Both Scott Morrison and the soccer club have posted statements on Facebook about tonight's collision.
"A shout out to young Luca for being such a good sport," the PM wrote.
"You may have seen we had a bit of a collision at club training tonight at the Devonport Strikers Football Club in Tasmania. I spoke to Luca and his mum Ali tonight to check in on him and he was in good form.
"Great to be able to have a good chat to him about his love of football and to hear he’s had three hat-tricks in his budding career already."
The Devonport Strikers wrote, "Our club values are determination, effort and respect. We think Luca showed plenty of determination and effort to stop the PM scoring at all costs!
"The latest star of the election is ok and looking forward to being the star of the show at school tomorrow!"
Scott Morrison has just finished giving a speech at the Australia-Israel Chamber of Commerce where his big theme was about the power of government.
He said that only his party knows when the government should step into the lives of Australians, and the response to the pandemic had proved that.
“You know, during the course of this pandemic, we’ve learned a lot about the power of government. And I think we’re over that,” he said.
“And we want to put that in the rear-vision mirror. We’re putting this pandemic behind us and all the intervention of government in our lives. There are some who see that as an invitation to take the role of government into our lives.
“I’ve seen it in other left wing governments in other places of the world, they see it as a reason to keep government at the centre.
“We know when to step up, and we did to support Australians get through one of the most difficult times in Australia’s history but we also know when to step back.”
During his Press Club appearance, Mr Albanese also spoke about yesterday's farcical press conference, at which he fled questions about the federal budget deficit.
To remind you, yesterday Mr Albanese cut his presser short after 20 minutes – including five minutes of preamble – and was chased by reporters, who were trying to get a straight answer on whether deficits would be higher under Labor.
The Labor leader said his party's costings would be released on Thursday, and refused to give any more detail.
"Nobody has asked about costings, so I'm going to intervene here," Press Club President Laura Tingle said midway through the Q&A session.
"They'll wait to chase," Mr Albanese said, referring to the press pack.
"I got 18 questions here but they'll wait to chase."
(I was there yesterday. There were not 18 questions, unless you count every time journalists interjected to ask the same question over and over again.)
Tingle asked whether the Charter for Budget Honesty had become "a bit of an excuse for not being more transparent".
"We have released, with every policy, we've released how much it would cost over the forward estimates as we've gone on," Mr Albanese argued.
"We have been transparent the whole way along. We are releasing our costings tomorrow. I had some detail today, which I flagged yesterday in one of the 18 questions I took at a media conference yesterday."
Again, I must say, I'm sceptical of Mr Albanese's maths there.
Labor is about to see whether one of its big gambles of the election will pay off, with a top MP on the chopping block if things turn sour.
Labor has been ramping up efforts in the previously ultra-safe seat of Fowler in Western Sydney, following new fears it could fall into the hands of the Liberal Party.
Shadow Home Affairs Minister Kristina Keneally could see her career ended if she loses the seat to independent candidate and local lawyer Dai Le, the Financial Review reported.
Anthony Albanese planned a trip to the electorate this week in a final desperate bid to rally support for Ms Keneally ahead of the election on Saturday.
Pictures: Tim Hunter and Sam Ruttyn
“We’re keeping an eye on it,” a Labor source told the Financial Review of the situation.
The heightened concerns come after research shared by The Daily Telegraph showed Ms Keneally's primary vote had tumbled by nearly 13 points to 42 per cent.
The poll, conducted by Laidlaw Campaigns and Counsel, suggested the current two-party preferred vote in Fowler is 45 to 38 in favour of Ms Keneally.
This narrowing margin however means it is still possible that Ms Le could win the seat, an outcome that would be a major blow for the Labor Party.
At the National Press Club this afternoon, Anthony Albanese copped a question alluding to his habit of talking about his childhood.
"Mr Albanese, you speak extensively about being the young man from the council flat. And this is not an invitation to repeat that story," said Sky News political editor Andrew Clennell.
"I might anyway," Mr Albanese quipped.
"Please don't. Please don't," said Clennell.
"Would the young man in the council flat approve of the man here, endorsing Stage 3 tax cuts, which give people on more than $200,000 a tax cut of more than $10,000. Or would the young man in the council flat approve of a family on $500,000 getting a $26,000 childcare subsidy?
"Aren't you just endorsing this tax cut policy to win the election? And won't you change your mind afterwards by blaming economic circumstances?"
"The young lad in the council flat – and I'll begin there – had a mum who told that young man that he could be anything he wanted to be," said Mr Albanese.
"When I speak about no one left behind – no one left behind is about protecting the disadvantaged. That's why I don't support a real wages cut for people on minimum wage.
"That is part of my mantra I've held my whole life. But the other thing about no one held back is people aspiring to a better life. That's what Labor does."
He said Labor had voted for the tax cuts to give people "certainty going forward".
"If you look at what I've done, some of my views of course have changed. When facts change, change your views. You learn each and every day in this job. I've developed, I believe," said the Labor leader.
