Read all the headlines from day seven of the 2025 federal election campaign on Thursday, April 3.
Read all the headlines from day seven of the 2025 federal election campaign on Thursday, April 3.
Thanks for reading our live coverage of the federal election campaign and Trump’s tariff announcement today.
Here’s a brief look back at the headlines so far:
- Donald Trump has hit Australia with a 10 per cent tariff on all goods exported to the US as part of a sweeping overhaul of import duties that has roiled international markets and raised fears of a global economic downturn.
- Anthony Albanese was the first world leader to respond to the announcement. He described Trump’s tariffs as “unwarranted” with “no basis in logic” and revealed a five-point plan to support Australian industry.
- Paul Keating, Jacqui Lambie and the Greens all separately called for Australia to re-consider the closeness of its defence pacts with the United States.
- Trump singled out Australia for its ban on imports of uncooked US beef, but the PM confirmed he would not weaken biosecurity laws as Australian farmers said they’d rather cop tariffs than diseases from American beef.
- Peter Dutton backed the government’s new measures, but said he could have negotiated a better outcome with the Trump administration.
- The Australian sharemarket shed $38 billion in morning trade today.
- Albanese and Dutton have agreed to a second campaign debate, this time with the ABC on April 16.
- The opposition leader is campaigning in Perth ,while the PM’s press conference was gate-crashed by climate protesters just outside Newcastle in NSW.
Stay tuned.
Penny Wong has taken aim at Peter Dutton, calling him “delusional” for thinking he would have negotiated better with the Trump administration.
“I think people know in the real world that Peter Dutton is delusional. He’s so arrogant as to be delusional,” the foreign minister told the ABC’s Afternoon Briefing moments ago.
“He seriously thinks that he, uniquely amongst all leaders in the world, could have got a better deal, when the reality is this is the decision that President Trump and his administration have made.”
Wong doubled down on the government’s position that the tariffs are unwarranted and Australia wouldn’t compromise on its biosecurity and pharmaceutical benefits scheme.
Meanwhile in Victoria, Liberal candidate for Goldstein Tim Wilson is facing accusations of getting a party branch secretary and campaign volunteer to pose a tradie in a Facebook campaign ad.
In the ad, Wilson says he is focused on making housing more affordable. The video shows him speaking with a few constituents – including a man in a fluoro vest holding a hard hat who looks like a tradie or builder.
The man appears instead to be one of Wilson’s campaign volunteers, Frazer Hurst, who has no listed affiliation with the housing and building sector.
According to Hurst’s LinkedIn profile, he is a politics student at Monash University who works as a duty manager at Brighton Coles and is a branch secretary of the Liberal Party.
Read more about this story and follow along with our rolling coverage of Victoria’s hot seats here.
On ABC Newcastle, the PM has denied he fell off stage when speaking at a union meeting. Here’s the exchange.
Jenny Marchant, host: Prime minister, we saw that you fell from the stage and get up this afternoon. Are you OK?
PM: No, I stepped back one step. I didn’t fall off the stage.
Marchant: It looked like you went down. I’m glad to hear you’re OK, though.
PM: Just one leg went down, but I was sweet.
The PM has said the climate protesters who crashed his press conference at the Maitland hospital this afternoon were “entirely inappropriate”.
“I think that people screaming in a hospital ward says more about them than advancing their cause,” Albanese said on ABC radio in Newcastle moments ago.
The protesters, who posed as journalists to get close to the PM, were critical of Labor’s record phasing out fossil fuels.
One of the protesters yelled: “Mr Albanese, why has the government approved 33 new fossil fuel projects since coming to power?”
Anthony Albanese has fallen off the back of a stage as he was manoeuvring for a photo to mark a lifetime achievement award at a union conference in the Hunter Valley.
The prime minister had just finished delivering a speech to the Mining and Energy Union and was moving across a stage, which is raised by less than metre off the floor.
A misplaced step meant he slipped off the back end of the elevated stage. He was back on his feet quickly to pose for the photo to mark his award, given to him in appreciation of pro-union workplace laws.
He then walked off stage without any apparent injury.
Circling back to Dutton’s press conference earlier, the opposition leader also committed to keep Labor’s landmark “same job, same pay” laws despite previous plans to review the legislation.
A reporter asked: “You have raised a lot of concerns about IR policy including [the] ‘same job, same pay’ [laws]. Would you repeal it?”
Dutton said: “We’re not going to.”
However, shadow industrial relations minister Michaelia Cash has previously criticised the “rushed” laws, which mandate equal pay for labour hire workers, as making businesses more costly to run. The Liberals had committed to reviewing the legislation.
The Coalition has vowed to repeal other parts of Labor’s industrial relations agenda, such as the right to disconnect and a pathway to permanency for casual workers.
Read more about where the major parties stand on key issues here.
The PM is about to address mining workers at a union conference in the seat of Hunter.
The seat west of Newcastle is held by Labor MP Dan Repacholi.
Industrial Relations Minister Murray Watt and Resources Minister Madeleine King have joined Albanese, demonstrating the importance of retaining the mining seat.
The prime minister said Labor’s same job, same pay laws, which mandate equal pay for labour hire workers, would be gutted if Peter Dutton was elected.