Fresh from being attacked by Jason Clare, Independent MP Dai Le has paid tribute to her Labor rival for the seat of Fowler, Tu Le.

Labor’s Ms Le gave birth to a beautiful baby girl, Matilda, less than a month ago.

Now, she’s on the campaign trail juggling a newborn as she attempts to unseat the popular independent.

But, speaking on Sky, Dai Le refused to hit back after the attack from Labor’s campaign spokesman, Mr Clare, who said a vote for Dai Le was a vote for Peter Dutton.

But the Independent wasn’t playing along, instead paying tribute to her rival.

Ms Le has just given birth and is out there campaigning. I take my hat off to her. Continue campaigning, because we all are … we all have to fight for our community.

Morning everyone, thanks Amy.

My first big gripe for the day is the price of hot cross buns.

In preparation for the great Australia Institute bun off … I ducked into my local shopping centre on the way home from work last night.

Ok, I confess … I bolted in and grabbed the first buns I saw.

$9.50 for six fruit buns from Bakers Delight.

$9.50!

Naturally, when I got home, my wife informed me they were $3.50 at the supermarket if I’d been willing to walk an extra 50 metres into Woolies or Coles.

But, screw them. They rip us off for everything else.

So … $9.50 Bakers Delight buns it is. They better be good!

I am going to hand you over to Glenn Connley for a little bit while I go be a talking monkey.

Glenn will keep you up to date on any news while I’m gone. I have promised him hot cross buns, so don’t take any guff from him.

And earlier on RN Breakfast, shadow finance minister Jane Hume had to do some mopping up of Peter Dutton’s comments on climate change in last night’s debate.

Dutton couldn’t say whether or not he believed climate change was making weather events worse because “I am not a scientist”.

Which is EXTRAORDINARY in 2025 for any political leader to claim.

Hume though, says she believes Dutton does believe in climate change:

“I personally believe in climate change. I know that Peter Dutton does,” she said.

So does the Coalition accept the science that climate change is making weather disasters worse?

“If that’s what scientists are telling us, then that’s what we should believe,” Hume said.

What do you mean IF?

Peter Dutton has spoken to the Australian newspaper where he says he will:

“Increase defence spending significantly” – so yay! More than the $380bn we are already spending on Aukus!

Reform income tax brackets: “I want to see us move as quickly as we can as a country to changes around personal income tax, including indexation, because bracket creep, as we know, is a killer in the economy.” (Which is not what the original stage three tax cuts would have done. AT ALL)

But he can’t do tax indexation now. Although he would like to do it at some point, so that’s the main point of the article.

The Labor campaign is back in Brisbane, where three seats are in play – Brisbane, Ryan and Griffith, all of which are held by the Greens.

The Greens are putting up a fight and Max Chandler-Mather is thought to have done enough to hold on to Griffith. The other two are anyone’s guess.

Given Labor is about to announce the details of its critical minerals reserve policy and it’s come up in the Trump tariff discussion, this update from AAP might be of interest:

Ukraine and the United States have made “substantial progress” in their talks on a minerals deal and will sign a memorandum in the near future, Kyiv says.

US President Donald Trump is seeking a bilateral minerals deal as part of his push to end Ukraine’s war against the Russian invasion. Trump also sees it as a way to recover billions of dollars the US has spent on military assistance to Ukraine. President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has said that Ukraine would not recognise past US military aid as loans.

“Our technical teams have worked very thoroughly together on the agreement, and there is significant progress. Our legal staff has adjusted several items within the draft agreement,” First Deputy Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko said on Wednesday on X.

What would a re-elected Labor government do for Indigenous students?

Jason Clare:

First I’ve got to say we’re not getting ahead of ourselves. We’re putting all of our efforts into the election campaign and hope we win the support and the trust and the votes of the Australian people. But, you know, the terrible truth is that if you’re a young Indigenous male today, then you’re more likely to go to jail than you are to go to university.

That’s why these reforms that I’m talking about are so important. If we invest properly in our schools in the right sort of things that help kids who fall behind to catch up and keep up, then more people will finish school.

That’s why we’re setting those targets in the new national agreement. That’s why I’m doubling the funding that the Commonwealth will put into public schools in places like the Northern Territory. The sad fact is that when I became the Minister for Education, the funding for students in schools in the Northern Territory was abysmal, effectively 1-in-5 students weren’t being funded at all. The agreement that itch struck means that we will get every public school in the Northern Territory to that full funding level 20 years earlier than would have happened under the Liberals instead of 2050, it will now happen by 2029.

And that investment targeted in the right way we think will help to increase the number of young people finishing high school both Indigenous and non-indigenous.

And on the Liberals claim that fee-free tafe is “just not working” Clare says:

Well, people are still doing the courses. This is the great line that the Liberal Party is peddling that people aren’t completing the courses. Courses take more than a year to do. We want more people to get more skills. The Liberal Party seem to think that education is a cost. I think, we think, education is an investment. Education is the most powerful course for good in this country and I want more young people, particularly from the western suburbs where I grew up and where I represent, the outer suburbs of our big cities and the regions, to get the same crack at education that other kids across the country do. That’s why we have got to make sure child care cheaper and fund our schools properly, make TAFE free for more Aussies, as well as cutting that HECS debt. And the Libs are against all of that.

What does education minister Jason Clare think of the Liberal idea to bring back tech colleges?

Clare:

What we need is more young people to finish school and then be able to go on to TAFE or to go on to university. We know that more and more jobs require those sort of skills that you get at TAFE or you get at university.

But remember the form of this Liberal Party – they ripped the guts out of schools. When they were last elected under Tony Abbott, they ripped $30 billion out of our schools and we oar still paying for that now. We have seen the number of kids in public school, finishing high school, drop from 83% down to 73%, and not satisfied with that, now they’re threatening to rip the guts out of TAFE as well. They have said they’ll get rid of fee-free TAFE.

What we need to do is not just build one or two technical colleges in a state, there’s kids in every single high school that wasn’t to get the skills they need to get a trade and that means that we need to provide them with that support in every high school and help them to get the skills they need through these fee-free courses at TAFE. The Liberals’ record is rip money out of schools and now they want to rip money out of TAFE that shows they have got no credibility when it comes to education.