Federal election 2025 LIVE updates: Albanese, Dutton launch campaigns; Jacinta Price wants to ‘make Australia great again’​on April 12, 2025 at 10:56 pm

Independent MP Monique Ryan has been asked about her Sydney colleague Allegra Spender’s admission that she had paid social media influencers to create social media content. Spender has said influencers disclosed that posts were done in collaboration with her.

Ryan was asked if she was doing it as well but she said she was not.

“I’m not, but having said that, I do have someone who works with me, who is my media advisor, and she makes social media content,” Ryan told the ABC’s Insiders program.

“The reality is that young people these days, I hate to break this to you, don’t watch Insiders, and they don’t read the papers.”

“They get the news off social media. And I think it’s really important, as I have the youngest electorate in Victoria, that I engage effectively and well with the young people in my electorate.”

Ryan was asked in the case of Spender, about whether it should be clear to voters that this content was paid for by the politician.

“Look, I don’t really have an opinion on it,” she said.

In March, the Labor Party compensated some of the social media influencers who covered the federal budget for their travel to Canberra, after inviting them to attend the lock-up as part of a campaign strategy to court prominent online voices.

During Clare O’Neil’s appearance on ABC’s Insiders she also sought to detail how the government will partner with the states to build 100,000 homes exclusively to sell to first home buyers.

There will be $2 billion in grants for new homes and $8 billion in zero-interest loans provided to states to build the projects. The government could also use the $8 billion to take an equity stake in a project.

“What’s missing from the state development agencies is the capital flow, and we are going to put $10 billion into this project because we want to give young people a direct shot at home ownership,” the housing minister said.

“The big issue we have with supply. At the moment, we’ve got an overall problem with supply, but the biggest problem is at the entry level, end of the market, and that’s where we’ll be intervening to bring that additional supply.

“If our government is re-elected, we’ll sit down with the states and start to map out where these projects will be built that will involve state, local and federal land, involve some private developers and some state agencies.

Asked if it meant the government would be in competition with the private sector, she said: “What we’re doing is supplementing supply at the affordable end of the market, and that’s where it’s really needed.”

Moving to Labor’s housing plan, Housing Minister Clare O’Neil has her party’s scheme to expand a first home buyer scheme will not have a significant impact on house prices.

“We’ve gone from 10,000 homes a year to 50,000 homes a year under this scheme with no discernible impact on prices,” she said on ABC’s Insiders.

She said the serviceability requirements that a bank would put on first home buyers were the same.

“It won’t have a significant impact on housing [prices],” O’Neil said.

“One of the things I worry about in the housing conversation is that the older generations are not hearing the level of distress that young people around our country are in.”

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton is set to announce a major housing policy to make mortgage interest payments tax-deductible for some first home buyers at today’s Liberal Party national campaign launch.

Several Coalition sources, speaking anonymously before Dutton’s formal announcement, say a family earning average incomes would be about $11,000 a year better off under the policy, which would only apply to first home buyers purchasing newly built homes.

It would run for a maximum of five years, and a family could save about $55,000.

The cost of the policy is not yet known.

Dutton has already announced a Coalition policy to provide tax cuts of about $1200.

Marles, who is also defence minister, said opposition defence spokesman Andrew Hastie’s views about the role of women in military combat positions were “untenable”.

It re-emerged last week that Hastie, a former special forces soldier, said in 2018 that “the DNA of a close combat unit is best-preserved if it is exclusively male”.

A Coalition spokesperson said last week that his comments “were made more than seven years ago based on his own experience” and the party had no intention to change personnel policy.

Marles said all women in combat roles met the current criteria, “that is the important point”.

Opposition campaign spokesperson James Paterson savaged Marles in response, saying that unlike Hastie, Marles had never served in the defence force and was presiding over a disaster in defence policy.

Paterson denied Hastie was being hidden in the election campaign and noted that Marles was diminishing short-term military capability spending to pay for AUKUS instead of spending on both.

Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles has declined to endorse the Coalition’s $1200 tax offset proposal to be unveiled at the opposition’s campaign launch in Sydney later today.

Without explicitly ruling out Labor’s support for the idea, Marles criticised the pledge in a Sunday morning interview on Sky News.

“Australians would have a right to feel a sense of cynicism about this policy, particularly in light of the position the Coalition took to our tax cuts,” Marles said, referring to Labor’s “top-up” tax cut announced in the May budget.

Marles said the Coalition was making up policy on the run.“They are all over the place.”

The Coalition has said taxpayers earning between $48,000 and $104,000 will receive a $1200 offset on next year’s tax return.

As Matthew Knott and Paul Sakkal reported, the plan would be limited to a single year, like the Coalition’s pledge to cut petrol excise by 25¢ a litre – will be tapered so that taxpayers earning below $48,000 and between $104,000 and $144,000 a year receive a smaller offset.

“Families are getting smashed under the Albanese government and they need help now,” Dutton said in a statement ahead of the Coalition’s campaign launch in western Sydney.

“Our cost-of-living tax offset will put more money back into the pockets of millions of Australians at a time when they’re being crushed by skyrocketing grocery bills, rent, mortgage repayments and insurance costs.”

You can read more about the plan here.

One of Labor’s signature policies announced overnight was to remove income caps for its 5 per cent deposit scheme for first home buyers.

The current scheme is limited to 35,000 people a year and available only to singles earning under $125,000 a year or couples on a combined income of $200,000.

Under the expanded scheme announced by Labor, someone who wanted to buy a $1 million apartment would need a $50,000 deposit.

A single person would need to earn about $214,000 a year to be able to comfortably service the mortgage for the remaining $950,000, according to the Commonwealth Bank mortgage calculator.

Labor says higher property price limits and no caps on places or income will mean more people will be able to purchase a house.

A press release spruiking the announcement also said some new homes would be reserved for first home buyers.

“We know the long-term fix to housing is to build more homes,” a Labor media release said.

“That’s why the Albanese Government will also invest $10 billion to partner with state developers and industry, to build up to 100,000 homes – with these homes reserved for sale only to first home buyers.”

Hi good morning and welcome to our coverage of the federal election campaign.

Labor and the Coalition have both made some big announcements overnight and both parties will officially launch their campaigns later today.

So it will be a busy day and our team of reporters will be here to bring you all the action, insights and coverage.

This morning we have heard Labor’s plan to give all first home buyers access to 5 per cent deposits while the Coalition has offered one-off tax cuts of up to $1200.