Federal election 2025 live updates: Anthony Albanese and Peter Dutton continue campaign in final days before Australia votes – latest news
Dutton rules out offering cabinet post to Pauline Hanson in minority government
Pauline Hanson won’t get a seat at Dutton’s cabinet table, despite One Nation doing a preference deal with the Liberal party.
Dutton says he “wouldn’t be mucking around” with independents and minor parties.
I wouldn’t be mucking around with independents and third parties at this election. I really wouldn’t. We don’t want to see a European situation where you’ve got a handful of Greens and left-leaning teal candidates holding the government to ransom.
He’s asked a follow up on whether the Liberal party shares values with One Nation, but Dutton skips over the reporter.
Like yesterday, Dutton’s choosing to avoid or ignore a lot of the follow-up questions during the presser today.
Key events
Australia needs stability ‘at a time of global uncertainty’: Albanese
Hot off the heels of Canada’s progressive Liberal party winning government, Albanese makes the case for stability with Labor at a time of global uncertainty.
In times of global economic uncertainty that is the stable and responsible approach that our people deserve and our nation needs. At a time of global uncertainty, when so much in the world is unpredictable, Australians can be sure of where Labor stands and what Labor stands for.
Albanese has spent some time blaming the Coalition for their record in government.
He then takes aim at the opposition over their criticism and attacks on Labor.
The Liberals and Nationals have spent three years raging about problems that their decade in office created.
The Liberals have not learned, they have not changed.
Labor MPs in audience for PM’s press club address
On Labor frontbench watch, we can see foreign affairs minister Penny Wong, deputy PM Richard Marles, treasurer Jim Chalmers and finance minister Katy Gallagher are here to watch the address.
I’ve also spotted health minister Mark Butler, and Andrew Leigh and emergency management minister Jenny McAllister.
Without fail, Albanese has brought his trusty Medicare card, and has whipped it out about four and a half minutes into his address.
Albanese addresses National Press Club
Anthony Albanese is addressing the National Press Club in Canberra, making an impassioned plea to Australian voters.
All the lines and arguments he makes are ones we’ve seen on the campaign trail, and his pledge “no one held back, no one left behind” is one that’s stuck since the 2022 campaign.
The prime minister starts with a broad look at the challenges that have been “thrown” at Australia from around the world.
Through everything the world has thrown at Australia over the last three years, for all the challenges our nation has faced, our government has held true to those enduring Australian values of fairness, aspiration and opportunity.
It has been less than three years since Australians voted out the Morrison government. My colleagues and I know there is more work to do. That is what drives us.
He then homes in on Medicare – a staple of the Labor campaign, and an issue Labor has used to attack the Coalition.
Josh Butler
Dutton campaigns in Melbourne seat of Chisholm
Peter Dutton has now come to the Melbourne seat of Chisholm, held by Labor. It’s a seat the Coalition would love to win back, if they have much chance of retaking government.
Dutton is at a Chinese restaurant, meeting leaders of the Australian Chinese community.
He’s also with Liberal candidate Katie Allen, the former MP who was unseated as the member for Higgins at the last election.
Luca Ittimani
Australian sharemarket dips and dollar gains
The Australian sharemarket has dipped and the dollar picked up after March’s inflation data came in slightly higher than analysts had expected.
The benchmark S&P/ASX 200 had ticked above 8,100 points on Wednesday morning for the first time since early March, but lost most of this morning’s gains to fall back towards 8,070.
Inflation was flat at 2.4% in the year to March but the less bumpy trimmed mean measure fell from 3.3% to 2.9%. That figure, which is the one the Reserve Bank keeps in mind when calling interest rates, dropped below 3% for the first time since December 2021, but came in slightly above the market’s expectation of 2.8%.
Australia’s dollar shot back up above 64 US cents after hovering below 63.9 cents, while picking up some ground against the Chinese yuan, UK pound, Japan’s yen and the Euro.
Caitlin Cassidy
Union asks Dutton to reveal plans for school curriculum before election
The Australian Education Union (AEU) has hit out at the Coalition for neglecting to detail plans of their flagged reforms to the Australian curriculum ahead of the federal election.
Its president, Correna Haythorpe, said the Coalition had “attacked teachers throughout this campaign, with Trump-style fake claims of indoctrination and woke agendas”.
But with only days to go and millions of Australians having already voted, they have failed to outline the actual changes they will make to the Australian curriculum, if elected to government.
