Q: The Liberal candidate for Fowler has had to apologise for social media posts where he repeatedly used derogatory terms to refers to Indigenous Australians. He made insensitive and offensive remarks about Tanya Plibersek’s family also. Is this the standard you will accept for Liberal candidates running in this election and indeed if elected for your government and do you not have a better candidate?

Peter Dutton:

A couple of points. He has apologised for the comments and so he should have. They were inappropriate and shouldn’t have been made. He has apologised for them.

I won’t take a lecture from the Prime Minister who has a relationship with the Greens, is accepting preferences from the Greens in his own seat, he is preferencing a Green number 2. This is an anti-Semitic Jew-hating party. (This is absolutely not true, and is irresponsibly factually incorrect) They have been involved in all sorts of horrible doxing and comments online that are repugnant but not repudiated by the Prime Minister.

The Prime Minister has a candidate in Dickson, one in Flynn and elsewhere, where they have conducted themselves appallingly. The Labor candidate in Fowler has been referred to the integrity – the corruption commission. I am not going to take a lecture from the Prime Minister.

Dutton refuses to take a second question on this, pointing out that this is his candidate.

Q: Under your leadership the Liberal Party has shifted away from its traditional base at the big end of town and towards lower and middle income earners. Polls suggest this strategy is paying off with big potentially in Werriwa, Whitlam and Melton. Has the Liberal Party now become the true party of working Australians and is this a permanent realignment do you think, or is it just a reaction to the cost of living crisis?

Peter Dutton:

I made this point when I first became Liberal leader that we weren’t the party of the big end of town. That is for the Labor Party, that is the relationship between the big unions and big business. We are the party of small and medium enterprise.

We are the champion of a local small micro business that wants to become a medium size business and list one day or sell out to a bigger company.

We are the party of not just small businesses but also battling Australians and for the millions of forgotten Australians living in the suburbs and regions, they see a Prime Minister who is obsessed with pleasing green voters in inner city Sydney and Melbourne.

This Prime Minister hasn’t blinked when that claim has been made against him. He has deliberately sided with green voters in inner city Sydney and Melbourne to hang these people out to dry in regional areas. He didn’t introduce the cut to fuel tax.

We are proposing that because it will help families who are driving long distances to work or to school and running kids around on the weekend.

We are the party giving $1200 back by way of tax rebate to help those families in outer metropolitan areas. I don’t know how many years it would have been since a Liberal leader has been to Melton? Quite a few, I would have thought.

For us and if you look at the work Laurence has done here, these regions are naturally swinging to the Liberal Party because people know that the Labor Party is for inner city green trendies, not for outer suburb hard workers. That is what the Liberal Party is about and that is the choice people have at this election.

Q: You have campaigned heavily on cost of living. Is it a bad look you don’t know the price of a dozen eggs?

Peter Dutton:

The point that most families have made to us is the cost of everything has gone up. The cost of everything has gone up in the household budget. I was talking to people in Far North Queensland this morning, their insurance bill has doubled. We are talking about it going up by 35%, their lived experience is it is doubling. It is not just food and it is not just electricity, it is insurance, it is the cost of everything under this government that continues to rise.

Peter Dutton is in the electorate of Paterson he starts off with the cost of living spiel, which is what the Coalition is back on as an issue (having detoured into hate media, welcome to country ‘debate’ and other One Nation wooing topics’.

There is a chance where if the Coalition’s primary vote is in the doldrums, One Nation could pick up seats like Hunter. And maybe Paterson. Which is something to think about and so far seems to be missed in all of this One Nation preference talk. In three cornered contests, it is possible for the minor party to win from behind – the Greens did it in Brisbane and Ryan – and One Nation can do it from behind in these seats, with Coalition AND Labor preferences.

The ACF (Australian Conservation Foundation) has joined in with the Greens demand for no new coal and gas as part of any negotiations in a minority government.

