Welcome back to your daily election wrap. Brett Worthington will catch you up on news from the campaign trail.
The question was simple.
Announcing the Coalition’s domestic violence policy, Opposition Leader Peter Dutton was asked what was his message to Australian men about their responsibilities in this “crisis”.
The answer started well, before quickly highlighting the struggle male leaders seem to have confronting this national scourge.
Dutton, as he often does, spoke about his experiences as a police offer and the tragic scenes he’d witnessed.
He added that men needed to provide good examples to their children and sons and not walk past violence in the workplace or home. His attention then turned to social media, the role of pornography and computer games.
In focusing on younger people, his efforts might go some way towards helping future generations, but offer few solutions to a problem that’s here and now.
One woman is killed every four days on average in Australia.
For all the talk about crime in this campaign, little of it has been about where women and children are most at risk — in their homes.
Dutton was right when he said domestic violence was an issue that has “bedevilled us as not just a country but as a world for generations and generations and that upsets me”.
But as is so often the case with this policy area across the political spectrum, it’s left to female politicians to carry the can, as was the case at his press conference.
Dutton watched on as frontbenchers Sussan Ley, Michaelia Cash and Kerrynne Liddle explained the bulk of the Coalition’s plan.
Michaelia Cash and Sussan Ley took the lead explaining the Coalition’s domestic violence policies. (ABC News: Ian Cutmore)
Dutton no longer backing down
That same press conference also offered a reminder that the reverse gear has been ripped straight out of the Dutton campaign car.
Gone are the days of chucking the campaign into R and reversing over its earlier announcements, like the work-from-home capitulation.
Instead, it’s D all the way, even if it comes with a U-turn or three, as was the case at today’s press conference.
Peter Dutton is in no mood for reversing with just days left in the campaign. (ABC News: Ian Cutmore)
Yesterday, Dutton seemingly suggested the Coalition had no plans to move the capital of Israel from Tel Aviv to West Jerusalem. A spokesperson later issued a statement making clear the policy was to move the capital back to West Jerusalem.
Asked about it today, he refused to admit he’d misspoken.
He offered the same justification for an about-turn on an electric vehicle (EV) tax break.
On Monday, when asked if he would scrap EV subsidies, he told reporters “we don’t have any proposals to change those settings”.
The Liberal campaign opted for a drop of red after the morning’s press conference. (ABC News: Ian Cutmore)
Within days, the fringe benefit tax exemption had gone the way of the dodo, not that Dutton was willing to admit the reversal.
“I think we’re better off just to accept we have a difference of opinion but there has been no change in policy,” he said.
And on the public service (and the policy that has haunted the Coalition all campaign), Dutton insisted 41,000 public service jobs would only be cut in Canberra, representing around two-thirds of the staff based in the national capital.
The trouble is, that is at odds with what the ACT Liberal senator has been saying and by the time you exclude frontline, national security and defence employees, you’re fast running out of Canberra workers to sack.
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Tripping over lines about falling
The prime minister too found himself in a twist while campaigning in the west.
For reasons that no one seems to understand, Anthony Albanese initially tried to suggest he hadn’t fallen off a stage early in the campaign.
And look, that might be what his press office was telling him. The prime minister’s official photographer was the only one not snapping when the PM went down.
Anthony Albanese took his campaign back to WA, where he hopes to win the new seat of Bullwinkel. (ABC News: David Sciasci)
The Coalition has seized on his explanation as a clear demonstration of a man loose with the truth.
When asked why it was important to him that he initially described it as a step, not a fall, Albanese took aim at the media and said it showed something about the Coalition’s character that it criticised him about it.
The Coalition hadn’t criticised Albanese for falling, but rather the lengths he and his ministers went to insisting he hadn’t.
Anthony Albanese speaking with Kerry Stokes at a breakfast event. (ABC News: David Sciasci)
Meanwhile, decked in his beloved Hermes tie, the PM was snapped kissing the ring of media tycoon Kerry Stokes, one of the most powerful voices in the west, at a breakfast event that Albanese spoke at on Thursday morning.
Good day for…
Nationals candidate Sue Gilroy in the NSW Hunter region. The One Nation how-to-vote policy change sees her now second, not fifth, on the party’s preferences.
Bad day for…
Voters trying to follow those how-to-vote cards, which seem to have been updated with a pen rather than re-printed as ABC News discovered while reporting from the region.
Who needs a re-print when you can updated the how-to-vote cards by pen. (Supplied)
What to watch out for
Coalition votes in electorates that would get nuclear power stations.
Speaking at the National Press Club today, Nationals leader David Littleproud (who would be deputy PM in a Coalition government), said it didn’t matter that Dutton wasn’t visiting the seven sites, including one in Labor-held Hunter, this campaign.
“There’s no need to go in an election campaign where you have already won the votes,” Littleproud said.
Where pollies have been
Catch up on today’s stories
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