Read all the headlines from day three of the 2025 federal election campaign as both leaders will tighten security after gatecrashers disrupted their events yesterday.
Read all the headlines from day three of the 2025 federal election campaign as both leaders will tighten security after gatecrashers disrupted their events yesterday.
Speaking from the Leppington mosque, Opposition Leader Peter Dutton has pledged to boost security for the local place of worship.
Dutton is offering $25,000 as an election pledge for CCTV cameras to boost security at the Al-Mariah Masjid mosque, where many worshippers have Pakistani heritage.
Peter Dutton is now arriving at a Ramadan event in the Macarthur electorate, a Labor-held marginal seat in western Sydney.
The press pack is going to the Al-Mariah Masjid mosque in Leppington.
The seat is currently held by Labor backbencher Mike Freelander and is being challenged by Liberal candidate Binod Paudel.
It isn’t an election campaign without a baby picture.
Already, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese yesterday had two separate interactions with babies – one from the gym he briefly visited in Brisbane and another at the Medicare clinic (who the PM later found out was a bit sick after he had shaken hands).
Today, it was Dutton’s time to shine as he posed for some photos with baby Melissa from the Assyrian New Year Festival in Fairfield.
No tears were shed, as Melissa looked a tad confused but was prepared to pose for photos with the opposition leader.
National security correspondent Matthew Knott has given an analysis of the Dutton campaign from the morning.
Speaking from the brick factory in high-vis, Matthew will gives a rundown of how the opposition’s campaign is going. Watch the clip below.
Peter Dutton’s morning of campaigning began at a brick factory in Chris Bowen’s western Sydney electorate of McMahon, where he accused the energy minister of driving up electricity prices.
Just an hour or so later, Dutton bumped into Bowen at an Assyrian New Year Festival in Fairfield, Sydney. Such are the serendipitous joys of campaigning.
The pair stood near each other, exchanging a brief hello, as Assyrian locals played drums and performed a traditional dance to welcome them to the event.
Bowen made a point of welcoming Dutton in a speech to the festival, saying politicians from all political perspectives were welcome in the area.
As well as hundreds of locals enjoying traditional food, NSW Premier Chris Minns is at the festival, as is Fowler MP Dai Le, who could play a crucial role as a balance-of-power MP in a hung parliament.
When addressing the crowd at the Assyrian New Year festival in Sydney’s Fairfield, Peter Dutton gave a shout-out to the “amazing” independent MP for Fowler, Dai Le.
Dutton has named Le, who previously ran as a Liberal candidate at state elections, as one of the crossbench MPs he would call first to seek support if there is a hung parliament.
Greens leader Adam Bandt says federal Labor is copying a Greens policy in pledging to set up a taskforce to crack down on supermarket price gouging.
“Another day and another Greens policy that the prime minister has adopted,” Bandt told a press conference in St Kilda West, in inner Melbourne.
“Their first step is to say no, and then they adopt them, and we take that as a really good sign … these supermarkets are abusing their power and ripping off customers.”
Opposition Leader Peter Dutton visited western Sydney electorates McMahon and Fowler as Prime Minister Anthony Albanese spent the morning in Canberra.
See some moments from the campaign captured by our photographers on the trail, James Brickwood and Alex Ellinghausen.
Earlier, Opposition Leader Peter Dutton said Prime Minister Anthony Albanese cannot afford to host a COP climate summit in Australia.
“The government is planning to spend tens of tens of billions of taxpayer dollars on hosting a COP [summit] that will not bring down power prices and will sign a Labor government up to giving tens or hundreds of millions of dollars out to a third-party country,” he said.
“It’s not something we are supporting, it is madness.”
Analysis: The surprise element of Jim Chalmers’ fourth budget – a small income tax cut – is already featuring prominently in Labor’s attacks against Peter Dutton.
A closely held secret until budget night, the reduction in the 16 per cent tax rate to 14 per cent over two years, starting from mid-2026, is worth at best only $10 a week to people earning more than $45,000.
Labor had expected the Coalition, which had already supported a string of the government’s pre-budget announcements, to also support the tax cut. The Coalition has been ramping up its attacks on bracket creep, which, due to a lift in wage growth under Labor, is starting to bite into the take-home pay of an increasing number of Australians.
But within a day of the tax cut landing, shadow treasurer Angus Taylor announced a Coalition government would repeal it.
On Sunday, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese repeated Labor’s attack line that a vote for the Coalition was a vote for higher taxes.
“[Peter Dutton] is going to an election not just having voted against our tax cuts this week, he is saying that he will introduce legislation to increase the taxation rates of all 14 million Australians,” he said on the ABC’s Insiders program.
At his press conference in suburban Canberra, Albanese and Finance Minister Katy Gallagher reinforced the point that the Coalition had confirmed it would repeal the tax cut.
The issue is also featured in Labor’s own social media attack ads, with Taylor’s commitment to end the cut featured prominently.
The potency of Labor’s attack, notwithstanding the Coalition’s own policy to reduce petrol excise, stems from the fact it’s true.
Dutton, at his own press conference on Sunday, said his plan to halve fuel excise for 12 months was superior than the “hoax” of a tax cut on offer from the government.
“Mr Albanese is promising 70¢ a day in a tax cut which doesn’t start for 15 months. I think this prime minister is out of touch with how much pain Australians are feeling,” he said.
The Coalition is banking that clearly observable cheaper petrol, particularly to people in outer suburbs, is more of a vote winner than a tiny weekly tax cut in the middle of next year.
On social media, the Liberal Party reinforced its attack on the size of the government’s planned tax changes.
“A 70¢ tax tweak isn’t going to restore the living standards you have lost after three years of Labor.”
When Dutton announced the Coalition’s fuel excise plan, he revealed it would be reviewed, in a signal it could be extended. But at $6 billion in a single year, continuing the policy would punch a hole in a budget that is forecast to show a $42.1 billion deficit in 2025-26.
The 2025-26 deficit already includes the cost of Labor’s tax cut. In other words, and without as-yet unspecified spending cuts elsewhere, to extend the lower excise requires an end to the tax cut.