Read the live blog for rolling coverage of the second week of the 2025 federal election campaign.
Read the live blog for rolling coverage of the second week of the 2025 federal election campaign.
To conclude his press conference, Albanese attacked the Coalition for having a “string of far-right candidates”.
The Courier Mail has revealed the Coalition’s candidate for the Queensland seat of Leichhardt, Jeremy Neal, had previously posted opinions online including that feminists aided Donald Trump’s election loss and labelled China a “grub of a country”.
Neal also attacked the COVID-19 restrictions and vaccines and called for the defunding of ABC. Neal apologised for the now-deleted posts from 2020-22 as being “poorly worded”.
Albanese took the opportunity at the end of his press conference to attack the Coalition on this revelation.
“I don’t know where they’re getting these far-right candidates from, they’re popping up everywhere. In Western Australia, in South Australia, in New South Wales and now in Queensland,” he said.
Speaking of the Greens, the minor party is set to announce their conditions for supporting Labor in the event of a hung parliament, and MP Max Chandler-Mather shared more of what we could expect when he spoke to Melbourne’s 3AW radio this morning.
We already know that their main request is to limit negative gearing and the capital gains tax discount to just one investment property, and the Greens housing spokesperson says Labor’s already looked at this.
Chandler-Mather said:
We, in this course of parliament, we know that the government costed changes to negative gearing in the capital gains tax discount. They backed out at the last minute.
That’s their choice. But the reality is, I think a lot of people in Australia want to see changes to negative gearing so that their kids and grandkids can afford to buy a home, and I think in a minority parliament, the Greens will have enormous influence and power to push for those changes.”
Chandler-Mather also said he didn’t believe the prime minister when Albanese said there would be no deal with the Greens in the event of a hung parliament, citing last year’s changes to the stage three tax cuts as an example of the government’s willingness to change its position.
Albanese says Greens leader Adam Bandt is trying to make himself relevant by demanding a string of conditions in order to form a minority government.
“Adam Bandt is trying to make himself relevant, I don’t blame him for that. That’s up to him. All minor parties will try to do that,” he said.
“There’s nothing new about the Greens talking themselves up, because sometimes the media follow that up for whatever reason, it makes things a bit more interesting. But the truth is, that our objective is to hold on to the 78 seats we have and … build on it.”
NSW Premier Chris Minns has described Dutton’s policies as having “the life span of warm yoghurt”:
You have … Peter Dutton on what used to be a fundamental part of his election pitch [being cutting public servants]. One day he’s for it, the next day he’s against it.
I think at the end of the day voters will say to themselves, how can we trust this bloke if his policies have got the life span of warm yoghurt?”
A new prop has made it into one of Albanese’s campaign speeches, as he holds up a printout of the Coalition’s 2014-15 budget.
Taking a question on public servants in Canberra v NSW, Albanese pivoted to attacking the Coalition for its cuts.
“This little document here, budget 2014-15, the cuts are there in the budget. $80 billion. $30 billion from education, $50 billion from health. His economic policy doesn’t add up,” Albanese said.
“On work from home, he said he’s against it, then he said it’s just about Canberra as if all public servants work in Canberra, they don’t. Public servants are at the Centrelink office up the road here.”
Minns then chimed in on how public servants under NSW differ from federal public servants.
“I’m not going to pretend to all of you here that our policy is exactly the same as the Commonwealth government’s. They’re different,” he said.
Opposition leader Peter Dutton and his energy spokesman, Ted O’Brien, have made a pointed choice of location to announce their gas policy this morning — Energy Minister Chris Bowen’s western Sydney seat of McMahon.
They are arriving at the Bluescope Steel factory in Erskine Park with the Coalition’s western Sydney spokeswoman Melissa McIntosh. McMahon is safely held by Labor and not on the Coalition’s list of seats to target, but Dutton has been here twice since the campaign began.
The more salient message for the Coalition is around energy prices, which it wants to keep at the front of the election debate.
Albanese says he is not thinking about what happens after election day May 3.
Asked about the Greens outlining their demands if a minority government is formed, Albanese said Labor was not getting ahead of itself.
“May 3 is a long way away. We are not halfway through this election campaign. Elections are hard to win. So I’m not thinking about what happens post May-3,” he said.
“I’m focused on May 3. I’ve been focused on it for some time. My opponent is focused, of course, on measuring up the curtains at Kirribilli House.”
After officially opening the new Hay St Market at Paddy’s in Sydney’s CBD, the prime minister is now addressing the media with local member Tanya Plibersek and NSW Premier Chris Minns.
Watch them speak live here:
The Australian sharemarket is poised to give up much of Tuesday’s gains when the market opens this morning after another wild night on Wall Street.
Futures are pointing to a 1.9 per cent at the open for the ASX. The local market gained 2.3 per cent on Tuesday.
Overnight, Wall Street surged 4 per cent at the open before plunging after US President Donald Trump confirmed he would impose 104 per cent tariffs on China. Wall Street’s benchmark index fell by as much as 3 per cent before closing 1.6 per cent lower in another session of volatile swings. That left the index, which sits at the heart of many investors’ retirement accounts, nearly 19 per cent below its record set in February.
The Australian dollar lost further ground. It was fetching 59.40 US cents at 9.32am AEST.
The latest market fluctuation comes as the nation’s top economic officials were summoned to a meeting by Treasurer Jim Chalmers to formulate a response to the financial chaos unleashed by Trump’s tariffs.
Anthony Albanese spoke in Sydney at the official re-opening of the renovated Paddy’s Markets in the CBD.
He was joined by NSW Premier Chris Minns, local member Tanya Plibersek and Sydney Lord Mayor Clover Moore.
Watch the official opening ceremony here.