An election debate has ended with Penny Wong refusing to shake her opponent's hand after a bitter argument.
Welcome to news.com.au's live election blog for Day 28 of the campaign.
Both leaders will be campaigning in NSW today ahead of their third and final debate to be held in Canberra tonight. We'll be bringing you rolling updates throughout the day.
The political shenanigans have died down as we enter the final two hours before tonight's debate.
Scott Morrison and Bill Shorten are tucked away with their staff, preparing for what could be the campaign's most pivotal moment.
We will be back shortly after 7pm with live coverage of the debate.
An anti-vaxxer controversy has erupted around Clive Palmer's United Australia Party, which says it "hasn't finalised a position" on whether children should be vaccinated.
One of Mr Palmer's candidates, Alexander Stewart, said there was no evidence the benefits of vaccines outweighed the danger in a since deleted Facebook post, according to The Sydney Morning Herald.
Mr Stewart called himself a "vaccination questioner".
"What I am saying is we need to ask questions," he said today.
"Mere effectiveness is not good enough in the public arena … we need to consider the side effects.
"If you want me to remove the weeds from my garden, one option is to use a nuclear weapon. Yeah it would remove the weeds from the garden, but it would have a lot of consequences."
Asked to respond, Mr Palmer's spokesman said: "The United Australia Party hasn't finalised a position on this at this stage."
The government's Simon Birmingham and Labor's Penny Wong have clashed during a debate at the South Australian Press Club.
The tense moment came right at the end, when Mr Birmingham brought up former prime minister's Paul Keating's controversial comments about the heads of Australia's intelligence agencies.
Mr Keating called the country's spy bosses "nutters".
"Paul Keating is not an isolated figure -" Mr Birmingham started.
"Oh, come on. Speaking of not being partisan on China, this is really, really not appropriate. This is really desperate politics," Ms Wong interjected, clearly frustrated.
"I'm only making the point in terms of Bob Carr and others who sit within the rank of the Labor Party," Mr Birmingham continued.
"Now, we will make sure we maintain a firm, a consistent approach, and in doing so, make sure we keep Australia's economic interests strong, but also of course our national security interest strong too."
That marked the end of the debate. Mr Birmingham turned and offered his hand to Ms Wong. She shook her head and refused.
Here's footage of the moment, courtesy of the ABC.
Tense moment between @SenatorWong and @Birmo at the SA debate. Birmingham says Keating’s China comments show Labor lacks consistency on the issue. Wong is fuming, accuses Birmingham of politicising foreign policy. Refuses his offer of a handshake at end of the debate. pic.twitter.com/Fj7P1m34fC
— Stephen Dziedzic (@stephendziedzic) May 8, 2019
Amid the deluge of annoying ads from Clive Palmer, there is one which stands out for its brazen dishonesty.
The ad in question, featuring United Australia Party Senate candidate Yodie Batzke, is currently on high rotation on TV and radio.
"The Liberals are going to give you tax cuts, but not until 2024. That means they have to win this election, the next election and probably the one after that before you get them," Ms Batzke says.
"By then Scomo and Joshee will have gone walkabout.
"Labor go one better. They'll give tax cuts in 2024, but also insult people earning less than $40,000 by pretending to give them one too! It's all on the never-never.
"Labor and Liberal just lie to you."
It is true that most of the government's tax cuts kick in from the 2024-25 financial year onwards. But both Labor and the Liberals are planning tax cuts for most Australians by the end of this financial year.
So who is really fibbing here?
Labor has dismissed the "utterly false" accusation that residents in the Sydney seat Bennelong have been sent a fake letter in support of its candidate, brain surgeon Dr Brian Owler.
The Northern District Times reports the letter, written by Beecroft residents Becky Li and Alex Chau, praises Dr Owler for saving their daughter's life.
"It is because of Dr Owler that our daughter is a happy, healthy child," it reads.
"Over three years of Chloe's surgery and radiation treatments, Dr Owler never hid the difficult choices. He gave us options and clearly supported our whole family."
However one of the letter's recipients, Marilla Dann, told the paper she doubted its veracity.
