As it happened: Scott Morrison, Anthony Albanese continue to clash over the economy as pre-polling opens across the country

Thanks for joining us today. In case you missed them, here are the day’s major headlines:

• Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese said he supports a 5.1 per cent wage hike to keep up with the current rate of inflation, and that increasing productivity would be the key to sustaining the wage increase.

Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

• Prime Minister Scott Morrison says he continues to support Liberal candidate Katherine Deves after she appeared to walk back an earlier apology for describing gender reassignment surgery as mutilation.

Liberal candidate for Warringah Katherine Deves.Credit: James Brickwood

• Labor says it will seek to legislate a religious discrimination act and remove the ability of schools to expel gay and transgender students at the same time should it win government. Prime Minister Scott Morrison has previously said his party would deal with the issues separately.
• Northern Territory Chief Minister Michael Gunner announced his resignation, saying his head and his heart are “at home” following the recent birth of his second child.

Northern Territory Chief Minister Michael Gunner.Credit: Dan Himbrechts/Getty Images

• Anti-Chinese government protesters interrupted a candidates’ forum in Chisholm, where candidates responded to questions about racist attacks on Chinese people, Australia’s deteriorating relationship with China and election attack ads.
• There were 48,034 new cases of COVID-19 and 49 deaths recorded nationally in the latest reporting period.

The candidates’ forum for the ultra-marginal seat of Chisholm has wrapped up.

More than 120 people attended the event at the Mount Waverley Community Centre where the two key candidates, Liberal MP for the seat Gladys Liu and Labor’s Carina Garland faced more than two hours of solid questioning by the three Chinese community associations who helped organise the event, by The Age, and by audience members.

Two men who disrupted the forum are escorted from the hall.Credit: Eddie Jim

It was a lively forum, beginning with a loud protest by Hong Kong independence activist Max Mok, who had planned to run for the seat.

Candidates then faced questioning about issues ranging from climate change to WeChat to Australia’s relationship with China.

All of it was translated into Mandarin, or at times from Mandarin into English, by master translator Professor Charles Qin.

Good night from the Mount Waverley Community Centre!

Some audience members event became angry at a series of answers Liberal MP Gladys Liu gave, under questioning over her previous use of WeChat. Liu used WeChat to help win her seat in 2019.

In January this year, Liu said she would stop using the Chinese messaging app because of fears of political interference.

Her announcement followed Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s WeChat account being hijacked.

Gladys Liu at the Chisholm candidates forum.Credit: Eddie Jim

Asked whether she wanted the Chinese community to stop using WeChat, given she had abandoned it, Liu claimed she had never said that she had stopped using WeChat because of Chinese government interference.

“The reason I stopped using WeChat was I found it was more efficient to communicate with my constituents [other ways].“

In January, Liu said: “In an election year especially, this sort of interference in our political processes is unacceptable, and this matter should be taken extremely seriously by all Australian politicians.”

Labor’s Carina Garland said that she used WeChat because so many members of the Chinese community were on WeChat, but she said if intelligence agencies gave advice not to use WeChat, Labor would follow the advice.

“But that advice has not been issued,” she said.

During questioning from the audience, Liu was also asked about her past voting on climate change issues during her three years in parliament.

Liu side-stepped the question, responding to the audience member by saying that investing in technology was the key to tackling climate change.

“Both parties have both committed to 2050 zero emission, and we don’t want to sacrifice a section of the community to have unreliable and not affordable energy and that’s why we take a very careful measure to reach this goal and we invest in technology.

“If you don’t have technology, what you have to do is to increase taxes or you have to increase energy price and that means those who are doing it tough will suffer.”

She was also asked by an audience member about the Morrison government’s failure to establish a federal corruption commission in the past three years.

She claimed that “Labor has been playing political games” and that this was why a federal ICAC had not been established.

She returned to a claim she has repeatedly made, that the Coalition had “350 pages of the policy” and that their attempt had been thwarted by Labor.

But the Coalition’s model was widely criticised by legal and transparency experts for lacking teeth and being overly secretive.

The government went to the 2019 election promising to set up the new agency, and released a draft law for public comment, but never tabled a bill in the last Parliament for a debate.

Candidates at the Chisholm forum tonight have now been asked about Australia’s deteriorating relationship with China.

Liberal MP Gladys Liu said that Anthony Albanese was always “flip-flop, flip-flop” on China, blaming Australia for ruining the relationship with the country at times and blaming China at others.

