As it happened: Albanese, Dutton signature policies revealed; economists warn of house price surge

Thanks for reading our live blog covering the federal election. This is where we’ll end today’s coverage.

To conclude, here’s a look back at the day’s major stories:

• Opposition Leader Peter Dutton knocked back repeated questions on whether he would help his son to buy a home after Harry Dutton joined his father on the campaign trail today.
• Prime Minister Anthony Albanese landed in Tasmania today, where he announced $24 million to help Boyer paper mill transition to lower emissions and keep producing newsprint.
• Albanese also continued to link the Coalition to Donald Trump, in response to questions about the Liberal’s diss track about Labor.
• The election watchdog has warned a teal campaigning organisation to comply with disclosure rules as the group insists it does not have to reveal its funding sources as other political groups do.
• Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek made fun of her awkward greeting with the prime minister at Labor’s campaign launch, saying she “should’ve done an elbow bump” instead.

• In the charged debate over fish farming, independent senator Jacqui Lambie has Tassal Group, Huon Aquaculture and Petuna firmly in her sights.

We will be back bright and early tomorrow morning.

A quick follow-up to my earlier post about Kooyong MP Monique Ryan’s appearance on ABC’s Insiders on Sunday – especially that slightly awkward moment when she didn’t seem keen to criticise fellow teal Allegra Spender for paying influencers to post nice things about her.

Ryan has now clarified her comments, saying she misunderstood the question at the time.

“Yesterday on Insiders I was asked about influencers posting on behalf of politicians. I’ve not paid any influencers to generate content on my behalf, was unaware of the issue with Allegra Spender, and was not clear on exactly what I was being asked yesterday morning,” she said.

Independent member for Kooyong Monique Ryan on the campaign trail over the weekend with volunteers.

“Having now had an opportunity to look at this issue, I fully support the AEC’s position statement from last Friday that influencer content paid for by politicians should be clearly labelled as such.”

To recap: Spender is under scrutiny for paying an agency to commission social media content with online influencers.

Spender made the disclosure after the AEC issued guidance last week that if an influencer, podcaster or content creator is paid for posts or videos it must be authorised.

More details available at the Victorian ‘hot seats’ blog here. 

The Australian government and the opposition have both announced policies to address the country’s housing crisis, with young people in particular priced out of the market.

Labor says it wants to drop deposits for mortgages to buy a home to five per cent, while the Coalition wants to make mortgage repayments tax deductable.

In an early release episode of The Morning Edition podcast, Brendan Coates, who is the Grattan Institute’s housing and economic security program director, talks through these policies and which could boost housing supply and home ownership.

Tune in below:

Major parties are not listening to Australians on housing and lack courage in taking on challenges, independent senator David Pocock said this afternoon.

Speaking on the ABC’s Afternoon Briefing today, he said both Labor and the Coalition were missing “long-term thinking” to take on challenges such as the tax system, negative gearing and stamp duty.

Independent senator David Pocock.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

“What the major parties are missing is long-term thinking and courage to take on these challenges. It seems like the whole election strategy is to be able to basically say ‘we are slightly better than the other bunch’.”

But independents across the country were listening to their community, the ACT senator said.

Pocock was also asked about whether there was appetite from the major parties to act on the changes, since the loss Labor experienced in 2019.

“Clearly not from the major parties and I think part of that is that they are not listening to Australians,” Pocock said.

The housing situation was different from 2019, and it was now desperate, he added.

Earlier, Foreign Minister Penny Wong was questioned about government spending on Sky News today.

Here’s what she said:

These policies have been worked through, and I think they are really sound policies, and that’s adding to the strength of the offer that we’re putting to the Australian people ...

What I would say is I think people are waking up to Peter Dutton and understanding that he’s negative, he’s aggro, and he has $600 billion of secret cuts he won’t talk about to fund his nuclear reactors.”

She was questioned about the seat of Sturt in South Australia – which Prime Minister Anthony Albanese visited earlier today and is held by the Liberal Party by just 0.5 per cent – and if Labor was in with a chance.

“It’s a tough seat, obviously it’s been held by the Liberals for a long time, but Claire Clutterham is an outstanding candidate really, from the community, and I think certainly would be a much better MP than the incumbent.”

Finance Minister Katy Gallagher has been asked about Labor’s plan to let all first home buyers purchase a property with a 5 per cent deposit.

Speaking in Hobart, she was questioned about the policy on ABC’s Afternoon Briefing, and if Labor’s scheme as well as Coalition’s housing policy could drive up prices.

