LIVE

Tue 15 Apr

Australia Institute Live: Day 18 of the 2025 election campaign. As it happened.

Amy Remeikis – Chief Political Analyst

This blog is now closed.

Key posts

The Day's News

07.44 AEST

Asked about his comment yesterday (which he made twice) that he wants to see house prices continue to rise, Peter Dutton says:

If you’ve got a house that you’ve just bought and you’ve got a $500,000 mortgage and your house goes down by mortgage and your house goes down by $100,000 under Labor, and your mortgage is worth more than the mortgage is worth more than the house itself, then that’s not a good situation for you.

So, no, we don’t want house prices to plummet. Labor’s recession in the ’80s and 90s did exactly that. This is the biggest-spending government since biggest-spending government* since that bad Labor government.

What we need to do is to make sure that we’ve got enough supply coming in.

The question wasn’t about a recession, or whether he wanted to see house prices ‘plummet’ it was what did he want to see house prices do. And there is no suggestion that we are heading to a recession – except from him and Angus Taylor.

*The Coalition have matched Labor’s spending promises this election and come up with foregone revenue commitments (tax offset, fuel excise cut etc) but not released their costings so we can’t tell you how much they are spending (just for the purposes of Dutton’s complaints about Labor spending)

07.32 AEST

Peter Dutton is speaking to ABC News Breakfast this morning and among his first lines is a lie. There is enough to actually criticise Labor for, without claiming Anthony Albanese and the campaign are doing something they are not.

Asked about the polls, and the vibe, being against him, Dutton says:

We’re the underdog…the Prime Minister’s already talking about a third term. But what I want to talk about…

Albanese says ‘I’m not getting ahead of myself’ or ‘if we are lucky enough to get elected’ a few times a press conference, as does Dutton (after admitting on radio in the first week of the campaign he would prefer to live in Sydney as prime minister) so maybe don’t say anything that’s very simple to fact check?

Because people watching ABC in the morning are engaged and listening to the campaign, which means they would know when something said doesn’t feel right. So what is the point?

07.20 AEST

Good morning

Hello and welcome to another day on this never ending campaign.

We had the second treasurers’ debate last night, which we will go back and visit for you and tonight we have the second leaders’ debate, which we will also cover off tonight.(Edit: Gah! No we don’t that’s tomorrow! I am a day ahead of myself)

The vibe is with Labor, which you can see from Peter Dutton’s increasingly desperate campaigning. Dutton continues to falsely and irresponsibly claim Jim Chalmers thinks there will be a recession next year (very weird message from Dutton given he claims he’s ‘Team Australia’) and yesterday rolled out his 20-year-old son who said he was struggling to save for a house, like we didn’t know his family are multi-millionaires. And when asked the very obvious question – will you help your children when it comes to the housing market – Dutton just avoided it. And in the same press conference, said he wanted to see housing continue to increase. Twice.

That’s what happens when you suddenly find you have to campaign to the whole of Australia and address their issues, rather than just the safety of Sky and 2GB studios.

Meanwhile, Sky News continues to complain that the independent candidates aren’t campaigning in ways they like, this time with Allegra Spender holding a community event and not allowing media (them) in. But Sky News holds forums with candidates all the time (Paul Murray held one with Pauline Hanson and Bob Katter) which is just for them, and while it’s broadcast Sky still controls the show. Soooooo…….

Anyways, we will bring you all the day’s events, and more, as the day rolls out. You have Amy Remeikis with you for most of the day.

Ready? The third coffee is on the stove. And the bowl of mini easter eggs is being depleted as we speak.

Let’s get into it.

Subscribe The biggest stories and the best analysis from the team at the Australia Institute, delivered to your inbox every fortnight.