1 week ago
Jacinta Price pledges to 'make Australia great again'
Price, who earlier said she wanted “to make Australia great again”, is asked whether it was a nod to Donald Trump. She says:
If I said that, I don’t even realise I said that, but no, I’m an Australian and I want to ensure that we get Australia back on track. Absolutely.
Dutton is asked about the quote, and whether he also wants to MAGA. He says he “wants to get rid of a bad government”.
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Price's MAGA moment
Sarah Basford Canales
Peter Dutton has joined a party rally in the Mount Pleasant Bowling Club in the Perth seat of Tangney.
The opposition leader is among friends here with a sea of blue Liberal shirts and a number of the local candidates running for Labor-held seats.
Michaelia Cash revs up the crowd of supporters, introducing Dutton as the next prime minister of Australia.
Dutton tells the crowd 3 May will be a “sliding doors moment” saying:
“When we look here to the west on election night … we’re going to be looking for you to bring the election home. It is going to be tight.”
Price is then handed the mic where she makes a reference, perhaps unintentional, to a familiar Donald Trump war cry:
Unlike the Albanese government, who try to subsidise the way out of a crisis that they’ve created in this country, and we have incredible candidates right around the country that I’m so proud to be able to stand beside and to ensure that we can make Australia great again, that we can bring Australia back to its former glory, that we can get Australia back on track.
The leader and his colleagues then serve a sausage sizzle for the party faithful outside on the lawns.
Josh Taylor
Laming in high court bid over AEC fines
Former Liberal MP Andrew Laming has appealed a $40,000 fine over Facebook posts that did not have authorisations, arguing that the fine should reflect the number of posts made, not how many people saw them.
Laming was initially fined $20,000 after being taken to court by the Australian Electoral Commission over three Facebook posts. The federal court found his posts on the “Redland Hospital: Let’s fight for fair funding” Facebook page in the months before the 2019 federal election did not carry his name and town or city, as required for proper authorisation.
The fine was doubled on appeal with the full federal court in 2024 finding 28 people had seen the three posts.
Laming appealed to the high court, and in a hearing on Wednesday - for which the transcript was released on Friday - Laming’s counsel, Nick Ferrett argued against the fine being determined on the basis of each time a communication reaches a recipient, because the number of people who see a Facebook post is outside of the user making the post’s control.
Ferrett said:
The best you can say in that scenario is that the person who is uploading it, particularly if they are savvy about social media, will have an idea of the number of people who might look at it. That is [the] best you can say about it.
But it is out of their control how many may look at it, and that sort of comes back to the point about whether what Parliament really meant was to make people liable for circumstances, which are entirely out of their control, to vastly raise the possible maximum penalty.
Tim Begbie, counsel for the AEC, used the example of a fictitious billionaire candidate, arguing that counting one communication for a single fine, regardless of how many people it reached, would be a very low fine to issue:
If a billionaire candidate wanted to promulgate to half of Australia, over the course of the AFL grand final, messaging that was attacking opponents without any identification of where that messaging was coming from, that might be a very powerful communication strategy, and it might be a very cheap one to add $25,000 to whatever the cost of running those ads was, if it meant having a meaningful impact on candidates getting elected, and that means, if it involved a meaningful impact on the free voting choices of each elector that watched the grand final.
The court reserved its decision.
Laming did not contest the 2022 federal election, following losing preselection.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Victorian Labor have already posted the clip of Price saying “make Australia great again” on X, along with the caption:
Breaking: Jacinta Price said the quiet part out loud. We can’t risk the DOGE-style cuts and the Americanisation of our healthcare, education and essential services. But under Peter Dutton that’s exactly what you’ll get.
Peter Dutton asked if MAGA message helpful to Coalition’s campaign
Just one more “make Australia great again”-related comment that is worth including from Peter Dutton’s press conference in Perth.
Dutton was asked directly: is that a message that you think is helpful to the Coalition at this point in the campaign?
He responded:
You’ve got families out there at the moment, and we’ve spoken to them here in WA, who can’t afford to pay their power bill, who can’t afford to pay their insurance bill … they’re making decisions at the moment about whether they insure their house or not, right?
So let’s just deal with the reality for people. I really think that if we want to make their lives better and we want to get our country back on track, we have to change the government.
Dutton then referred to Price, who provided this answer:
If I said that, I don’t even realise I said that, but no, I’m an Australian and I want to ensure that we get Australia back on track. Absolutely.
After Price puts her shoulder to the wheel on cultural heritage laws, touching on defunding the Environmental Defender’s Office and Labor apparently being beholden to “radical fringe groups”, Dutton finishes the press conference by saying: “that’s exactly why Jacinta Price will be in a cabinet that I lead”.
Jacinta Price says Department of Government Efficiency ