With the cost-of-living crisis still front of mind for many Australians, both major parties go into the race spruiking policies they claim will help ease hip-pocket pain.
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00:00It's such a critical part of the overall picture.
00:06WA, as my colleague who's travelling with the Prime Minister pointed out, Tom Lowry
00:10pointed out a few moments ago, there was four seats there that Labor picked up in 2022.
00:16Labor has a three-seat majority in the parliament that's just finished.
00:20So that's how tight the numbers are.
00:23The West has been a place where the Labor brand is in good shape.
00:28The state election was very strong in Labor's favour.
00:33That was only a few weeks ago.
00:35And the Prime Minister has been there close to 30 times.
00:38This might be his 30th trip.
00:40I'm not quite sure on the details, but it's that scale since 2022, since he became Prime
00:46Minister.
00:47He is handing out money for a local hospital there, and he'll be talking about why he's
00:52friendly to a state like Western Australia with its huge resources industries, iron ore
01:01and gas in particular, and he's sending a message that this is a Labor government that's
01:06supportive of those industries.
01:09And he can expect that, all things being equal, the pendulum would have shifted away from
01:14Labor over these years, but he needs to hang on to those wins from last time.
01:18Jacob, how did the weekend campaigning go for the leaders?
01:23It kicked off in its expected sort of relatively frantic pace.
01:28There were a bunch of different things that really cut through.
01:31The Prime Minister and Labor announcing a supermarkets policy on Sunday morning.
01:37Not a lot of detail on that one, frankly, kind of has the vibe of a slogan and a headline
01:44rather than any real policy meat on that.
01:47The argument being, I think, supermarkets that, quote, take the piss are the ones that
01:51are going to be targeted.
01:53That's not a particularly sharp, useful piece of language when it comes to the law, which
01:58is what this is ultimately about.
02:00And the competition regulator cracking down on that type of price gouging where and when
02:07it happens.
02:08The opposition more emphasising its plan to get energy prices down.
02:15And you could say equally there's a lack of detail there around how it's going to manage
02:20getting more gas into the economy, which is what opposition leader Peter Dutton announced
02:25in his budget reply speech on Thursday night.
02:28He says he will get gas prices down to $10 a gigajoule.
02:33They're currently just under $14 by the end of this calendar year, and that'll lead to
02:39lower energy prices.
02:41Devil in the detail, though.
02:43Peter Dutton chose to head to Western Sydney yesterday.
02:45What was the significance of that?
02:47So it's you're beaming out of Western Sydney.
02:51It's one of the key battlegrounds in this election.
02:55There are a lot of seats in Western Sydney and I guess the equivalent kind of regions
03:01in Melbourne and Brisbane.
03:03These are mortgage belts.
03:05These are areas with large ethnic communities.
03:10And it's where the cost of living crisis has been felt very acutely.
03:14People are struggling with their transport costs.
03:17Peter Dutton has a policy to cut the fuel excise immediately by 20 cents.
03:23That's about half.
03:24A little over 20 cents, I should say, per litre.
03:26That would bring, he says, immediate relief to those communities where people do have
03:31to commute a long way.
03:33So he's gone, I guess, into Labor heartland.
03:37But the Coalition feels these are seats they can bring back to their side of the ledger.
03:43And what about the Coalition's gas reservation policy?
03:45I mean, how has it been received with voters and the industry?
03:48Is it likely that Labor would do similar?
03:50Well, we'll wait and see on Labor.
03:53My sense is they're really still watching, gauging the reaction.
03:58The response from the industry has been verging on apoplectic, it has to be said.
04:03Certainly, that's what they're telling me.
04:05They're very unhappy with the gas reservation idea.
04:08Not the concept per se, but the fact that the version that Peter Dutton announced on
04:15Thursday in his budget reply speech very much affects existing investments, existing infrastructure,
04:23much of which is devoted to exporting gas to very lucrative offshore markets.
04:30Some of them, anyway, were OK with the idea of a reservation that only affects future
04:35gas projects.
04:36And remember, this is a Commonwealth area.
04:39It can only really do this on offshore gas.
04:42So this is places like off the northwest shelf of WA and off the Northern Territory.
04:50Both are locations that are not particularly useful for the East Coast gas market because
04:55we don't have pipelines that cross the continent.
04:58We'd need to put gas on ships, LNG ships, bring it back east and then turn it back into
05:05gas.
05:07All very expensive and also, frankly, the sort of things that take a long time to be
05:13put into practice.
05:14So they're the sort of questions that hang over this policy.
05:18The other thing the industry is very concerned about is if this reservation is imposed as
05:24it's been described.
05:25And as I said, we don't have a lot of detail, but as described, that could lead to less
05:30gas being available on the East Coast because there's less of an incentive, the industry
05:36says, to extract gas and gas to take gas out.
05:40It's not just a tap that you turn on and off.
05:42You have to spend a lot of money every year, some $4 billion in Queensland alone to get
05:48the gas out.
05:49Jacob, is there a sense that Labor's bad polling is shifting somewhat?
05:53Well, this has been brewing for four, five, six weeks, you could say.
06:00Early sense that the polls were starting to shift.
06:05Certainly they've narrowed.
06:06And as you've been reporting this morning, there's a there's a flurry of polls out over
06:11the last 24 hours or so, all pointing to the same thing, which is that it's about neck
06:16and neck in terms of two party preferred.
06:20There's been a shift, it seems, towards Labor's primary.
06:24That's picking up somewhat.
06:27And both sides will say, well, that's probably inevitable because there was an unusually
06:31large or there still is an unusually large undecided vote, which is indicative perhaps
06:37that people are not happy with what they've got right now.
06:40But they haven't shifted over to Peter Dutton in the numbers that he would need to to get
06:46a majority of his own right.
06:48He has a big mountain to climb.
06:49He's got to pick up something like 20 seats, whereas Labor has a three seat majority.
06:54They only need to lose a few seats and then they're in minority.
06:58The polls as they stand now, and I would take them with a grain of salt this early in the
07:02campaign.
07:03A lot can and will change in these polls.
07:06But they would have Labor pretty close to a majority in its own right.
07:13And you wrote a piece yesterday about a moment that may come back to bite Peter Dutton.
07:17Can you tell us what happened and why it could be problematic?
07:20Well, it was a sort of funny moment where he interviewed himself, in a sense, at a press
07:24conference and asked the question, does anyone think that Labor can win a majority?
07:30And he paused for, I counted, almost six seconds as he looked around the gallery, or the press
07:35pack that was with him.
07:36No one responded.
07:37And then he answered his own question and said, essentially, that no one thinks Labor
07:42can win a majority.
07:44Now, in the 24 hours since, we've seen polls that on paper, I stress on paper, actually
07:51might give Labor a majority.
07:53So it's one of those funny sort of moments.
07:55We might come back to it later in the campaign as perhaps demonstrating a bit of hubris.
08:00Now, I think the point he's making as well is that he believes whatever happens, voters
08:06are going to put a parliament in place where the crossbench has a lot of clout.
08:12And that's going to hang over this campaign all the way to the finish line.
08:16Which side is sending signals to that crossbench?
08:19How will that crossbench split?
08:21There are some who you would say would be natural coalition supporters, and then there
08:26are others who are natural Labor supporters.
08:28And the voters in the seats where they're electing these independents, the Teals, some
08:33of them have more of a National Party sort of flavour to them, some of them obviously
08:38leaning more Labor, Green.
08:42Both sides are going to push, both of the major parties are going to push those candidates
08:46to reveal which way they'll jump if there is a hung parliament.