Labor’s Clare O’Neil had a bit more fun with that:

Military jobs are really tough, and I know a lot of really bloody tough women, and that’s why Labor can be absolutely unequivocal about this. Our government is completely supportive of women serving across the ADF.

You know, we’ve got issues with our recruitment and personnel in the Australian Defence Force. What is it going to mean if we just exclude half of the population from serving in these critical roles? Peter Dutton is going to have to clean up this mess today. We can’t have a Defence Minister of this country that doesn’t support women in military combat roles. That absolutely cannot happen. And as you point out, Nat, I don’t understand why they sacked a Liberal candidate yesterday for sharing these views, when actually the Shadow Defence Minister has these views. It is just an absolute mess over there in Liberal Party HQ, and I’ll be keen to see how Peter Dutton tries to reconcile all these things today.

In one of the side campaign issues, there is now pressure on Andrew Hastie to step aside from his shadow defence portfolio, after he didn’t disavow comments he made in 2018 that women shouldn’t serve in combat roles in the ADF. This all came about because Sarah Basford Canales at the Guardian revealed the Liberals candidate for Whitlam made similar comments on a more recent podcast. He was dumped by the Liberals. That candidate then turned around and said ‘well, Hastie agrees with me’. Peter Dutton said he believed that women should serve in combat roles in the ADF if they wished and that Hastie had the same view as him (Dutton).

But then the Australian reported that Hastie wasn’t stepping away from his 2018 comments (that he believed the fighting DNA of a combat unit was better protected when it was exclusively male) and that has created a very awkward sitch for the Coalition who now have to pretend that everyone is in agreement in their party that women can fight in the ADF when the shadow defence minister is staying mum.

Jane Hume gave this mess her best shot this morning:

Peter Dutton has made this very clear that women should be able to serve in the ADF in any role in which they choose. That policy hasn’t changed. It will continue. We also have incredible support for Andrew Hastie, who has served his country bravely in Kharkiv at the front line, unlike the Defence Minister Richard Marles, who has never served in the ADF. Andrew Hastie has extraordinary experience. He has the support of Peter Dutton, he has support of the Coalition, and our position hasn’t changed. Women should be able to serve in the ADF in whichever position they choose.

So what she is saying there though, is that by serving in the ADF, Hastie would be a better defence minister than Richard Marles, but Hastie doesn’t think women should be in combat roles so……

Liberal senator Jane Hume did a bit better job of explaining the Coalition’s gas reserve policy on the Seven network this morning:

This is about an east coast reservation, essentially keeping Aussie gas for Aussies. There are three ways that gas can be used: It can be used in long term contracts, it can be used for domestic supply and it can also be traded on the spot market using those volatile prices — that’s where this East Coast gas reserve will come from bringing more gas to the system will unlock supply and bring prices down over time. We estimate that it’s going to create around a 23% drop in wholesale gas prices that will feed through to industrial gas, to retail gas, and also to electricity prices.

It then dissolves into a fight over who cares more about energy prices with Clare O’Neil which is…sigh.

As Amy and I spend the morning looking through our employment contracts to see if there is a clause for “recovering lost hour of our life” for those of you who did not see it, Amy has some nice clips below to check out.

Overall, it was a debate which probably should worry the Dutton camp because he did about as well as he could, and the audience still said he lost.

I thought Dutton did fine, so long as you don’t mind lies.

He suggested the budget was in balance when the ALP took over in 2022, which is wrong.

He suggested bulk billing numbers were not falling when the ALP took over, which is wrong.

He suggested international students are causing house prices and rents to rise, which is wrong.

He suggested Jim Chalmers is wanting interest rates to fall because he is panicking about a recession that seems to be the ALP’s fault, which is wrong.

He suggested the LNP after the 2013 election did not cut health spending, which is wrong.

And well, you get the idea.

He had some good moments such as when Albanese did his schtick of holding up a Medicare card and saying that’s all you need by asking the questioner if she has to pay when she sees a GP (she did).

But missed some things. Pretty much his campaign no seems to be petrol and gas and trying to remind people of The Voice.

He didn’t really go big on gas, which was odd given the modelling for the gas reservation policy was released straight after, but even his petrol excise policy already seems odd because he couldn’t really explain why, if it is so good, he is only going to do it for a year. He suggested something about Labor spending money madly, which makes no sense given the excise cut costs roughly the same as the tax cut and Dutton has promised to get rid of those so what’s the issue?

