign rally in Brisbane over the weekend with some familiar faces

And where the big announcement was $4000 off the cost of household batteries.

As AAP reports:

The subsidies, which would kick in from July 1 if the government is re-elected, would reduce the cost of a typical battery by 30 per cent.

While one in three homes have solar panels, only one in 40 households have batteries due to the high up-front cost, averaging around $14,000 per unit.

That means most consumers are unable to draw on excess solar power, generated during periods of peak supply during the day, at periods of peak demand at night.

A regular household taking advantage of the incentive to purchase a new solar and battery system can expect savings of up to $2300 a year – or 90 per cent – off their energy bill, government analysis shows.

Households with existing rooftop solar could save up to $1100 per year.

You know Labor is feeling the vibes are headed its way given this press conference:

Last week after Donald Trump announced his idiotic tariffs – that were so ill-thought out that he levied a tariff on penguins, Norfolk Island and a US army base in the Indian Ocean  – we called for the RBA to reconvene and cut rates.

It was clear last Tuesday that the Reserve Bank was paralysed by the tariff announcement that was due to come out the next day. The RBA should have delayed their board meeting until after the announcement by Trump. Every economist knew that these tariffs would be unprecedented, but instead the RBA decided to carry on as usual and as a result did nothing except come up with excuses not to cut rates.

Now the markets and economists are clear – the RBA will cut rates in May, and because of the tariffs will likely have to cut rates by more than previously expected over the next 6 months.

We continue to call for the RBA to reconvene. There is no reason to wait till the end of May, there is no reason to just sit by and watch the world’s economy falter. Monetary policy should be nimble, and the RBA should show leadership by cutting rates before Australians suffer from the damage of Trump.  

What is Anthony Albanese’s plan to hold Victorian seats, given that Labor is in trouble in its former stronghold state? Albanese then turns to the Labor attack line which is gaining some traction in focus groups – the Liberal party is too right wing.

Albanese:

I want to not just hold all our members here in Victoria, I want to win seats like Menzies and Deakin. That’s why I was in Deakin last week.

I hope Michael Sukkar is door knocking. I really hope he is. The more media appearances, the better. I encourage you to do interviews and to lift his profile with voters in Deakin. Because I think his whole way that he conducts himself is not what we need in 2025. What we need is effective local members who stand up for their communities.

This guy here, Daniel Mulino, is standing up for this community here in Sunshine. He’s standing up for Libby Coker in Corangamite and Richard Marles in Corio, standing up for the members in Ballarat and Bendigo, standing up for those people who want to get on the metro and get seamlessly through to the airport, right throughout Melbourne.

That’s what my members are doing.

I mean, Peter Dutton lost another candidate overnight. I think the women of Australia will be asking themselves what is going on when Peter Dutton can endorse a bloke who has the views he put forward, over a long period of time, was a former candidate for the UAP, this is a part of – a part of the take over of the Liberal Party by the hard right.

When you look at Alex Antic being number one in the ticket, he has his Shadow Health Minister at number two. A woman, Anne Ruston, who I would have some policy disagreements with on Medicare, but, she’s the Shadow Health Minister. She’s been a senior minister in the government, dumped by Alex Antic in South Australia.

Jacinta’s opponent got hunted down by the right wing of the Victorian Liberal Party. In WA, all sorts of strange people with some very far-right views, who had to get dumped. There was a candidate every week going out. Roger Cook was – it was hard for him to keep up during the state election. Goodness knows who they’re returning. Ian Goodenough, he’s running as an independent. He represented his local community for decades, the father of the house, I think, or maybe Bob Katter, but they knocked him off in pre-selection. His views weren’t right wing enough. I’m pretty confident, we’ll be arguing not just to hold seats but to win seats here in Victoria.

Given JP Morgan has increased its prediction of a recession across the globe by the year’s end from 40% to 60% (thanks to the Trump presidency’s insane policies) what would Anthony Albanese’s plan for getting Australia through it be?

Albanese:

What we’re doing is preparing for further uncertain times. We do live in uncertain times. And part of that is the impact of global changes, including the tariffs decisions that was made by the US administration last week.

That’s why you can’t afford to have a government that is a shambles and doesn’t know what it’s doing from day to day.

You need considered orderly government and competent ministers that know what they’re doing, that set up Australia as best as possible.

You can’t change global events. What you can do is prepare for them.

And that’s one of the reasons why we turned those Liberal deficits into Labor surpluses. That’s why we have delivered real wage increases five quarters in a row.

That’s why we’re assisting with tax cuts for every taxpayer, Peter Dutton wants to cut everything except for the income taxes of 14 million Australians. He wants to rip the heart out of fairness in our industrial relations system.

Doesn’t matter if it’s work from home, same job same pay, casualisation, gender equity in the workforce, Peter Dutton does not stand for fairness. The Labor Party does. It’s part of our core values that we try to implement with all of our programs.

But while the Coalition is on its ‘sorry about the whole you have to go back into the office thing, we all fam in the club’ apology tour, Anthony Albanese is not feeling the need to apologise.

Asked if Labor had anything to say sorry about, specifically the power price reduction promise, Albanese says:

Peter Dutton says as late as last week had the 41,000 job cuts front and centre. He never said sorry to the 22,000 veterans who were owed collectively $13 billion.

$13 billion, men and women who had worn our uniform, some of whom passed away while they were waiting for their entitlements.

He never said sorry about that.

Peter Dutton is now pretending to try and get through an election. But guess what? Before the last time the Coalition were elected, they said there would be no cuts to education, no cuts to health, no cuts to infrastructure, no cuts to the ABC, and they ripped the guts out of them in the 2014 budget. They didn’t deliver a single – a single surplus – when they promised a surplus the first year and every year thereafter.