"It's a blatant lie that it's from a neighbour," Ms Dann said.
"I just think it's a total lie."
Labor says the Beecroft couple has made a "very real contribution" to the democratic process.
"It is a sad reflection on politics today that the first reaction from some people is to assume that they are fake or lying," the campaign said.
Labor has pounced on Scott Morrison's continuing support for Gurpal Singh, the Liberal candidate in the Melbourne seat Scullin.
Mr Singh has previously referred to homosexuality as "something that is against nature" and linked it to paedophilia.
As Charis mentioned earlier, journalists grilled Mr Morrison on that issue at his press conference today, suggesting there was a double standard between the Prime Minister's treatment of his own candidate and his reaction to Labor's Luke Creasey last week.
"All I can say is the standard you walk by is the standard you accept," Mr Morrison said of Mr Creasey, who quit as Labor's candidate in Melbourne over his offensive posts on social media.
Today he said simply that the Liberal Party organisation had dealt with Mr Singh and "his candidacy has continued".
"This is the candidate who linked same-sex marriage to paedophilia," Labor's Kristina Keneally has said in a statement.
"Based on his own test and failure to show any leadership, Scott Morrison accepts this standard from his candidate for Scullin."
Someone is supremely confident Labor will win the election.
The betting agency Ladbrokes has announced it has taken the biggest single bet in its history, with someone putting a million dollars on Labor to emerge victorious on May 18.
The punter will earn $230,000 if Labor does win, at odds of $1.23.
Ladbrokes says the largest wager it had previously accepted on this year's election was $15,000 on the Coalition to win back on April 23.
Jay Dessi, the Greens candidate for Lalor in Victoria, has withdrawn from the race after the emergence of his offensive posts on social media.
Earlier today The Australian revealed Mr Dessi had joked about being sexually aroused by dead people, made a racist joke about an Asian friend's eyes, and posted a vulgar cartoon involving an animal receiving oral sex.
The first offence relates to a mock Google search, which started with the words "I had sex with" and offered the options "a minor", "a child", "a ghost", "a 14-year-old" and "a condom".
Mr Dessi responded to it with the word "ectogasm", an obscure term which refers to a sensual experience with a ghost or spirit.
The racist joke came when Mr Dessi commented on a photo of an Asian friend wearing a frog hat.
"Which eyes are the real eyes?" he said.
And so on. He is just the latest politician to be undone by his previous, unsavoury attempts at humour on social media.
"I again apologise for offense that my posts may have caused," he said today.
Meanwhile the Greens are standing by another candidate, George Hanna, who has refused to apologise directly for sharing a meme calling Liberal Jacinta Price a "coconut".
Mr Hanna and Ms Price are both indigenous.
Scott Morrison has sidestepped growing criticism about a Liberal candidate who believes same-sex couples who have children are likely to be paedophiles.
Gurpal Singh remains endorsed in Scullin in Melbourne's north despite a series of homophobic remarks coming to light.
The Prime Minister on Friday criticised the Opposition for its delay in dealing with Luke Creasey, running in Melbourne, saying his apology for vile Facebook posts wasn’t good enough.
“The standard you walk by is the standard you accept,” Mr Morrison told reporters, after Bill Shorten initially supported Mr Creasey continuing as the candidate.
Questions are now being asked about why Mr Singh is still running.
At a press conference today, a journalist referred to the PM's remarks that "the standard you walk by is the standard you accept".
"You've got a candidate in Scullin who in an interview in 2017 linked paedophilia with same-sex marriage. Do you and the Liberal Party accept those comments from him?" the journalist asked.
Morrison: That matter was dealt with by the party…
Journo: Why isn't the…
Morrison: The organisation dealt with it.
Journo: What did they do to deal with it. What did they do?
Morrison: His candidacy has continued.
Journo: That means you think those comments are acceptable?
Morrison: I don't accept that.
Journo: Why did he keep the job.
Morrison: Sorry.
Bill Shorten has delivered an emotional defence of his mum after claims emerged that he didn't tell her full story during an appearance on Q&A this week.
