Federal election 2019: Live coverage of Day 21 on the campaign trail

The Prime Minister faced a horror day with candidates dropping like flies, and one phrase he let slip in a press conference revealed just how dire things are.

Sam Clench, James Weir with Shannon Molloy and Charis Chang

less than 2 min read

May 1, 2019 - 2:24PM

Welcome to news.com.au's live coverage of Day 21 of the federal election.

Our reporters are on the ground with Bill Shorten and Scott Morrison, and we'll bring you rolling updates from the campaign trail throughout the day.

Live Updates

Mundine told to 'go back where he came from'

Just when you thought the day couldn't get any more controversial, another spat has emerged.

Indigenous candidate Warren Mundine has accused his Labor rival in the Sydney electorate of Gilmore of being "extremely insulting".

The trouble started when candidate Fiona Phillips delivered an unflattering assessment of Mr Mundine to WIN News Illawarra: "He is a phony and he needs to go back to where he came from".

Mr Mundine hit back at the comments saying in a statement: "I’m a member of the Yuin Nation, the traditional owners of the land and sea within the Gilmore electorate … my people have lived on Yuin country for thousands of years."

The Liberal candidate is facing a bitter battle after being parachuted into the seat by PM Scott Morrison. He doesn't live in the area but said "no one deserves to be ordered to 'go back to where they came from'.

“Like many Aboriginal people, my grandparents and parents often had to move away from their country for work and other reasons. I’ve had to do the same. I’ve lived in many places in my life, half of it in regional Australia," he said.

“Fiona did traditional owners great dishonour and disrespect yesterday by ordering one of them to leave their own country."

Ms Phillips hit back at her opponent.

"This has nothing to do with land of the Yuin Nation. Australia is, and always has been First Nations land," she said.

"Mundine has rolled into town straight from Sydney's leafy north shore on his big business funded bus of lies deceiving pensioners about fake plans to raise the pension."

Killin: Another Lib bites the dust

The Liberal Party has lost another candidate in Victoria over a homophobic attack of a prominent backbencher.

Peter Killin, running in the electorate of Wills, launched an attack on Liberal MP Tim Wilson, who was described as a “notorious homosexual”.

Mr Killin was called to party administration to explain himself today after reports emerged of his comments and ABC is now reporting that Mr Killin has resigned.

It's the second candidate to be disendorsed today with Jeremy Hearn dumped after a series of anti-Muslim comments were unearthed.

Billionaire: "Whoever wins, doesn't matter"

British billionaire Sanjeev Gupta is so confident about the future of electric cars in Australia that he says it doesn't matter who wins the federal election.

Touring his Whyalla Steel Works with Opposition Leader Bill Shorten on Tuesday, the GFG Alliance boss said electric vehicles would soon be commonplace on Australian roads

"I think electric cars will happen globally," Mr Gutpa said.

"I think they will happen in Australia and I think whoever wins [the election] doesn't matter."

As part of its ambitious climate change policy, Labor wants 50 per cent of all new cars sold by the end of next decade to be electric.

Labor has set the same 50 per cent target by 2025 for purchases in the federal government vehicle fleet, and will allow business to deduct a 20 per cent depreciation for private fleet electric vehicles valued at more than $20,000.

The Coalition has savaged Labor’s plans to accelerate take-up of electric vehicles, warning the freedom of motorists is at risk and popular existing models taken could be taken off the roads.

GFG Alliance has been working in partnership with British firm Gordon Murray Design for 18 months on an electric vehicle strategy, and a decision on prototype vehicles is in its final stages.

Mr Gupta wants to make electric vehicles in Australia and then establish a manufacturing base in India.

Speaking to workers on site, Mr Shorten said Labor considered steel an industry of national significance.

“You can't be a fully-formed economy of our nature and resources if we don't have a steel industry,” Mr Shorten said.

Earlier Mr Shorten visited the SSE Solar Farm outside the South Australia city, accompanied by Labor's climate change spokesman Mark Butler.

