Hello readers, and welcome to today’s election edition of Afternoon Update.
The seventh day of the campaign has been dominated by Donald Trump’s “liberation day”, with the US administration announcing 10% tariffs to be imposed on Australia.
Anthony Albanese declared it was “not the act of a friend” but said nobody globally had gotten a “better deal” than Australia. That’s excluding Australia’s tiny external territory of Norfolk Island, which was, in the words of the PM, “rather bizarrely” slammed with a 29% tariff.
Peter Dutton strongly supported the five measures announced by the government in response to the tariffs, including a $1bn economic resilience program, but the opposition leader told reporters the Coalition “could have achieved a different outcome”.
Almost every nation in the world, including the United Kingdom, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea and India were unable to secure exemptions, so that must have been some ace Dutton had up his sleeve.
Today’s big stories
The foreign minister, Penny Wong, was unimpressed with Dutton’s suggestion that the government needed to do more to stop Trump’s tariffs.
Speaking on Sky News, Wong said Dutton seemed to think he was “Superman”, but was actually “captain obvious”.
“He suggests that this is a time for negotiation; well, that is what we have been doing,” she said.
In non-tariff news, election connoisseurs may recall the “fake tradie” discourse over Sydney metalworker Andrew MacRae when he appeared in a 2016 Liberal party election campaign advertisement.
Well, the controversy returned on Thursday with social media ads showing former MP Tim Wilson talking to a man in hi-vis who bears a striking resemblance to a member of the Liberal Goldstein campaign. You be the judge.
What they said
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“Australia’s clutch of Austral-Americans, that phalanx of American acolytes, must have choked on their breakfasts, as Donald Trump laid out his blitzkrieg on globalisation, with all its implications for the rupture of cooperation and goodwill among nations.”
It comes as no surprise that the former prime minister Paul Keating has written the most poetic – and scathing – statement on the Trump administration’s tariffs.
Keating has never been a fan of Aukus, which he made abundantly clear during a fiery address to the National Press Club in 2023.
Now, he has gone further, calling China the “sole promoter of free and open international trade” in the face of America’s “new economic fortress”, which he says will rally the global South.
How social media saw it
Nobody was safe from Trump’s “reciprocal” tariffs, including Heard and McDonald islands – an uninhabited external territory of Australia, and one of the most remote places on earth.
While void of humans (with an Antarctic climate and two active volcanoes), the islands are home to seabirds, seals and penguins.
Understandably, the local residents were outraged by the decision, which they said would be a huge blow to their thriving fishing industries.
The big picture
Albanese has been rising in the polls but he took an unfortunate stumble on stage at a Mining and Energy Union conference on Thursday afternoon.
His small fall off the riser prompted audible gasps from the crowd. But he was back on his feet after a few moments, sharing a laugh with union members who rushed to assist him.
Let’s wait and see if it’s plastered over tabloid front pages tomorrow.
Watch
Happy Liberation Day, folks. Trump announced sweeping tariffs on some of the US’s largest trading partners on Thursday, upending decades of US trade policy and threatening to unleash a global trade war.
The sweeping list, which he displayed as a prop, is helpfully not alphabetised, grouped geographically or in numerical order.
And in other news …
‘Same shit, different year’: Australia records hottest 12 months and warmest March on record
RBA urges caution on lending criteria as report shows borrowers in better financial shape than 2022
South Korea ‘at breaking point’ ahead of ruling on President Yoon’s impeachment
Daily word game
Today’s starter word is: CERE . You have five goes to get the longest word including the starter word. Play Wordiply.
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