For Albanese it was Albanese as we known him. He was clunky at times, when he tried to get an answer on petrol excise into a line about working from home.

He really missed an opportunity to paint Dutton as reckless over his talk of a recession.

The sad part was all the bipartisanship.

Both love AUKUS despite Trump, both are very worried about Gaza but also not doing a damn thing. Both went out of their way to praise a woman who seemed to think migrants were the cause of all problems with housing (apparently foreign students are buying lots of houses – 2 or 3 and leaving them empty). Both are happy to say foreign investors in housing are bad, but nothing to say about local investors (or the tax regimes that benefit them).

Both probably used this as practice for next week’s debate on ABC which will be watched by rather more people, but still nowhere near enough to change any votes of a size that will matter.  

Jim Chalmers will meet with the RBA and financial regulators today to talk the impact of Trump’s tariffs.

There is a bit of an increased sense of urgency because Trump is now threatening to increase the tariff he has already placed on China, after China responded to Trump’s original tariffs with tariffs of its own (this is what we talk about when we talk about trade wars)

The attendees include:

RBA Governor Michele Bullock

ASIC Chair Joe Longo

APRA Chair John Lonsdale

Treasury Secretary Steven Kennedy

ACCC Chair Gina Cass-Gottlieb

Chalmers has already met with the Commonwealth, NAB, ANZ, Westpac, Super Members Council, ASFA and Macquarie heads.

And while the Coalition are running around saying this is an indication Chalmers thinks Australia is going into recession (which it isn’t) he found a defender in former LNP senator Arthur Sinodinos who told the Nine network:

It’s a confidence building measure with the electorate to say, ‘look, we’re getting our best brains together to work out how we diversify our markets, how we adjust our economy, how we get ready for this.

It’s the sort of thing you’d expect any government to do.”

Ted O’Brien is trying to turn the energy debate into a debate on modelling which is….sigh.

O’Brien is probably not the best person to sell this. Because again, the Coalition’s acceptance of what has always been true – that Australia has enough gas to fill its domestic needs and doesn’t need new gas wells and that taxing the gas giants is GOOD for Australia, is actually a pretty big turning point in Australian politics.

This is important because it destroys the myth of a gas shortage in Australia.

There are just a few multinational gas corporations operating in Australia, but they export 70% of the gas produced along the east coast. Now about 20% of the gas they extract is uncontracted – it is not going to supply any contracts with any other countries. The gas companies sell this on the spot market, which is very lucrative, because it is where you go when you need something quickly. So someone needs extra gas quickly, they have to go to the spot market and that tends to put a premium on the price.

But then to keep all of that going, the gas companies keep pushing the myth that there is a gas shortage so that they can open more gas wells and keep their sweet ride going for longer. And by exposing Australian gas prices to the international market, it makes gas more expensive for Australians. And the answer from the gas companies has been – well, we’ll have to open more gas wells in order to increase supply and bring down prices. Which is complete and utter bupkis.

The Coalition’s policy is actually exposing that myth. Because it is saying we can use that un-contracted gas to supply Australia’s domestic needs, without opening new gas wells and tax the gas giants for the benefit of Australians.

Of course, the second part of the policy is to open up new gas wells. Which is already exposed as being bupkis by the first part of the policy. It’s just Labor now which is the hold out here, but there is an actual opportunity to change how Australians think about it’s gas and expose these myths the gas industry has convinced people is the truth for their own financial gain.

The Coalition having a new energy policy means we all have to sit through some Ted O’Brien. Which is maybe the weakest part of the Coalition policy. There is some chat about his debate with Chris Bowen at the national press club on Thursday and O’Brien pretends he much prefers to be on the ground, mixing it with the people.

I’m from Queensland and lived on the Sunshine Coast for a few years and so I know plenty of people who have been on the ground with O’Brien, and let’s just say that if his statement were to be fact checked, it may not come out his way. Moving on.

O’Brien is asked where the $1,300 a year increase on power bills the Coalition uses to hit Labor with comes from.

Q: Where do you get that $1,300 figure from? I tried to look at this last night. You’re right that power bills have gone up, but I couldn’t get anywhere near $1,300 – only in the worst-case scenario, perhaps in a very big house that’s using a lot of electricity.