ACF CEO Kelly O’Shanassy said:

Approving new coal and gas projects is the opposite of climate action, so we commend the
Greens for identifying a halt to new climate-wrecking fossil fuel mines as a negotiating priority.

In an era of escalating climate change, when global scientists and the International Energy Agency have called for no new fossil fuel projects, it is grossly irresponsible to keep approving
new coal and gas mines.
It was shocking to witness the offshore regulator’s approval last week of Santos’ Barossa gas
project, which will spew out more than 270 million tonnes of climate pollution over its lifetime.
No matter where it’s burned, Santos’ gas will turbocharge heatwaves, bushfires and other
extreme weather here in Australia.
We call on the next federal government to comprehensively assess the climate and nature
impacts of Santos’ Barossa gas project.
The next parliament must champion a safe climate – starting with a determination to end the
approval of new coal and gas projects.

Australia’s export of fossil fuels is responsible for three times of the emissions we create at home – we are responsible for 4.5% of global emissions, with 3.5% a result of exports.

It is obvious that the ‘break in case of emergency’ comms strategy of ‘ha, it was a joke!’ has been cracked open in regards to Peter Dutton calling the Guardian and the ABC “hate media” at a campaign rally in Melbourne on Sunday.

Not only is it not a joke, and actually part of an on-going campaign of demonising good reporting, it is also dangerous in this climate, given how many people are going to the extremes, emboldened by Trump rhetoric.

Nazi’s feel comfortable to gatecrash Anzac Day ceremonies and ‘just ask questions’ about Indigenous inclusion in Australia. Which is then picked up by mainstream media as ‘just asking questions’. If you are asking the same questions as Nazis, you might need to take a look at yourself and what you are doing.

Paterson says:

Oh, look, I hope no one took that too personally. I thought that was said in jest. I think it’s pretty fair to say that both the Guardian and the ABC have taken some tough editorial stances and applied a lot of scrutiny to Peter and the campaign. And they can certainly dish it out. I’m certainly sure they won’t be offended in return.

Q: But it is the public broadcaster, with a many billion dollar budget. Hate mediais quite a strong comment from an aspiring Prime Minister, is it not?

Paterson:

I thought it was a tongue in cheek comment. I think you will know, as you’ve seen on this campaign trail, Peter engages very well and very respectfully with all media outlets. You’ve had great access to him on the campaign trail.
Everybody gets a question every day. He doesn’t hide from that scrutiny. And I think it’s a fair exchange of ideas and sometimes a little bit of cheeky exchanges too, and I don’t think that’s a harmful thing in a healthy democracy

Which brings me to another point. There are a lot of commentators who speak about the difference between Peter Dutton camera and Peter Dutton away from the cameras and how he’s actually a very ‘good sort’. But it doesn’t matter. It truly does not matter if Dutton is a good sort in person. It matters what he does with power. How he treats it. What he signals with it. And Dutton, despite from all accounts being much more jovial on the campaign with journalists than Anthony Albanese (who is always cranky, on or off the cameras – he’s a cranky person in general) when he has power, uses it in way to try and hold others down. That’s not ‘a cheeky exchange’. That’s dictatorship.

James Paterson who is supposed to be the official campaign spokesperson for the Coalition (but who has been largely usurped by Jane Hume) held a doorstop this morning where he was asked whether or not Peter Dutton will visit any of the sites the Coalition has earmarked for nuclear sites:

Q: Senator, Peter Dutton was also asked a pretty straightforward question. Will you visit a nuclear power site during this campaign? He didn’t say yes or no. So what’s going to happen there?

Paterson:

Well, he gave a very clear answer to that question, which is he already has visited…

Q: Outside the election campaign, he was asked about the election campaign.

Paterson:

Your time as Opposition Leader is more than just what you do in an election campaign. And Peter Dutton has visited, as Opposition Leader, three sites of nuclear power facilities

Q: There are seven, though, Senator.

