Stay across all the headlines from day four of the 2025 federal election campaign. Follow live.
Stay across all the headlines from day four of the 2025 federal election campaign. Follow live.
Analysis: Opposition Leader Peter Dutton has suggested that the government could limit funding for state-run schools that teach a “woke agenda” as part of the Coalition’s pitch on education. So how would that work?
Dutton was asked in an audience Q&A on Sky News last night: “What will the Coalition do to tackle the woke agendas that are being pushed through our education systems?” The question followed up on Dutton’s budget reply speech, when he said a Coalition government would “restore a curriculum that teaches the core fundamentals in our classrooms. A curriculum that cultivates critical thinking, responsible citizenship, and common sense.”
Dutton told the audience member that the federal government had the power to condition the funding it gives states. “And we should be saying to states … that we want our kids to be taught the curriculum, and we want our kids to be taught what it is that is needed to take on as they face the challenges of the world. And not to be guided into some sort of an agenda that’s come out of universities,” he said.
Is it so simple? First, the federal education department writes the Australian curriculum – which was last updated by the Coalition in 2022 – but states also have their own curriculums. This means that stipulating the precise material that must be taught in schools is not so straightforward.
Second, the federal government gives about 20 per cent of funding to public schools (and 80 per cent to private schools). The Albanese government has bumped this up to 25 per cent, but it still the minority funder. Most public school funding comes from the states.
Third, while teachers are guided by the curriculum, each has discretion over how they teach that material in the classroom. This makes it difficult for state education departments to know exactly what happens in each class, let alone the federal department.
That’s before examining what Dutton actually wants removed or added to the curriculum – he hasn’t specified which so-called “woke” elements of classroom teachings he is opposed to.
Peter Dutton’s campaign is arriving at Marnong Estate Winery in the safe Labor seat of Calwell in Melbourne’s northern suburbs.
The Liberal Party is hoping to pick up several Victorian seats in this election, capitalising on the growing unpopularity of the state Labor government.
We are following Anthony Albanese in Adelaide today. Here is a pictorial view of his morning events.
A campaign can make or break an election, and in his time as a political reporter – he covered his first campaign in 1983 – Tony Wright has witnessed a few of these moments.
With an election that could turn on such moments in front of us, Wright recounted the triumphs and the blunders of campaigns past in the latest edition of our podcast, Inside Politics, with Jacqueline Maley.
Wright remembers, for example, when John Howard launched his campaign in 2001 and, as he put it, uttered the deathless phrase: “We will decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come.”
“He really galvanised the nation with that line, didn’t he? And he really defined immigration policy and national security policy for the next generation,” Maley said.
To find episodes as soon as they drop, follow Inside Politics on Apple, Spotify or anywhere else you listen to your podcasts.
The final thing to bring you from this morning’s just-finished press conference: asked if he saw political benefit to muscling up to the Trump administration on tariffs, Albanese said it was to “stand up for Australia’s national interests”.
“That is my job,” he said. “I also will stand up for the principal view that the Australian government has had, which is that we support free and fair trade.
“Tariffs are acts of economic self-harm.”
The PM says he is increasingly concerned about social cohesion in the country.
Amid rising anger – especially in Muslim communities about the government’s response to the situation in Gaza – Albanese said we were living in “really uncertain times”, citing conflict in the Middle East, the war in Ukraine, and several wars across Africa.
“Elections come and go,” he said at this Adelaide press conference. “You know what stays? Our commitment to multiculturalism, our commitment to respect each other.”
The PM has said he will not undermine Australia’s biosecurity laws despite calls from the Trump administration to loosen them to reduce the trade burden.
With the White House listing Australia’s biosecurity laws as problematic and with the possibility of further US tariffs being placed on Australia, Albanese said the issue was “not up for negotiation”.
“We will defend Australia’s interests and the idea that we will weaken biosecurity laws is, as my mum would say, ‘cutting off your nose to spite your face’,” Albanese said.
“Not on my watch. We will not undermine the biosecurity issues. I want to see a constructive outcome.”
A key element of the federal election campaign will unfold this afternoon when the Reserve Bank’s new monetary policy committee announces whether it has held interest rates steady or delivered a surprise rate cut.
The bank cut the cash rate for the first time in more than 4½ years in February to 4.1 per cent.
Last week’s monthly inflation figures showed the rate of price growth was continuing to ease, but markets and economists think the bank will hold the cash rate steady, especially given the uncertainty around US President Donald Trump’s tariff agenda.
The prime minister is still speaking in Adelaide’s Flinders Medical Centre in the marginal Labor seat of Boothby, announcing $150 million in federal funding for a medical centre.
After touring the hospital and meeting patients, the PM took aim at Dutton’s record as health minister, and while waving his own Medicare card, said a Coalition government would gut health funding.
“When he was health minister, we had $50 billion cut from hospitals, he attempted to introduce a tax every time people visit a GP and … abolish bulk-billing altogether,” Albanese told reporters.
“So this election is about a choice between Labor, strengthening Medicare, supporting cost-of-living relief, building a stronger economy and building Australia’s future, and a Coalition government that wants to cut everything except for your taxes.”
In breaking news, a teal candidate has apologised for making a sexual joke to a 19-year-old hairdresser, which she has admitted was a poor attempt at humour.
Independent Nicolette Boele, who is running to take Sydney’s north shore seat of Bradfield from the Liberals, has been banned from a local hairdressing salon after she allegedly told the female hairdresser that her hair wash “was so good and I didn’t even have sex with you”.
Full details here.