Clennell's attempt to follow up on that answer was shut down by Press Club President Laura Tingle.
"Sorry Andrew, sit down," she said.
Polling booths unable to open due to "recruitment difficulties"
Voters are being warned that dozens of polling places won't be able to open on election day due to "recruitment difficulties".
The AEC said the booths were in the following divisions:
Capricornia, Flynn, Kennedy and Leichhardt (QLD)
Barker and Grey (SA)
Durack and O’Connor (WA)
Electoral Commissioner Tom Rogers said the vast majority of the nation’s planned 7000 polling places will be in operation. “While the impact will likely be limited, and limited to certain areas, voters in identified regional locations who have not accessed an early voting centre, or postal vote, may not have a polling venue in their town on election day,” Mr Rogers said. “The list of affected areas will reduce as we get closer to Saturday and many local residents will have already accessed the alternative forms of voting available in the Australian system.”
The latest Wage Price Index has confirmed real wages fell 2.5 per cent in the past 12 months.
“Real wages have continued to collapse. Today’s figures confirm the worst real wage decline this century," Australia Institute senior economist Matt Grudnoff said.
Australia Institute employment and fiscal policy director Greg Jericho said the result showed workers were not seeing the benefits of lower unemployment.
“Real wages are now below what they were at the last election and are essentially no different from where they were at the September 2013 election,” Dr Jericho said.
Albo blasted for revealing first move if he becomes PM
Defence Minister Peter Dutton has called out Anthony Albanese for revealing what his first move would be if he were to win Saturday's election and become the new Prime Minister of Australia.
The Labor Leader told The Australian he would be sworn in as soon as Sunday or Monday if he wins the election, in order to attend the Quadrilateral meeting in Tokyo on Tuesday.
Mr Dutton has taken issue with this, claiming Mr Albanese is "taking people's support for granted".
Speaking to 2GB, the Defence Minister likened it to Bill Shorten having "the removalist truck booked ready to take the furniture into the Lodge" during the last election.
Picture: Lachie Millard
"At the moment you would have thought Anthony Albanese's focus would be on trying to release their costings, which they are refusing to do, explaining to people in the last few days of this campaign why they can be trusted with this economy," Mr Dutton said.
Labor have committed to releasing their costings on Thursday, with Mr Albanese refusing to reveal ahead of time whether it will include larger deficits than the Coalition.
"I think Mr Albanese is showing a lot of inexperience in this campaign. I think people's doubts about Mr Albanese are vindicated when he makes statements like this," Mr Dutton continued.
"Taking for granted that you’ve already become Prime Minister, or are on the cusp of it, I think is hubris writ large.
"Instead of focusing on taking people's votes for granted, frankly, they should be getting out their costings. At the moment they are spending money like drunken sailors."
A new poll showing promising results for Scott Morrison has been slammed as "garbled" and "contradictory" in a blow for the PM just days out from the election.
The survey conducted by Resolve Strategic for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, found the primary vote for Labor has dropped from 34 to 31 per cent in the past two weeks, while support for the Coalition rose from 33 to 34 per cent.
However, it showed Labor is still ahead in the two-party preferred result, leading 52 to 48 per cent, though that is a tightening on the 54 to 46 per cent outcome during the previous survey.
Speaking to Sunrise on Wednesday morning, News Corp columnist Joe Hildebrand questioned the poll's accuracy, claiming there were a number of "red flags" in the figures.
Picture: Sunrise/Channel 7
"I don't know what these numbers are telling us but it's not where the electorate is at. I have never seen such a weird, garbled and contradictory set of numbers in my entire life," he told host Natalie Barr.
"It's showing Queensland has a Greens vote of 17 per cent. This is a party that got 10 per cent at the last election and we are expected to believe it's shot up by 50 per cent across the board to 14 or 15 per cent generally, and 17 per cent in Queensland. And that Labor has a primary vote of 28 per cent in NSW when private polling shows it could win Bennelong by 55 to 45 per cent, again the Prime Minister's old seat.
"Labor has a chance to win North Sydney for the first time in history and yet this poll is telling us that it doesn't even have a primary vote of 30 per cent in NSW. This is the strangest thing I've ever seen."
Hildebrand questioned the methodology of this new poll, pointing out it was vastly different to other polls conducted in previous weeks.
"It's a weird set of numbers. I just texted a Labor strategist to say does this correlates with their numbers and they just said it's garbage," he said.
Barr then pointed out that it is possible the other polls could be wrong, highlighting the fact that the majority of the polls at the previous election believed Bill Shorten was a shoe-in.
Hildebrand conceded that polls have been wrong in the past, but questioned how a person could look at these numbers and not have "a bunch of red flags go off", claiming many of the figures were contradictory to each other.
"Polls do tend to tighten the closer you get to polling day, but this hasn't just tightened a bit, this is like a whole bunch of numbers that have shot through that are completely different to what they were and are going in different directions," he said.
