Albanese declines to provide costings timeframe

The crossbenchers have been asked about how they will keep government spending in control given the big debt Australia has.

Hughes MP Craig Kelly, who is also the leader of the United Australia Party, says the question should be directed to Scott Morrison and Anthony Albanese.

“They have wandered around the country promising $100 million, $200 million there, $50 million there,” he says.

“The question should be - where is the money coming from? Who is going to pay for this? Are you just going to blow the nation’s debt out and pass this burden on to future generations of Australians?”

Warringah MP Zali Steggall has taken aim at Prime Minister Scott Morrison, whose character and leadership style has emerged as a key issue for some voters.

“I have observed him over the last three years and I have repeatedly observed him fail to step up to leadership positions but also to show the adequate necessary respect for women,” she tells the National Press Club, where members of the existing crossbench are debating each other.

“I saw him absolutely, horrendously throw Christine Holgate, a professional, a respected, a very high, highly respected executive under the bus in parliament for political gain. It was entirely inappropriate.”

Steggall’s main opponent is Liberal candidate Katherine Deves, who has the backing of the prime minister.

Labor leader Anthony Albanese is in the Coalition-held seat of Hasluck, visiting a childcare centre in Kalamunda.

Indigenous Australians Minister Ken Wyatt holds the seat with a 5.4 per cent margin. Labor is running Tania Lawrence.

Scott Morrison is continuing his campaigning in key Labor seat of Blair, showering $3.5 million in promises for a soccer club and a study into building a bridge.

The prime minister is meeting local business owners and soccer club officials in Ipswich.

He is announcing $1 million for the fast growing Ripley Valley Football Club to build a clubhouse. Morrison is also promising $2.5 million for a business case study into a second crossing of the Bremer River in town.

The river can heavily flood during heavy rain in south-east Queensland but a second crossing would mitigate that, as well boost capacity on the road network, with an expected 20,000 vehicles to cross the city daily by 2026.

Some election signage depicting ACT senate candidate David Pocock and independent candidate for Warringah Zali Steggall breached electoral laws, the Australian Electoral Commission has found.

The signage, produced by conservative lobby group Advance Australia, depicted Pocock and Steggall wearing clothing with the official Australian Greens logo in a bid to smear the two politicians. The signage also contained no other images or phrases that corrected the representation made by the images.

Both candidates in question are not endorsed by the Australian Greens.

The signs appeared on trucks, including trucks parked near pre-poll voting centres. Electoral laws state it is an offence to publish, permit, or authorise to be published any matter or thing that is likely to mislead or deceive an elector in relation to the casting of a vote.

After AEC said the signs breached electoral laws, Advance Australia has agreed to not further display them without first giving the AEC 48 hours’ notice. While the lobby group agreed to not display the signs without notice, it insists it did not breach the laws.

Albanese is asked about Scott Morrison’s comments suggesting he did not tell the Labor party about the AUKUS security pact negotiations as it could have resulted in a leak.

In response, the opposition leader slammed Morrison and accused him of not prioritising national interests.

“What this prime minister always does is put his political interest first before the national interests and always about the politics,” Albanese says.

“We were briefed on the Wednesday afternoon. The prime minister’s office - as you will know because you would have been one of them – went around that afternoon and briefed people in the gallery that I had been briefed on a significant announcement that would occur the next day. That didn’t come from me. That came from the Prime Minister’s Office.

“What I did was convene a meeting of the shadow cabinet and the caucus and we endorsed the position that I took to those bodies within hours of the announcement.

“The problem for this prime minister is that he’s always looking for a conflict and a division. That’s what he feeds off. He’s never looking for agreement.”

Albanese is asked about why he thinks it is better for government to take equity in the home of Australians through Labor’s Help to Buy shared equity scheme.

The scheme will allow 10,000 low- and middle-income homebuyers enter the housing market each year by letting them co-purchase a home with the federal government, which would take an equity stake of up to 40 per cent in the property, under the Labor proposal.

Albanese says government shared equity schemes work as one in six of the people in WA and Victoria who have entered into such schemes since 2017 have bought out the government equity.

“Our plan is based upon plans that work that we know work because it’s been working here in WA for 30 years in Victoria in their model that they did their trial which has been supported in the past by Scott Morrison,” he says.

On Coalition’s super for housing scheme that was announced yesterday, Albanese says it is a move of desperation.

“Let’s be very clear about the difference in the housing policies between what we have announced and what the government has announced. The government in its desperation has come up with a thought bubble according to itself, has not been modelled. They have no idea what the impact will be,” he says.

“Minister Hume said that it will put upward pressure on housing prices. That’s what they’ve said. They’ve acknowledged that that is the case. The government now have a policy to cut super, to cut real wages of those on the minimum wage and to increase the cost of living pressures on people who are doing it really tough at the moment.”

Albanese also references others who have called the Coalition’s policy as the “worst housing policy in decades”.

“Their policy that they announced yesterday has been opposed by their own ministers in their own government over a long period of time, whether it be Paul Fletcher or Sussan Ley and others, and now they’ve come up with the plan that Saul Eslake called the worst housing policy in decades.”