Would Peter Dutton cut free TAFE? Does Tanya Plibersek have a place in Anthony Albanese’s cabinet? We reality check

Another week on the campaign trail means we only have two weeks left of word salads being lobbed at a frequency that’s impossible to truly digest.

It’s difficult to know where to look. In addition to promises and statistic-based sledges from Anthony Albanese and Peter Dutton, we’ve had Jacinta Nampijinpa Price’s “Make America Great Again” references, false claims the Indonesian president had publicly announced a request from Russia to base planes in Australia’s near neighbour, speculation about the nature of the relationship between the prime minister and cabinet minister Tanya Plibersek, Penny Wong retirement rumours, and Jim Chalmers calling the second leaders’ debate victory early. And that’s just from senior Labor and Coalition members.

It hasn’t just been Anthony Albanese and Peter Dutton raising eyebrows and garnering applause this week on the campaign trail.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen/James Brickwood

Fear not. Here’s week three on the campaign trail, fact-checked.

Is the Coalition going to cut free TAFE?

“There is only one way to protect schools, protect TAFE, protect hospitals and protect Medicare from the Liberals’ cuts – vote for a majority Labor government on the third of May,” Albanese said to lengthy applause from Labor’s faithful, including former prime minister Julia Gillard, at an official campaign launch in Perth on Sunday.

A standing ovation may have wholeheartedly met Albanese’s on-stage declaration, but the crowd was cheering an incomplete picture. As we wrote at the end of week one, despite Labor’s oft-cited attack line – Albanese repeated a variation of it during the second leaders’ debate on Wednesday – the Coalition has denied it would cut Medicare or health funding. In fact, Dutton has pledged to match Labor’s funding for frontline services. Dutton, as health minister, did plan to slash hospital funding by $50 billion in 2014-15, but real expenditure showed hospital spending has consistently increased in the decade that’s followed.

When it comes to schools, this is where it’s murky. As we wrote last week, Productivity Commission figures show the Coalition increased spending on all schools by almost $8.7 billion between 2014-15 and 2021-22 despite Labor’s claim they “ripped $30 billion” out of public schools – which is based on theoretical budget comparisons.

Dutton and Price have, however, been talking more about indoctrination in schools, with Dutton saying the Coalition could restrict funding to schools on that basis. It is unclear what changes Dutton would seek to the curriculum, and he has not given specific examples. He has also not provided evidence for his indoctrination claims, and neither has Price.

What is clear is the Coalition does not agree with Labor’s $1.5 billion Free TAFE Bill that passed in March. Leaked footage of opposition education spokeswoman Sarah Henderson saying the policy, which the opposition voted against, was “just not working” emerged on social media this week – and Dutton addressed it on Tuesday.

When asked if he would cut the scheme, Dutton said the Coalition had said it was “not supportive of the government’s policy in relation to TAFE”. The scheme is designed to prioritise equity cohorts and encourage them, via 100,000 fee-free course places a year from 2027, to work in priority sectors including construction, which will be key to building enough homes to address the housing crisis.

On Wednesday, the Coalition pledged $260 million to build 12 new technical colleges for students in years 10 to 12 to learn trades should it win the election.

Labor has modelled negative gearing and capital gains tax changes, thank you very much

During the second leaders’ debate on Wednesday, Dutton said that the Albanese government “modelled negative-gearing changes and CGT”. Albanese immediately shot back a denial, saying: “That’s not right”.

But this masthead revealed in September that Treasury had worked on options to scale back negative gearing and capital gains tax concessions. Asked about the modelling at the time, Chalmers said it was “not unusual at all for governments or for treasurers to get advice on contentious issues which are in the public domain”.

Will Anthony Albanese and Peter Dutton’s children use the bank of mum and dad for their first homes?

Dutton first deployed 20-year-old Harry, the eldest of his two sons with Kirilly Dutton, to spruik the Coalition’s housing plan on Monday – and seemed entirely unprepared for the question of whether he would help Harry financially with a deposit. One day later, Dutton conceded he would one day give Harry financial assistance to buy a home.

“The prime minister and I might be able to help our kids, but it’s not about us, it’s about how we can help millions of Australians across generations realise the dream of home ownership like we did, like our parents and grandparents,” Dutton said on Tuesday in Victoria, with Harry once again by his side.

