Welcome back to your daily election wrap. Brett Worthington will catch you up on news from the campaign trail.
There’s a pretty universal rule in politics — a politician’s children are off limits.
For Anthony Albanese, it’s sacrosanct.
The prime minister is so hesitant to bring his immediate family into debates that when there are questions (like his son Nathan’s membership of Qantas Chairman’s Lounge) he immediately cries foul.
Nathan is a no-go zone, as was again on show last week when the PM refused to say if he had talked with his son about the importance of mental health growing up (Albanese was making a mental health announcement).
“I prefer not to discuss my personal relationship with my son at a press conference,” he replied.
Families are so off-limits for Albanese that last year he ordered Victorian Labor to take down a meme mocking the opposition leader and his wife.
For Peter Dutton, his family too has long been off limits, in part amid the security threats he faces.
That was until this campaign, and the emergence of his son Harry, who answered a question at a press conference on Monday and again joined his father on the trail on Tuesday.
Dutton’s children also took part in an interview with 60 Minutes before the campaign.
But letting them front the cameras and answer a question is a whole other thing.
Harry Dutton joined his father for a second press opportunity on Tuesday but was not part of the press conference. (ABC News: Luke Stephenson)
The bank of mum and dad, Dutton edition
Harry Dutton’s despairing at the state of the property market (essentially speaking for many other 20-somethings), prompted more questions than answers.
The Duttons are very wealthy people. So, would the Bank of Mum and Dad be helping their children?
On Monday, Dutton wasn’t taking the bait, instead pivoting into what he wanted to talk about.
On Tuesday, he initially continued that theme, telling the Today Show it wasn’t about his family.
Except it was. He made his family the story by allowing his son to front a press conference.
Try as he might, this was a genie that wasn’t going back into the bottle.
By the time he faced a press conference on Tuesday, he’d changed his tune.
“I think our household’s no different to many households where we want our kids to work hard to save, and we’ll help them with the deposit at some stage,” he said.
The future of Albanese’s ‘good mate’
Try as Albanese might to insist Tanya Plibersek is a “good mate”, there’s little love between the two Labor luminaries, who have long represented neighbouring seats.
If there was any doubt, their awkward encounter at Labor’s launch left little to the imagination.
Popular Plibersek seems to have lived rent-free in her leadership rival’s mind and when Albanese gets a chance to knock her back a peg, he rarely abstains.
He did it immediately after the last election, giving the urban MP (whose only electoral threat is from the Greens) the water and environment portfolios.
Having been forced to watch Jason Clare enact the education policies she mapped out in opposition, she’s repeatedly had her legs taken out from underneath her with the PM’s repeated interventions into her portfolios.
Questions arose on Monday if the PM again had Plibersek in his sights after refusing to guarantee her future after the election.
By Tuesday, he was insisting Plibersek would be “a senior cabinet minister” in a re-elected Labor government.
He was always going to have to clean up what he’d said the day earlier.
Plibersek is a rockstar and darling of the Labor movement and any push to dump her from cabinet would have been met with swift backlash even for a newly re-elected prime minister.
That’s not to say she wouldn’t welcome the back of the poisoned chalices she’s had to drink from in this term.
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How do you solve a problem like Brad and Jacinta?
Albanese and Dutton’s respective state leaders in Victoria have received little airtime this campaign.
Everytime Albanese headed into the state he was met with the question of: Where’s Premier Jacinta Allan?
It was a question he put to bed last week, capitalising on the Coalition’s work from home capitulation to find time to campaign together as the opposition busied itself hosing down its backdown.
The new week is bringing with it a new Victorian woe but this time it’s for Dutton and his state counterpart, fellow ex-cop Brad Battin.
There’s been a noticeable difference between the two men on Dutton’s plans to build a nuclear power plant in Victoria.
“Our focus is gas,” Battin told the Guardian.
The Victorian didn’t go as far as Queensland’s LNP Premier David Crisafulli who has made no secret of his opposition to nuclear.
When asked about Battin’s comments, Dutton deflected, accusing Albanese of pretending “that you can rely on solar and wind”.
Good day for…
Tanya Plibersek, after Albanese guaranteed her “senior” spot in his cabinet.
Bad day for…
The WA Greens, who, after facing backlash, cancelled plans for a dance party fundraiser on Anzac Day. And a special mention to David Littleproud, the would-be deputy prime minister, who today said he would apologise for comparing Labor MP Lisa Chesters to a dog yesterday.
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What to watch out for
The trend is your friend in polls and for the Coalition, it finds itself in unfriendly territory when you look at recent Newspolls. While not predictive of the future, they show Labor’s national primary vote has recovered since the budget to 2022 election levels. With Victoria and NSW the key battlegrounds for the election, Labor is seeing improvement but is still down on 2022.
On one level that might sound good for the Coalition. But consider this: after a steady decline in Labor’s primary vote in both NSW and Victoria, there’s been a noticeable change in direction in polls since the budget. In Victoria, while the Coalition might be in a better spot than it was in 2022, it’s nowhere near what it will need to win the half dozen seats its chasing in the state.
Where pollies have been
Catch up on today’s stories
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