The Labor leader fought back tears as he described his mother's circumstances.
" My mum suffered a catastrophic heart attack in her sleep … she never woke up. It's been about five years to last month when she passed away. I miss her every day," he said.
"But I'm glad that she wasn't here today to read that rubbish," he said of the reports.
Mr Shorten said his mother, the eldest of four siblings, came from modest circumstances and when she topped her school, she didn't have the money to go to uni to study a law degree so instead took a teaching scholarship.
His voice broke as he recalled his uncle telling him as he was preparing the eulogy for his mother five years ago that she was the bravest woman he had met.
"Do you know – in the 1970s, while she was raising us, she did her PhD?" he said.
"Then in the 1980s, when we were still at school, mum enrolled in law school in her late 40s. She worked full time. She raised us."
Despite his mum, Dr Ann Shorten, topping her university law course and being awarded the Supreme Court prize, she couldn't find a law firm to take her on to do her articles. Aged in her early 50s, she eventually went on to do this through an institute. While his mum was a barrister for six years, her career wasn't the success she hoped.
"She got about nine briefs in her time," Mr Shorten said. "It was actually a bit dispiriting. She had wanted to do law when she was 17. She didn't get that chance. She raised kids.
"She discovered in her mid-50s that sometimes, you're just too old, and you shouldn't be too old, but she discovered the discrimination against older women."
But Mr Shorten proudly added: "Do you know that my mum wrote the book on education and law in Australia? Brilliant. She's brilliant. And that's what drives me".
"I chose to give you that last bit of the battle of her time at the Bar, because my mum would want me to say to older women in Australia – that just because you've got grey hair, just because you didn't go to a special private school, just because you don't go to the right clubs, just because you're not part of some back-slapping boy's club, doesn't mean you should give up. What I said at Q&A is what drives me.
"What I did on Monday night is I explained who I am. I explained what drives me.
"My mum is the smartest woman I've ever known. It has never occurred to me that women are not the equal of men. It's never occurred to me that women shouldn't be able to do everything. That is why I work with strong women. That is why I believe in the equal treatment of women. But it's more than that. My parents sent me to a rich school. But we were not rich.
"We were not poor. We were not rich. We were like hundreds of thousands of other families. My family spent all their spare cash educating Robert and I. We had three holidays when we were kids. Who cares? I got a quality education.
"The point about it is – my mum has taught me that what matters in life – isn't how rich you are, or how poor you are, it's not what religion you worship, it doesn't matter who you know, what church you go to … mum taught me that it doesn't matter about your gender – it matters how hard you work."
Mr Shorten's speech was one of the most powerful of the campaign so far and was sparked by his mention of her circumstances on Q&A.
On the show Mr Shorten explained that his late mother Ann had always wanted to be a lawyer but took a teaching scholarship because she was the eldest in her family and had to "look after the rest of the kids".
“What motivates me, if you really want to know who Bill Shorten is, I can’t make it right for my mum but I can make it right for everyone else,” Mr Shorten said on the ABC show.
But a Daily Telegraph story today suggests Mr Shorten did not tell the full story, as he didn't reveal his mother did eventually graduate with a law degree and went on to practice at the bar for six years.
Tele columnist Miranda Devine defended the coverage in an interview on Sky News ahead of Mr Shorten's press conference saying: "All we’ve done on the front page is point out a glaring omission from Bill Shorten's own narrative that he put forward into the election campaign about his mother. And he’s left out a big chunk.
"We don't mean any disrespect by pointing it out."
She said Mr Shorten had seemed to airbrush away a big segment of his mother's life.
"He's pretended that she was just a teacher and that she wanted more than anything to do better and to become a lawyer, she would have loved to have become a lawyer etc," she said.
"That all sounds very plausible until you find out that she was a lawyer and not only was she a lawyer, she went to the Bar and she was very well respected.
"He's left that out of his life story just he's conveniently overlooks the fact that he went to one of the most prestigious schools in the country.
"Don't leave out half the story if you're pretending to show your true self to the voter."
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