The pair met with Wilson Burns, of Bilson Electrical and Renewables, touring the solar farm which provides enough energy to power 3000 homes through a 5 megawatt system.

Mr Burns said renewable energy was the only policy area younger voters cared about.

The solar farm has been running for 12 months and is being doubled in size.

“Renewable energy is the number one thing everyone is talking about,” Mr Burns said.

“Me, my friends, people who I'm around, everyone agrees the same on renewables,” he said.

– with Tom McIlroy, Australian Financial Review

Slip-up exposes ScoMo's woes

It’s all about the specifics in this election campaign and it’s important to make clear who exactly you’re referring to.
Like this morning, on a plush soccer field in East Cannington, when Scott Morrison got confused about which minority-bashing MP he was talking about. The Lib’s Muslim-bashing candidate Jeremy Hearn or the Lib’s gay-bashing candidate Peter Killan.
Ugh, it’s so hard to tell the difference!
Scott Morrison wanted to talk about the $16m he’s announced today to develop a WA football centre, instead he was tackled with questions about reports his party is preparing to dump Mr Killan after homophobic comments he made about Liberal MP Tim Wilson came to light.

One reporter was asking the PM about Jeremy Hearn, who has been disendorsed after it emerged he argued Muslims shouldn't get citizenship as they were trying to replace Australia's system of government with sharia law.
The reporter noted that Mr Hearns comments were published on the Quadrant website quite a long time ago and asked why he was preselected.
But Mr Morrison obviously got confused about which offensive candidate the reporter was referring to because he answered that the candidate "came in because we weren't able to continue with the other candidate because of section 44 issues", before he realised his mistake and uttered eight words that reflect how ridiculous the situation has become: "Sorry, you are referring to the other one?"
Indeed. The … other one.
It was the second time he tripped up in a matter of minutes. Moments earlier, a potential fall arose as he tried to dribble a soccer ball with young players.
At the press conference, Mr Morrison followed up with " Again, I expect the party administration to be doing their due diligence and where that's been not up to standard, I expect them to meet those standards in the future and improve their processes.
"Look, in election campaigns, these individuals we identified, they've been identified in a number of parties and they need to be dealt with swiftly and appropriately and that's the action we are taking."

PM asked about homosexual comments

The Prime Minister is hosting a press conference in Western Australia and has been asked about Victorian candidate Peter Killin.

It's emerged that Mr Killin, running in the electorate of Wills, launched an attack on Liberal MP Tim Wilson, who was described as a “notorious homosexual”.

When asked whether people like Mr Killin belonged in the Liberal Party.

"I think Tim Wilson is an outstanding member of Parliament. I stand with Tim. Absolutely. I thank him for the great work he has been doing," Scott Morrison said.

He said Mr Killin was being brought to the party administration to give an explanation about the issues.

"What further action is taken, well, I'll allow the party to follow its processes."

He noted that another Liberal candidate in the Melbourne seat of Isaacs, Jeremy Hearn, had been dumped "as they should".

"We have seen the same thing happening with the Labor Party. So what I would simply say is this: For the Liberal Party, in this day and age when there is social media, multiple posting, that represents new challenges in the vetting of candidates.

"This is something I will be expecting the party to be working on and improving their processes."

A dark day for decency

In case you’re having trouble keeping track – and I don’t blame you – of today’s candidate controversies and scandals, here’s a summary.

– Liberal candidate for Paterson Sachin Joshi recently wrote that women are to blame for the gender pay gap because they lack initiative and skill.

– Liberal candidate for Wills, Peter Killin, will reportedly be dumped for endorsing an extraordinary homophobic attack on prominent backbencher Tim Wilson.

– Jeremy Hearn was disendorsed as the Liberal’s candidate for Isaacs after a series of anti-Muslim comments were unearthed.

– Gladys Liu, the Liberal candidate for Chisholm, referenced being an AFL ambassador, not once but twice during the campaign, despite quitting that role last year.

