Hello readers, and welcome to today’s election edition of Afternoon Update.
We are officially a week into the campaign, and Anthony Albanese just wishes he could “go to the pub with my mates”. Don’t we all. The comedic exchange with journalists took place at a press conference in Blacktown, after the PM and Peter Dutton appeared at the Daily Telegraph’s Future Western Sydney event.
Housing, migration and Trump’s tariffs were on the agenda for the leaders’ addresses, as they also spruiked investments in the expanding region.
And earlier, out on the campaign trail, Dutton scotched rumours of a cooling relationship with mining magnate Gina Rinehart over the Coalition’s gas plans.
Today’s big stories
Influencer Abbie Chatfield has hit out at the media and the Coalition after she was cleared by the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) of any wrongdoing.
Liberal senators had questioned whether some of Chatfield’s social media content should have been classed as electoral material – which would require an authorisation statement. Chatfield, in a post last night, said the Coalition had raised concerns about her social media posts to make an “example out of someone” and “create distrust within the Australian public”.
Meanwhile, on Friday in western Sydney, Dutton and Albanese were both asked to provide one-word responses to key issues. The PM described migration as “balanced” and power prices as “sustainable”, while the opposition leader said aspiration was “dashed”, housing was “unaffordable” and the Brisbane Broncos NRL team were “sad, but with great aspiration for this year”.
What they said
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“I’m not scared of President Trump.”
In 2017, the prime minister said Trump “scares the shit out of me” – but he’s not scaring Don Farrell.
The trade minister talked tough on Sky News as the fallout continued after the Trump administration hit Australian exports to the US with a 10% tariff.
Farrell said Australia would continue to negotiate with the US to remove the tariffs, while noting “the world has changed”, and that new markets needed to be found.
How social media saw it
This election campaign has not had enough giant props. Where are the novelty cheques, people? Luckily, the Greens leader, Adam Bandt, was on the case on Friday morning, appearing on the ABC brandishing a giant red toothbrush.
Bandt also took the comically large toothbrush to Luna Park, where, according to a media release, it made its “debut on the campaign trail”.
The prop (which Bandt was “all smiles” about) is a nod to the Greens’ policy to bring dental into Medicare as a key demand, in the instance of a minority Labor government.
The big picture
Children, dogs and hard hats are the real winners in election campaigns, and this year has been no exception. The education minister, Jason Clare, had a whirl at hopscotch with the kids during a visit to Cabramatta public school, in the seat of Fowler in outer south-west Sydney, which Labor hopes to wrangle from independent Dai Le.
He appeared alongside Labor’s candidate for the seat, Tu Le, and the prime minister.
No kissing babies, but Albanese did delightedly swing a student in the air (thank god he didn’t drop them). He told pupils about his public housing upbringing and declared: “You can be anything you want to be, if you study hard and work hard”.
Watch
Election campaigns come with a number of media coverage prerequisites: overwrought visual metaphors, misleading charts, culture wars …
Longsuffering election watcher James Colley looks back at the first week of the campaign proper, as the journalists saw it, in this week’s instalment of Surviving the Election with James Colley.
And in other news …
Australian super funds compromised after data breach as hackers use stolen passwords
South Korea president Yoon Suk Yeol removed from office after impeachment upheld by court
Environment watchdog confirms Sydney’s mystery beach balls likely came from sewage treatment plants
Queensland police to have power to issue on-the-spot domestic violence protection orders
Daily word game
Today’s starter word is: WARE. You have five goes to get the longest word including the starter word. Play Wordiply.
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