With plans for school funding to be tied to a curriculum based on Mr Dutton’s ideology, the Australian people must immediately be told what the Coalition’s plans for the curriculum would look like before they vote, as promised.
Read more on this story here:
Catie McLeod
Shoppers cutting back on treats, meat and alcohol due to cost of living, Coles says
Circling back to the Coles quarterly financial results announcement, the company’s chief executive officer, Leah Weckert, has said customers are still cutting back on certain purchases because of cost-of-living pressures.
In the media briefing earlier this morning, Weckert said shoppers were still buying fewer “treats” such as confectionary, chips and biscuits, and less meat, alcohol and bottled water.
Weckert said:
Treats sort of top of the list of things people are cutting back on.
The second most significant one is alcohol and so deprioritising drinking occasions.
Meat: so going meat-free a couple nights a week and doing a vegetarian meal, which is typically a more affordable meal for the family.
And then the other one I pulled out was bottled water, so going back to drinking tap water or filling your reusable water bottle instead of buying bottled water.
Weckert said there hadn’t been “a lot of impact” on how much fruit people were buying, as “Australians love fresh food”.
Kate Lyons
Chalmers warns of Coalition costings ‘con job’
Treasurer Jim Chalmers has said the Coalition’s failure to release costings for its policies three days out from the election is “utterly unacceptable” and is due to the Coalition’s unwillingness to account for the “savage cuts” he says they will need to make to pay for their policies.
The reason they have not released their costings yet is because they don’t want to come clean on the savage cuts they will need to make to pay for their nuclear reactors and what that means for Medicare or pensions and payments.
Peter Dutton has said on a number of occasions the there will be cuts to the budget but he won’t tell Australians what they are until after the election. That’s completely and utterly unacceptable. We need to see the Coalition’s costings, they need to take full account of their disastrous nuclear policy, and is to be a realistic costing of long lunches and mortgage deductibility and petrol.
He also warned journalists to “keep an eye out for some dodgy assumptions around productivity, pumping up their numbers” when examining the Coalition’s costings, when they are released.
Keep an eye out, remembering David Littleproud said they’ll start building nuclear reactors the day after they are elected, make sure they have fully accounted for that … We don’t want to see another costings con job.
Chalmers ‘really pleased’ as underlying inflation falls into RBA target band
Kate Lyons
Treasurer Jim Chalmers is speaking live now, responding to the drop in core inflation, announced by the Reserve Bank today which he has called a “proof of the responsible economic management, which has been a defining feature of this Albanese Labor government”.
We’re really pleased to see headline inflation in the bottom half the Reserve Bank’s target range again, at 2.4 % and especially encouraged to see trimmed mean underlying inflation within the Reserve Bank’s target and as well, at 2.9%.
This means underlying inflation is now at its lowest level in three years. This is a powerful demonstration of the progress that Australians have made together in the economy. This is proof of the responsible economic management which has been a defining feature of this Albanese Labor covenant.
Petra Stock
Election pledge to keep the ‘BoM of fire management’ online
Labor has been called to match a Coalition pledge to extend the life of a satellite fire mapping tool described as the “BoM of fire management”.
The North Australia and Rangelands Fire Information (Nafi) service, used by land managers across remote and regional Australia – where 99% of bushfires happen – expects to run out of funds by June.
The Coalition has committed $2.5m to keep the service running for three years. The Nationals leader, David Littleproud, said the ability to track fire activity saved “not just lives but livelihoods”.
Rohan Fisher, senior research fellow at Charles Darwin University, described the NAFI as like the “BoM of fire management” with more than 250,000 users.
John Connor, Carbon Market Institute chief executive, said the tool was a “crucial foundation” for the $80m Indigenous-led carbon abatement industry stretching from the Kimberley to Cape York, and should have stable funding.
It’s a clear public good, not just for the Indigenous carbon industry, but the whole resilience of northern Australia.
Emily Wind
Continuing from our last post …
Lethal humidity is a growing concern among scientists, as intolerable bouts of extreme humidity and heat are on the rise across the world. Humidity is more dangerous than dry heat because it impairs sweating – the body’s life-saving natural cooling system.
The number of potentially fatal humidity and heat events doubled between 1979 and 2017, and are increasing in both frequency and intensity, according to a 2020 study published in Science Advances.
During 2023 – which was the hottest year on record, more than 47,000 people in Europe are estimated to have died from heat, according to a study published in Nature.
A coroner found Keith Titmuss died of heatstroke after a Manly Sea Eagles pre-season training session in November 2020. You can read Scamps’ apology earlier in the blog here.