The advice from Treasury was that it would not push up prices, Gallagher explained.

“The other thing that is different to [our policy] and what the Coalition is offering is that we are also investing heavily in new supply,” she said.

“We want to help first home owners get a fair crack and that’s been part of the challenge in our country and part of the decade of neglect that was on the former government.”

The minister also denied the plan would transfer the risk to Australian taxpayers, arguing it was a “tried and tested” program.

“It’s an existing program so we’ve had it in place for some time, obviously expanding it to first-time buyers if they choose to use it,” she said.

Both Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Opposition Leader Peter Dutton have unveiled new housing initiatives targeting first home buyers.

Below our senior economics journalist Shane Wright explains how the policies could drive up house prices.

This weekend I caught up with One Nation’s candidate in Bruce, Bianca Colecchia, who came to Australia eight years ago on a student visa and now manages a gentlemen’s entertainment club in Melbourne’s CBD.

She doesn’t see her migrant background or her work in the adult entertainment industry as inconsistent with the right-wing political party’s conservative values.

“It’s actually really interesting,” she says.

“People go to clubs thinking they’re going to enjoy the night and end up talking politics with me all the time. We actually have a lot of party members who I end up bumping into at work.”

One Nation candidate Bianca Colecchia.Credit: Instagram

One Nation secured just under 5 per cent of the primary vote at the 2022 election with other right-wing minor parties United Australia (8.7 per cent) and the Liberal Democrats (5 per cent) also taking sizeable bites of the primary vote.

Colecchia relinquished her Italian citizenship this year in the hope of entering parliament, but if attendance at her political events are anything to go by, she might be waiting a long time for this sacrifice to pay off.

The Age popped into Colecchia’s event at Pioneers Park in Berwick on Saturday afternoon, to find no more than a dozen people huddled around an orange and blue marquee.

An Australian flag hung from the tent as attendees spoke of how Islamophobia “isn’t real” and the benefits of “Judeo-Christian” values, while munching on orange and blue cupcakes.

One Nation advocates for “net zero migration” and an end to “student visa loopholes” – policies that would have disadvantaged people such as Colecchia when she arrived in Australia, as well as many of the constituents of Bruce.

“People say it’s hypocritical for me ... I get it, I get where that can come from,” she said. “If that means at the time, these policies wouldn’t have allowed me in, I guess that’s fair enough.”

One Nation is number one on the Bruce ballot paper, one of six minor parties running in the electorate. Colecchia said new members have joined from both Labor and Liberal, as support for the two-party system declines.

More on this issue in our ‘hot seats’ blog.

Anthony Albanese is continuing to push hard into linking the Coalition to Donald Trump and his Make America Great movement.

Speaking at a press conference at the nation’s last commercial paper mill on the Derwent River outside of Hobart, Albanese suggested the Coalition continued to draw inspiration from Trump and MAGA.

“This is Australia. We are a different country. I’m running as an Australian prime minister on Australian values,” he said. “I’ll leave it to others to say why they consistently just borrow cultures and ideas and policies from other places.”

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese during a visit to the Boyer paper mill.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

It comes after he was asked about the Liberal’s diss track, called Leaving Labor.

This week, an image of Coalition frontbencher Jacinta Nampijinpa Price wearing a MAGA hat emerged, which the prime minister referenced.

“People can look at the caps that my team wear and the caps that the other team wear and draw their own conclusions,” he said.

The Coalition has written to the Australian Electoral Commission calling for teal independent Allegra Spender to be investigated for not declaring her collaboration with influencer Milly Rose Bannister.

Last week, the ABC reported Spender paid Bannister to create promotional content. In a letter to AEC acting commissioner Jeff Pope, Coalition senator James Paterson requested the AEC investigate the content.

Member for Wentworth Allegra Spender.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

“While we accept the legality of the disclosure statements, such as ‘made in collaboration with Allegra Spender, Edgecliff’, rather than ‘authorised by’, I note this appears to be an explicit attempt to obfuscate whether the videos are a paid advertisement, and is contrary to the language guidance for authorisations published by the AEC,” Paterson wrote.

“Some of Ms Bannister’s material, which includes an authorisation on one platform, has no authorisation on other platforms.

“The video on Instagram carries a ‘collaboration’ authorisation statement, while the TikTok version contains no authorisation at all. This latter example is clearly in breach of the authorisation requirements of the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918.”