Chisholm candidates Wayne Tseng, Gladys Liu and Carina Garland.Credit: Eddie Jim

“I guarantee you that the next time when Albanese comes to the Chinese community, he will say it’s Morrison’s fault. Does he have a position on the Australia-China relationship or does he have a position that he doesn’t want you to know?”

Labor candidate Carina Garland, however, warned that it was “really dangerous to try and create a division between the two major parties on national security as Gladys has just done”.

“What Gladys has said is actually really dangerous. We [Labor] have been really clear that we have a bipartisan approach [with the Liberal Party on China]. What isn’t helpful in our relationship with China is the beating of the drums of war from Peter Dutton.

“That is unhelpful, and I know, personally, I would feel much safer with someone like Penny Wong engaging in calm and measured, responsible dialogue with our biggest trading partner than I would having Peter Dutton anywhere near national security.”

On Anzac Day, Dutton warned Australia needed to prepare for war in light of increased aggression from China and global insecurity spurred by Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

Asked if Australia should be preparing for war with China, Liu said: “I believe all countries in the world should be prepared to protect their own country. Australia will do the same. China will do the same, America, Canada, any other country, if they have the ability, they will do their best to protect their country.”

Garland was asked if Albanese was the preferred candidate of the Chinese government. “All I hope on the 21st of May we confirm that Anthony Albanese said preferred candidate of the Australian people.”

The Age’s deputy editor, Michael Bachelard, who is moderating tonight’s forum in Chisholm, has asked Labor’s candidate, Carina Garland, if Labor’s attack ad against Liberal MP Gladys Liu’s integrity were racist.

Both Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Treasurer Josh Frydenberg said within moments of the ads’ release that it was racist. Labor has said privately that Liberals branded the ads as racist before they could have even seen them.

Chisholm candidates Wayne Tseng, Gladys Liu and Carina Garland.Credit: Eddie Jim

Garland said the ads were not racist and had simply pointed out facts about Liu.

“I think it’s perfectly reasonable in a democracy like ours to demand accountability from elected representatives.”

Bachelard also asked about purple signs that Liu’s team put up at 29 polling booths in Chisholm on election day in 2019.

The signs were in the same purple as AEC signage and told voters that “the correct voting method” was to put a one next to the Liberal candidate. Liu’s narrow election win was later challenged in the Federal Court but no action was taken to review it. If 545 more people had voted for Labor in the electorate of 100,000 people, Labor would have won the seat.

Liu said that this issue had been addressed. “It [the signage] wasn’t put out by me, it wasn’t authorised by me. I didn’t even know it was there on the day. The court never asked me to attend. So it is basically a grubby attack on me,” she said.

Candidates at this evening’s Chisholm candidates’ forum have been asked about racist attacks on Chinese people.

Liberal MP Gladys Liu said she condemned racist attacks on Chinese people.

Chisholm candidates Carina Garland, Wayne Tseng and Gladys Liu.Credit: Eddie Jim

“We should be working with the whole country and condemn racism,” she said.

She said the day after the Labor Party had launched its attack ads on her, she had experienced racism.

“The day after the Labor Party launched the grubby attack on me, there was graffiti [saying] ‘CCP’ [the Chinese Communist Party] … on my billboards, and that is dangerous. We should not divide our community based on race. It is dangerous, it is offensive and divisive.”

Labor candidate Carina Garland said that Chinese people had told her that they had experienced racism because of “destructive and divisive” comments in recent years by Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Defence Minister Peter Dutton.

The Chisholm candidates’ forum at the Mount Waverley Community Centre has gotten off to a dramatic start.

Incumbent MP for Chisholm Gladys Liu had her opening remarks briefly interrupted by activist Max Mok, a Hong Kong-born Australian who attempted to run as an independent in Chisholm but failed to correctly enroll with the Australian Electoral Commission.

The Hong Kong independence activist had planned to run as a candidate solely opposed to Liu.

Protesters at the Chisholm candidates’ forum.Credit: Eddie Jim

Mok and senate candidate Drew Pavlou, who is also running on a stridently anti-Chinese government platform, entered the hall screaming, “Gladys Liu is taking money from the Chinese government”.

Mok then scattered Chinese yuan before the crowd of around 120 people, a near-full house at the community centre.

They were tackled by organisers and members of the crowd and quickly exited the hall.

