Hello, readers, and welcome to today’s election edition of Afternoon Update.
The Coalition’s announcement on defence spending – more on that below – dominated the day, while Anthony Albanese did the rounds on his home turf in Sydney before heading to Perth.
The day also saw not one but two policy debates, with the health minister, Mark Butler going to head-to-head with his shadow counterpart, Anne Ruston, and the treasurer, Jim Chalmers, taking on the shadow treasurer, Angus Taylor.
Meanwhile, more than half a million votes were cast on Tuesday, setting a new early voting record.
Ten days and counting …
Today’s big stories
Peter Dutton has pledged to spend $21bn over the next five years on Australia’s defence, lifting it, as a proportion of Australia’s gross domestic product, to 2.5%, although he refused to specify where it would be allocated. Dutton has also committed to redoing security checks for thousands of Palestinians from Gaza granted visitor visas in Australia as he doubled down on introducing questions on antisemitism in citizenship tests.
“We won’t compromise on border security … Our nation is the greatest in the world,” he said.
Staying with the leader of the opposition: trade unionists, conservationists and church groups have united against Dutton’s nuclear plan, citing human and environmental concerns.
Meanwhile British-Australian doctor Mohammed Mustafa has called on Anthony Albanese and Penny Wong to sit down with him to discuss ways to help in Gaza, while rejecting the government’s characterisation that Australia is “not a major player” in the Middle East.
What they said
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“I am not going to resile from what I have said in the past … I said what I said but the thing that the Australian people need to know, under a Dutton-led Coalition government, we will have a policy that is open to all Australians for combat roles. Nothing is changing.”
Andrew Hastie, the shadow defence minister who has previously served in the ADF, was challenged on his views about whether women should serve in the defence force. In 2018, he said that the “fighting DNA of a close combat unit is best preserved when it’s exclusively male”. Today, he said he would not “resile” from his past comments, but said the Coalition policy was that all combat roles are open to women.
How social media saw it
In a campaign that has been relatively humour free – there’s not much to laugh about in the news sphere at the moment, to be sure – it’s comforting to see the ever-reliable stuck truck meme re-emerge. This time, the Liberal candidate for Greenway Rattan Virk’s campaign truck was caught post-crash propping up part of a pre-polling centre in Quakers Hill.
The big picture
Lifting the lid … or not. We’re guessing there’s only so much that can be beamed to the whole world when it comes to the live inner workings of a defence manufacturing plant.
Watch
Donkey voting, you ask? The term is used when an elector casts votes in the order they’re printed on the ballot. Often seen as a form of protest vote, there’s a myth that these ballots don’t count. In this episode of Voting 101, Guardian Australia’s Matilda Boseley explains that as long as every box is numbered, a donkey vote is a valid vote.
And in other news …
Pilgrims begin to gather as Pope Francis set to lie in state at St Peter’s Basilica
Elon Musk to pull back in Doge role starting May amid 71% dip in Tesla profits
Sarah Palin loses retrial of defamation case against New York Times
‘I’ve woken up with them on my face’: Portuguese millipede infestation horrifies Wellington
Daily word game
Today’s starter word is: UMP . You have five goes to get the longest word including the starter word. Play Wordiply.
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