– Bill Shorten denied having met dumped Senate hopeful Wayne Kurnoth of ‘Jewish alien lizards run the world’ fame. We found a picture of the pair of them.

– Angus Taylor was sprung making a positive comment about himself, from himself, presumably because he forgot to login to his fake Facebook account.

– Luke Creasey, Labor’s candidate in the seat of Melbourne, has apologised for sharing rape jokes and pornography on his Facebook page.

– United Australia Party candidate Stewart Hine, running in Nicholls, tried to swap favourable media coverage for some of Clive Palmer’s advertising dollars.

– Andrew Hastie, the Liberal MP for Canning, continues to insist he never met with right-wing extremist and convicted criminal Neil Erikson, despite his Liberal colleague Ian Goodenough saying that he did.

– One Nation candidate for Leichhardt Ross Macdonald has been embroiled in a sleazy social media scandal, with pictures emerging of him groping the breast of a woman while on holiday in Thailand and sharing bizarre, sexual images.

That's one day. One. Day. Isn’t democracy beautiful? There’s still three weeks of this campaign to go, by the way.

Another Liberal to be dumped: reports

The Liberal Party is reportedly preparing to dump another candidate in Victoria over his homophobic attack of a prominent backbencher.

Peter Killin, running in the electorate of Wills, launched an attack on Liberal MP Tim Wilson, who was described as a “notorious homosexual”.

The Sydney Morning Herald has revealed that Mr Killin made the remarks about Mr Wilson in the comments section of a blog by Christian right-wing figure Bill Muehlenberg.

Another commenter, Michael Taouk, was complaining that the Liberal Party wasn’t doing enough to “remove preselection from that notorious homosexual Tim Wilson”.

Mr Killin replied: “Your observations about Mr T Wilson, federal member for Goldstein are most pertinent at this point. Many of us will recall he was the openly homosexual who proposed to his boyfriend in parliment [sic].”

He lobbied fellow conservative Liberals to do more to prevent gay people from being elected.

“ONE LOUSY VOTE!” he said of Mr Wilson’s pre-selection.

“So, if you and I were there to participate in preselection the result = no homosexual MP.”

Mr Killin has also said he believes “the homosexual lifestyle” is “distressingly dangerous” and carries “appalling health risks”.

The SMH now reports that Mr Killin is expected to be dumped by the party today for the extraordinary attack.

Mr Wilson told the SMH that he would respond to the comments in the spirit of his own Christian values.

“I learned as a young boy to turn the other cheek and leave judgement to others,” he said.

Things have always been bonkers

Bill Shorten is in Whyalla in South Australia to visit a solar farm.

It reminds us of this bizarre moment in political history from Craig Emerson.

Shorten commits to third debate

Labor agreed to a third leaders’ debate, to be held at the National Press Club on May 8, it has been revealed.

Herald Sun reporter Anthony Galloway shared a letter from Labor’s national secretary confirming the plan.

Labor's national secretary Noah Carroll has agreed to hold the third leaders debate in the evening on May 8 #auspol2019 pic.twitter.com/Ao4SlOU682
— Anthony Galloway (@Gallo_Ways) May 1, 2019

‘Nail the bastard!’

Things got surprisingly hectic at a seniors’ forum in Perth this morning, where one pensioner called for Scott Morrison to “nail the bastard!”

The Prime Minister was addressing a select group of senior citizens at The Old Midland Courthouse about Labor’s proposed tax when questions from the audience took a wild turn.

“Can you nail the bastard in three weeks?” retiree Ian Johnson – armed with a manilla folder of press clippings – asked the PM.

Shaky yet enthused cheers from the crowd filled the small hall.

Mr Morrison smiled at the ruckus playing out before his eyes, before revealing his own aggressive attack plan.

“Do any of you remember that show Andrew Denton used to run called Enough Rope? Well that’s what I think I’ll give him.”

The intense scenes should’ve been expected.

Before the PM arrived at the hall, a crudely drawn protest sign sledging Mr Shorten’s proposed retiree tax bobbed in the air at the front of the aging crowd.