When asked the same question on Tuesday, Albanese said: “Families don’t have a place in these issues. I don’t comment on other people’s families and I don’t go into my own personal details.”

Albanese has a 24-year-old son Nathan with ex-wife and former NSW Labor deputy premier Carmel Tebbutt. Dutton is also father to 23-year-old daughter Rebecca from a previous relationship. Both the prime minister and opposition leader’s property portfolios have come under scrutiny recently as the housing crisis continues.

Would Tanya Plibersek be in Anthony Albanese’s cabinet if Labor is re-elected?

After an awkward encounter was caught on camera on Sunday, Albanese on Monday declined to confirm if leadership rival Plibersek would retain her environment and water portfolio after the election. By Tuesday, he had strengthened his language, telling reporters: “I expect Tanya Plibersek will be a senior cabinet minister. She’s an important member of my team.”

The prime minister, however, did not confirm Plibersek’s future portfolio, adding, “But I’m not getting ahead of myself and naming all 22 or all, actually, all 42 portfolios, on the frontbench. I’m not getting into that. She’ll be treated exactly as everyone else.”

Peter Dutton’s favourite question: Are you better off under Anthony Albanese?

It depends on what metric you’re measuring, but let’s look at some of the duo’s cited numbers.

“People have seen food prices go up by 30 per cent, their mortgages have gone up on 12 occasions,” Dutton said once again of the last three years under Labor during the leaders’ debate on Wednesday.

As previously reported, grocery prices are up, but by less than half what Dutton is claiming. As for interest rates, they increased 13 times in 18 months from May 2022 to November 2023. The cash rate was 0.10 per cent in April 2022, and is now 4.10 per cent after a decrease in February.

Albanese, meanwhile, said during the debate: “We are the only government in the last 20 years that produced consecutive surpluses, and we halved the deficit as a direct result of the responsible economic management we have.”

That’s not quite right. In 2004-05, the Coalition’s budget was a surplus, and so were the 2005-06, 2006-07, and 2007-08 budgets, with the latter marking the tenth cash surplus out of the previous 12 budgets – all delivered by Peter Costello. Jim Chalmers did, in September, become the first Labor treasurer since Paul Keating in the 1980s to deliver a second consecutive budget surplus, though his March budget was a deficit.

Former treasurer Josh Frydenberg’s final budget in March 2022 expected a cash deficit for 2022-23 to be $78 billion, with Chalmers’ latest budget taking that to $42.1 billion in 2025-26 – a reduction of $35.9 billion over Albanese’s term, which is 46 per cent.

“Debt is $177 billion less. We have improved the bottom line by $207 billion since we came to office. That means, paying off $60 billion less in interest payments as a direct result of the difficult decisions we made,” Albanese added – and this one is a bit more complicated.

The figures cited in that paragraph come from Labor’s 2024-25 estimates delivered by Chalmers in March when compared with Frydenberg’s final forecast in March 2022 for 2024-25. If you’re going off theoretical figures, Labor’s claim that, for 2024-25, gross debt decreased by $177 billion is not wrong. Nor is their claim that they’d save $60 billion in interest payments (from 11 years to 2032-33) and the bottom line would improve by $207 billion (between 2021-22 to 2028-29). But it’s important to remember that forecast estimates are different to real expenditure.

As for Albanese’s April 13 claim: “When we came to government, less than three years ago, inflation was going up, real wages were going down together. We’ve turned that around. Inflation was over 6 per cent and rising. Today, it’s down to 2.4 per cent, and it’s falling. Real wages have grown five quarters in a row.”

Per the Australian Bureau of Statistics, in April 2022, Australia’s headline inflation rate hit a 20-year high of 6.8 per cent, and had been rising since February 2021. May 2023 was the first time the monthly CPI indicator showed a deflation, with February 2025’s monthly CPI indicator being 2.4 per cent, down 0.1 per cent from January. March’s figure is out on April 30.

As for real wages, according to the ABS’ wage price index, in the 12 months to March 2022, it rose 2.4 per cent. The latest release from the ABS shows an increase over 12 months to December 2024 of 3.2 per cent. The wage price index hit a record low of 1.3 per cent in December 2020, and the highest it has been under Albanese was 4.2 per cent in December 2023.

With Nick Bonyhady and Natassia Chrysanthos

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