Anthony Albanese brushes off early election speculation while announcing new candidates
Anthony Albanese has attacked the Coalition’s nuclear policy again as he announced two new Labor candidates for the next election.
Anthony Albanese has laughed off speculation he’s gearing up to call an early election while announcing two more Labor candidates in the key battleground of Queensland.
Rumours the Prime Minister is weighing up going to the polls this year – despite his repeated desire to complete a full term in May – have resurfaced since parliament rose last week for the long winter break.
Opposition Leader Peter Dutton has reportedly told Coalition MPs to be ready to go to the polls as early as September.
But Mr Albanese brushed the speculation aside on Thursday while attacking the Coalition’s nuclear policy and talking up the government’s tax cuts.
“The election will be when I call it, when I go to the Governor-General,” he said.
“So if you follow me around, one day, between Monday and Sunday of one week, between now and next May, you’ll see me go off to Yarralumla and we will call the election and away we go.”
Mr Albanese said he wasn’t concerned about opinion polls showing the Coalition making ground on Labor.
“None of them, not one of them, not a single Newspoll has had us behind. They’re behind,” he said.
Mr Albanese said his announcement of Rebecca Hack to contest the Greens-held seat of Ryan and Rohan Holzberger to have another go at winning the Logan seat of Forde from the LNP was not an indication of an early election.
Mr Albanese will be in the northern Brisbane seat of Dickson – held by Mr Dutton – on Friday.
“This is a sign that we’re prepared. I’ve already announced candidates. We’ll be continuing to announce candidates right around Australia,” he said.
“We want to make sure that we have our candidates in the field in seats campaigning.”
He said he was in Queensland for three days to listen to people about the opposition’s plans for two of its seven nuclear power plants to be located in the state.
“I don’t see people walking through the streets of Brisbane saying, ‘What do we want? A nuclear reactor. When did we want it? Now’. And that’s the alternative – uncosted, no timeline,” Mr Albanese said.
“The Queensland LNP can’t even agree with themselves. David Crisafulli gave a big speech at a conference where ‘nuclear’ is the word that didn’t pass its name.
“That’s because he knows that it’s a crock. He knows that it’s going nowhere and he knows it’s a distraction.”
Earlier, Mr Dutton told 2GB the Albanese government is isolated globally in its opposition to nuclear power.
“In America, the Democrats are strongly in favour of nuclear, same as the Republicans,” he said.
“In the UK, the Labour Party, the Conservative Party, they’re strongly in favour of it.
“I don’t understand why the Labor Party has been left behind but if they don’t catch up our economy is going to suffer, and we can’t run an economy on wind and solar, we have to have a 24/7 baseload power and nuclear is the most efficient way to deliver that.”
Mr Dutton argued Labor’s resistance to the proposal was made on “ideological” grounds.
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