Paterson:

That’s right. And the truth is that wherever the sites are, all Australians will benefit from our energy plan. They’ll benefit immediately from the cut to petrol and diesel tax. They’ll benefit over time from reduced gas prices from our east coast gas reserve. And in the long term, they’ll benefit from an emissions free, reliable, affordable energy system under nuclear power. And what we’re focused on is all of the Australians who will benefit from that plan

Why have wages stayed comparatively low, despite a tight labour market?

Ross Gittins at the SMH looks at some research:

We can learn a lot from a new research paper by one of the nation’s top labour-market economists, Professor David Peetz, of Griffith University and the Australia Institute’s Centre for Future Work.

Peetz finds that, despite a fall in “real” wages (that is, after allowing for price rises) during the COVID pandemic and the subsequent surge in prices, by December 2024, real wages had recovered to be equal to what they were at the end of 2011.

Whether voters know it or not, the federal government does influence the size of wage rises via its regulation of the wage-fixing rules.

Two things to note. First, this is wages before taking account of income tax. Real after-tax wages would not have recovered to their level 13 years earlier, because of the bracket creep made greater by the price surge.

Second, over those 13 years, the productivity of labour improved by 15 per cent. So none of the benefit of that improvement was shared with workers – contrary to the assurances of businesspeople, politicians and economists that, by some magic process, productivity automatically increases real wages.

Sorry, there’s nothing automatic about it. If workers don’t have the bargaining power to insist on their fair share of the spoils, employers don’t pass it on.

Peter Dutton is about to hold his first press conference of the day – he is in the electorate of Paterson, which is one of the Coalition’s target seats

The Anti-Poverty Centre has responded to Anthony Albanese’s cranky response to Guardian journalist Dan Jervis-Brady asking him about Jobseeker (which has been one of the missing elements of this campaign, along with the farce that is mutual obligations.)

The Antipoverty Centre is calling on the prime minister to at least be honest about the failure of his government to support people in poverty instead of insulting our intelligence. Welfare recipients do not accept the pathetic excuse that “fiscal parameters” are a reason to keep Centrelink payments below the poverty line.

Earlier today Albanese accused a Guardian journalist of verballing him, saying that he “deserves respect” and leads a “compassionate” government, when they asked what it would take for a Labor government to increase JobSeeker to the amount called for by advocates and if his advice to unemployed people is to “just get a job”.

He had the audacity to make these comments when announcing a trauma recovery centre for women leaving violent relationships, while he chooses to keep women living in poverty with inadequate Centrelink payments and the partner income test, which trap them in violent homes. The Sex Discrimination Commissioner has called for these policies to change because she knows services are just a band-aid if root causes are not addressed.

As Australia Institute chief economist Greg Jericho commented, “When political parties talk about ‘fiscal parameters’ in regards to help for those living in poverty, they are not being up front about all the costs to the budget that go to the richest and the most profitable.”

Quotes attributable to Antipoverty Centre spokesperson and JobSeeker recipient Jay Coonan

The prime minister hasn’t earned the respect of anyone who cares about people in poverty.

A lot of poor people believed Labor when they said “no one left behind”, and that broken promise has caused a lot of pain. Many of us are feeling worse off financially now than we did three years ago and the government has shown no signs that they care to address that.

Albanese refuses to acknowledge the obscene reality that it is government policy to maintain 4% unemployment, while at the same time forcing those of us who don’t have paid work, or don’t have enough of it, to survive hundreds of dollars a week below the poverty line. There is no compassion in that, or the endless gaslighting about how good we have it.

The reality is we’re not in a cost of living crisis, we’re in a greed crisis that has been enabled by policy choices made by this government and supported by the Coalition.

The government can afford to lift all Centrelink payments to ensure no one is in poverty, it just prefers not to. No one talks about the budget constraints when it comes to more weapons or tax handouts to the wealthy, only when it comes to helping those of us who need it most urgently.

We need all Centrelink payments above the Henderson poverty line urgently, and then the government must work with welfare recipients to develop a sophisticated poverty measure that is fit for purpose in the 21st century.