Protesters scattered Chinese yuan during the forum before leaving.Credit: Eddie Jim

The candidates have assembled at the centre tonight to talk about why they are running for the seat and answer questions from The Age and the audience. The discussion is in English but being translated into Mandarin for the electorate’s large Mandarin-speaking population.

Opening statements from the candidates saw independent candidate Wayne Tseng, a former Liberal member who is preferencing Liu above Labor candidate Carina Garland, say he wanted to establish a national holiday for First Nations people and introduce a way of better reporting racism to authorities.

“It would be a valuable deterrent [to racism],” Tseng said.

Liu spoke next, saying that voting on a tax-reform bill after winning Chisholm in 2019 was her proudest moment in federal parliament.

“The very first bill that I voted on … was tax reform, which has benefited more than 11 million Australians. That means you’ll have more money, your hard-earned money, in your own pocket.”

She said the election in Chisholm was “a choice between a local member who always wants to work hard and do more for our local community versus someone who basically is an unknown”.

Two men who disrupted the forum are escorted from the hall.Credit: Eddie Jim

Garland, who grew up in nearby Clayton, said she had seen her parents work hard, and they had managed to get ahead. “I know so many families in our community work just as hard as my parents did. But the opportunities aren’t there for their children anymore,” she said.

“It’s really a pleasure to be with so many Chinese Australians tonight,” Garland said. “My mother is from Italy and I know how special the diversity in our community is. And I want to make sure that we embrace them and we have a united community rather than a community that, unfortunately, has been subjected to divisive language due to the poor leadership from Scott Morrison.”

Labor’s model for a federal anti-corruption body is “one that has serious powers, one that is independent of government ... it will be one with teeth, one that is serious” and would receive the backing of key independents, Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese says.

Albanese said his government would seek the advice of departments, including the Attorney-General’s department, to “get it right” on a national anti-corruption commission.

Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

“What is very clear is that the only way that Australia will get a National Anti-Corruption Commission is with the election of a Labor Government,” Albanese told ABC’s 7.30 program.

Last week, Prime Minister Scott Morrison warned that Australia risked becoming a “public autocracy” if an independent integrity body had too much influence over the decisions of elected officials.

Labor leader Anthony Albanese has backed his claim from earlier today that wages should increase in line with inflation, which is currently at 5.1 per cent.

“What you need to do to increase wages at the same time as you increase profits is to increase productivity,” Albanese told ABC’s 7.30.

Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

He said that if his party is elected, he will convene an employment summit to discuss the issue with business and union leaders.

“I believe very firmly that people who are on the minimum wage, which is just $20.33, shouldn’t fall further behind and I believe in particular in sectors like the aged care sector, where the royal commission said unless we increase wages, people will leave the sector,” Albanese said.

He said his bid to keep wages ahead of inflation was already being considered by the Fair Work Commission.

“What we know is that at the last increase, the Fair Work Commission made, it was 2.5 per cent even though inflation was just 1.1 [per cent]. We know that the Fair Work Commission has taken these issues into account,” he said.

“We need to make sure that we don’t create a whole section of the labour market whereby people are competing in a race to the bottom.

“Someone says they will do this job for this amount and then someone undercuts them. These are issues that need to be looked at in order to ensure we get good outcomes, not just for workers but also for the delivery of services.”

From 7.30pm, we will be blogging a candidates’ forum happening in the ultra-marginal seat of Chisholm.

The Age has partnered with three Chinese associations, and three of the candidates on the Chisholm ballot will be here, at the Mount Waverley Community Centre opposite the suburb’s railway station.

Labor’s candidate for Chisholm, Carina Garland, and the incumbent, Gladys Liu.Credit: Paul Jeffers, Eddie Jim

Sitting MP Gladys Liu, Labor candidate Carina Garland and independent Wayne Tseng, a former Liberal Party member who is giving his preferences to Liu, are attending the forum, which will be chaired by The Age’s deputy editor, Michael Bachelard.

The Greens’ Sarah Newman was also invited, but the candidate, a university student who works at JB Hi-Fi, was unable to attend.

The event will be in English and translated into Mandarin.

All voters in the electorate are welcome at the forum in the community centre’s main hall, at 47 Miller Crescent.

Chisholm is one of the country’s most multicultural electorates, with about 43 per cent of people speaking a language other than English at home (the national average is 21 per cent).

About 20 per cent of the population in Chisholm – which covers Box Hill, Blackburn, Mount Waverley and Burwood – speaks Mandarin.