Poll shows trouble for Dutton in final days
Anthony Albanese and Peter Dutton are hitting the road again as the penultimate day of campaigning for Saturday's federal election gets under way.
Both leaders are setting a frenetic pace in the final days before Australians vote, trying to visit as many marginal electorates as they can.
The final RedBridge-Accent national poll before Saturday's election has Mr Albanese extending Labor's two-party-preferred lead an extra point to 53 per cent to the Coalition's 47 per cent, News Corp reported. Anthony Albanese will make another visit to Western Australia on Thursday after addressing the National Press Club on Wednesday. Jason Edwards / NewsWire Credit: News Corp Australia
The Prime Minister is in Perth for his 33rd visit to the west as the country's leader. Western Australia was the state that secured Mr Albanese a majority government at the 2022 election and he has gone all out to keep the 10 seats Labor won then.
Meanwhile, Peter Dutton will be starting the day in his hometown Brisbane. Queensland is a stronghold for the Coalition and a major issue for Labor, which holds only five of the 30 lower house seats.
NED-13123 Key seats
Both Mr Dutton and Mr Albanese are keen to win back the three seats the Greens surprisingly won in inner-Brisbane in 2022 – Griffith, Ryan and Brisbane.
The Opposition Leader has promised to visit 28 electorates in the final week, as opinion polls show it will be a massive task for him to pick up the 21 seats the Coalition needs to secure a majority in the 150-seat parliament. Peter Dutton made his 15th petrol station stop in Melbourne on Wednesday. Adam Head / NewsWire Credit: News Corp Australia
Neither leader is expected to make any more major announcements, but the costs of those promises already made will be front and centre.
Shadow treasurer Angus Taylor will reveal the Coalition's costings, three days after Jim Chalmers unveiled the government figures.
Despite Mr Chalmers' criticising the opposition for not revealing their costings, he waited until the Thursday before the May 21 election in 2022 to show how Labor would fund their promises. Shadow treasurer Angus Taylor will release the Coalition costing on Thursday after Jim Chalmers unveiled the government's earlier in the week. NewsWire/ David Crosling Credit: News Corp Australia
Both major parties have pledged eye-watering sums of taxpayer dollars to fund their election commitments, with Labor accusing the Coalition of keeping their costings secret.
Labor, on the other hand, said it had managed to 'offset' its re-election campaign pledges and rustle up an extra billion dollars in savings when it released its updated costings on Monday.
Mr Taylor has promised the Coalition's costings would find the savings needed.
More than four million Australians have voted, with early voting ending on Friday before most people head to polling booths on Saturday.
More to come
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West Australian
16 minutes ago
- West Australian
Aussie petrol prices: Trump's move in Israel-Iran fight sparks warnings of bowser pain
Australians could be set for renewed pain at the bowser after US President Donald Trump stepped in to the raging conflict between Israel and Iran, with a shock weekend aerial strike. Mr Trump claimed to have taken out Iran's ability to enrich uranium through a bombing campaign on three key underground facilities. The Middle Eastern nation has reportedly warned 'all options' are on the table for a response. That will leave the west's energy security hanging in the balance, as Iran borders the crucial Strait of Hormuz waterway — a 33 kilometre-wide passage which transits about 20 per cent of global oil supply. Oil prices rallied on Monday morning as the threat of escalation loomed. Brent crude lifted more than 5 per cent to surge past $US80 per barrel. Share markets rose only modestly, a signal that investors hope for a quick return to peace. The benchmark ASX200 declined 0.3 per cent to 8,474.5 points at 12:30pm AWST, while Japan's Nikkei225 and futures for the US S&P500 slid a similar amount. Iran's next move will determine whether the cost of oil gets pushed even higher, according to AMP chief economist Shane Oliver. A disruption to shipping in the Strait or an Iranian attack on the oil infrastructure of other major Middle Eastern producers would be among the worst risks, Dr Oliver said. 'As 20 per cent of global oil supplies and 25 per cent of LNG trade flows through the Strait, any disruption could push oil prices above $US100 a barrel, possibly to around $US150/bbl,' he said. 'This would likely only be brief, as the US military would likely quickly move to stop Iran.' Oil reaching $US100/bbl would add 25 cents per litre to the price of petrol for Aussies, Mr Oliver said. That's on top of a 15¢/L increase already in the pipeline following the turmoil of recent weeks. It will mean cost of living pain returns to the agenda for Australian households, just as inflation looked to be coming under control following a four-year fight. But the overall impact of rising petrol prices on inflation will be moderated because consumers will need to switch spending from other categories to petrol. Demand for discretionary goods will fall and there will be less room for price hikes in other sectors of the economy, including services. Inflation remained under control during oil price breakouts across more than a decade from 2002 to 2014, partly for this reason. Prices for key Aussie energy export LNG will likely also head higher and ANZ researchers expected a 'meaningful' impact on gas. 'Over 20 per cent of the world's LNG trade would be at risk, namely exports from Qatar,' ANZ researcher Aaron Luk said. He said shippers would become 'even more cautious' about entering the waterway to pick up cargoes from Qatar, which is the world's third biggest producer. RBC Capital Markets head of strategy Helima Croft said Iran would struggle to close the Strait but may attack individual tankers. She said it was too early to know how the country would respond. 'Above all, we would caution against the knee-jerk 'the worst is behind us' hot take at this stage,' Ms Croft said. 'President Trump may indeed have successfully executed an 'escalate to de-escalate' move, but a wider expansion cannot still be ruled out at this juncture.'