O’Brien suggests that the number comes from the increase of the default market offer and the $275 reduction Labor promised (by 2025) which wasn’t there. So the number doesn’t appear to be grounded in reality

Actually, if you look at the default market offer which comes out each year, what you see is increases since Labor came to office of well over $1,000, and they promised you a reduction of $275.

So what you have, including here – I’m in Sydney today – you have people in Western Sydney paying $1,300 more than what Labor had promised them. That’s a fact.

Hmmmm. Not sure about that one. We will take a look at that too.

On the modelling for the gas policy, O’Brien says:

When it comes to our modelling, we are, again, the only party that has done modelling. And the modelling that has now been released goes to our gas policy.

What it says is big industrial users will see a 15% reduction in the cost of gas. That means, when you go to the shop and you buy a bottle of milk, a loaf of bread, a jar of jam, the packaging for all of those products – costs come down, it eventually flows through to consumers.

You buy some bricks, you buy a house with steel – costs come down. When you look at what Peter Dutton has already done on the 25-cent reduction per litre on petrol, and then you look at what we’re trying to do with gas, it all comes down to driving costs down.

Jason Clare has just told Radio National Breakfast that the Ukraine war drove a massive energy price spike and defended Labor’s response to it, which was to cushion consumer prices.

What he didn’t say was that during that energy price spike, Labor ignored the advice of every economist from Ken Henry to UK Treasury to put a super profits tax on the gas industry. Here’s our report from 2022.

As a result, gas companies have walked off with $100 billion in windfall profits that could have funded services in Australia:

Labor might have done OK protecting Australia’s consumers from the price spike, but they gifted multinational gas companies vast windfall profits that should have gone to the public.

Jason Clare was asked on the ABC about the lack of national debate on what is happening in Gaza and what the feeling was like on the ground in western Sydney and said:

For my community this is personal. It’s not a war on the other side of the world. This is very close to home. For a lot of people that I’ve got the privilege to represent, those dead bodies they see on TV have names. Often they’re family and their friends. This is personal for them. But I got to tell you, they also know where Peter Dutton stands on this, how much he demonises my local community. They remember he said it was a mistake to let people from Lebanon ever migrate to Australia

During the debate, a woman named Hiba. asked about her many loved ones affected by the current genocide in Gaza, carried out by the Israeli government (which was more truthful and plain speaking we have seen on the mainstream media in one sentence than we have seen in years).

“Hi. So, I’m from just around here from Toongabbie. I direct my question to both of you. I have many loved ones affected by the current genocide in Gaza carried out by the Israeli government. At the moment, our taxes are going towards the funding of weaponry aiding the onslaught on the innocent people of Gaza. What are you doing to stop this, Prime Minister and Opposition Leader? What will you do about this if you are elected?

This was a question asked in a Sky News debate. I doubt we will see anything like it on the ABC debate next week.

Albanese said:

Well, thank you very much for the question. And I certainly understand that for many Australians, or particularly those with families or relatives, either in Israel or in Gaza or indeed in Lebanon. This has been a very traumatic period. My Government’s approach is that every innocent life matters and we want to see a ceasefire, we want to see hostages released, we want to see aid get through to Gaza.

I must say though, there are no Australian weaponry involved in what is going on in Gaza. (Australia is part of the global supply chain for F-35s which the US sells to Israel and which have been used to drop weapons on Palestinian civilians. So it is not a direct sale and it’s not weaponry, but there is a link)
That is just not the case. We have made sure as well that Australia has taken, I think, a responsible position of continuing to call for not just the short-term issues in terms of ceasefire, aid to people in Gaza, the release of hostages, but also our principled stance of a two-state solution. I want to see both Israelis and Palestinians live in peace and security side by side.

Dutton (who gives the BUT HAMAS answer)

Well, like the Prime Minister, and I’m sure, like every Australian, I want to see peace in the Middle East as well. But what we saw when Hamas took hostages and took people into the tunnel network, that was an action which if had happened to Australians, there would have been an expectation of our government to react, to send in the SAS to make sure that we recovered those people as quickly as possible.
And I want to make sure that in our country, people can celebrate their heritage, can celebrate their connections to a country of origin or to a country which is important to them.
But when you come to our country, it’s about celebrating being Australian, always respecting heritage and culture, but also abiding by our laws. And I think what we’ve seen in our society over the course of the last couple of years, with fire bombings, with attacks on individuals, it’s completely un-Australian, and it’s not something that I think any of us would accept.

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