Welcome back to your daily election wrap. Brett Worthington will catch you up on news from the campaign trail.
Peter Dutton is a Winston Churchill fan.
That explains much of the past 24 hours for the opposition leader.
“That never give in strategy, for me, has really worked in my life, where some days you could just pack your cards up and say ‘I’m done, I’m checking out’,” he told diver Sam Fricker in a podcast late last year.
“But instead you double down and I think that is important.”
And double down he has.
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Faced with accusations he had verballed Indonesia’s president, the opposition leader was in no mood to again find himself backing down.
The whole saga kicked off on Tuesday, when reports emerged that Russia had asked Indonesia to host military aircraft about 1,400 kilometres from Australia’s mainland.
Seizing on the report on defence news website Janes, Dutton took aim at Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong.
He said it would be a “catastrophic failure” if they had not received notice of the request prior to it being “publicly announced by the president of Indonesia”.
Except that’s not what had happened.
Indonesia’s President Prabowo Subianto has not made any public statements or announcements about the reported request.
Within hours, Australia had received assurances from Indonesia that it was not considering allowing Russian planes to be based in its country, prompting Wong on Wednesday to dub Dutton “too reckless and aggro to be Australia’s prime minister”.
Cue Dutton channelling his inner Churchill.
“The reference I made was obviously to what is a very credible military website and that talked about government sources and the Prabowo government sources,” he told reporters before then repeatedly refusing to clarify questions about the matter.
Like Dutton, Churchill too was a defence minister, a home affairs minister and leader of the opposition.
Dutton is hoping he can replicate the set, and like Churchill, become prime minister.
But there are growing fears within the Coalition that he’s been unable to get his campaign into an election-winning position.
The old political adage suggests that if you’re explaining, you’re losing.
From the first week’s work from home woes, to the Jacinta Nampijinpa Price’s MAGA moment and a distracting decision to insert his son Harry into the campaign, Dutton has found himself having to do a lot of explaining.
Meet you in the lobby
There’s been a noticeable increase in security around politicians — and not just the leaders.
It’s little wonder why. Even before the campaign, the Australian Federal Police’s top cop reported politicians were facing increasingly menacing security threats, including threats of death and sexual violence.
But even with the heightened security, protesters have still been able to disrupt 10 leaders’ events so far.
Today it emerged alt-right protesters approached the prime minister in the lobby of a Melbourne hotel — the location of which was meant to be secret.
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Cameras rolling, two different men made separate approaches to Albanese, demanding answers on housing and immigration.
A member of Albanese’s staff smiled as she stepped in between the PM and the protester before federal police intervened. The PM flicked his wrist before walking off.
“I have no intention of going into security discussions,” he told reporters when asked about the incident, before vowing he had faith in the AFP to protect him.
Earlier in the campaign, it emerged Dutton had been the subject of an alleged terror plot.
Shouldn’t have to pay to be gay
There’s been no shortage of the good, the bad and the downright terrible social media content this campaign.
Enter Greens MP Stephen Bates, who used an innuendo-laden video on Only Fans to announce the party’s policy to make prescribed medications PrEP and PEP free.
The video sees Bates linguistically work his way his around tops, bottoms, boxes and the prospect of the parliament being, well… hung.
The underlying message of the video boils down to: you shouldn’t have to pay to be gay.
PrEP and PEP are listed on the pharmaceutical benefit scheme and have significantly reduced the spread of HIV.
But Bates argues the gap payment is a grower and costs users hundreds in out of pocket expenses.
“In a cost of living crisis, that’s just too much,” he said.
“You shouldn’t have to pay a fortune to be sexually responsible.”
It’s not the first time Bates has opted for attention-seeking campaigning, having taken his campaign to dating app Grindr in 2022.
Good day for…
China’s economy. Australia’s largest trading partner’s economy grew more than economists had expected in the first quarter of 2025.
Bad day for…
Speaker of the House Milton Dick. The Nine newspapers reported on Wednesday that Labor has had informal talks with long-serving crossbenchers Andrew Wilkie and Rebekha Sharkie about the possibility of becoming Speaker in the House of Representatives if there’s a hung parliament. The reports suggested the Coalition too had informal talks with the two independents.
Independent MPs Andrew Wilkie and Rebekha Sharkie have reportedly had informal discussions with Labor and the Coalition about becoming Speaker of the House if there’s a hung parliament. (ABC News: Matt Roberts)
What to watch out for
Big (political) spender Clive Palmer will announce his party’s preferences tomorrow afternoon.
Where pollies have been
Catch up on today’s stories
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