Sky News AU
an hour ago
- Sky News AU
'Fence sitting and confusion': Iran strikes show the growing gap between Canberra and Washington
The Albanese government is finding it hard to come to terms with the way the world works now and that's particularly obvious in its approach to Washington under Donald Trump. But it's also means the government is caught flatfooted when important things happen – like the weekend's US strikes on Iran's nuclear sites, for example. The government's stumbles and confusion are starting to have consequences for Australia's security and for our alliance relationship with America. This is probably going to get worse as the gap between Canberra and Washington grows. The mounting policy differences are in areas that matter to Washington and that are getting harder to hide. Australia has shifted away from the US when it comes to our approach towards Israel, the Palestinians and the Middle East. Mr Albanese left Australia's reaction to the US strikes on Iran to an unnamed spokesperson over the weekend. It wasn't until Monday that foreign minister Penny Wong belatedly said Australia supported the strikes. And not only has Australia shifted its UN vote for the first time in 20 years from support to Israel and the US, but minister Wong has gone further, saying Australia might recognise a Palestinian state before a peace process concludes. The government's default position of being critical of Israel because of the destruction in Gaza has left it flatfooted on efforts to stop the Iranian regime's nuclear program. The result is fence sitting and confusion. It was Monday afternoon before we heard briefly from the prime minister, echoing Penny Wong's words. That's well after other world leaders reacted to the upending of Middle Eastern security. Trump has told us he doesn't make a final decision until the last second. Mr Albanese seems only to know what to say and think well after the event. Australia's confusion seems to be noticed in Washington. It's telling that President Trump contacted UK prime minister Keir Starmer, before the US strikes, but didn't call America's other AUKUS partner, Mr Albanese. At the heart of things is the uncomfortable fact that the Albanese government's instincts and policies are widely divergent from Trump's America. That played to the government's advantage in our recent election. Voter anxiety about the early, chaotic days of Trump's second term let Mr Albanese paint Peter Dutton as the 'mini-Trump' and ride a wave of anxiety back into office. Great for domestic politics, but not great for alliance relations. The larger problem, though, is the growing gap between Australia and America on China as a security threat and on defence investment. The Albanese government has made a lot of domestic political mileage out of 'stabilising' the relationship with Beijing. Mr Albanese has already met Xi Jinping three times – in Bali, Beijing and Rio. 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He's made spending two per cent of GDP on defence into some kind of statement of sovereign strength, when he must know that won't even pay for the conventional military he plans, let alone eight nuclear submarines. To American eyes and ears, this is a heady brew that undercuts Australia's reliability as an ally. It can only make hardheaded folk in Washington wonder why on earth America should weaken its own Navy by handing over nuclear submarines from its own fleet to strengthen Australia when we seem determined to free ride on American taxpayers and American power. And far from working closely with the US and its other regional partners and allies to deter China, we seem willing to discount the threat and double down on our trade dependency on Beijing. After all, AUKUS exists to deter Chinese aggression. If Australia doesn't share that purpose, then AUKUS no longer makes sense. As we get further into Trump's second term, Australia and the US are drifting further apart. That might make many critics of the Trump administration happy, but the growing gap between Canberra and Washington undercuts our decades long reliance on the US for our security. And it seems the Albanese government is yet to notice. Michael Shoebridge is a contributor and the founder and director of Strategic Analysis Australia
Sydney Morning Herald
an hour ago
- Sydney Morning Herald
War in the Middle East is dangerous; Albanese missed his opportunity
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese's belated abandonment of Australia's neutral stance on the US joining Israel's attack on Iran is a continuation of the defensive and slow-footed reaction that has marked his record over the 18 months since the Middle East reignited. With US President Donald Trump posturing for days on taking military action against Tehran, Albanese had adequate preparation time. Yet, when the attacks came, the prime minister stayed silent on support. Instead, his office issued a statement by an anonymous government spokesperson calling for de-escalation, dialogue and diplomacy. Such lame silence opened the door for the opposition's canny acting foreign affairs spokesperson, Andrew Hastie, to seize the initiative and back the US strikes and scramble the government onto Monday morning television programs, Foreign Minister Penny Wong and Social Services Minister Tanya Plibersek eventually confirming that the government did indeed support Trump's strikes. Albanese then emerged on Monday to declare that, while the attacks were unilateral action by the US, 'Iran cannot be allowed to get a nuclear weapon, and we support action to prevent that'. He should have said it loud and clear on Sunday. That is not to say the prime minister was letting down our ally by not automatically endorsing American action. The US has been so erratic of late that we do not owe it that, not least because so many unanswered questions flow from the weekend. The legality of the US action is wide open to interpretation and Trump's declaration that Iran's nuclear program had been 'completely and totally obliterated' sits awkwardly beside assertions a day later by senior US officials they did not know the fate of Tehran's stockpile of near-bomb-grade uranium. Further, the UN's nuclear watchdog confirmed all three Iranian facilities had been badly damaged, but said it was not yet in a position to assess the impact underground and Iran has told the International Atomic Energy Agency there has been no increase in off-site radiation levels at the three sites. Trump's withdrawal in 2018 from the Iran nuclear deal reached by seven countries after two years of gruelling negotiation may have helped push Tehran down its current obstinate path. But in the 10 days of war with Israel this month, Iran has received little but verbal support from allies and is perhaps now the most isolated it has been since the 1979 US embassy hostage crisis.
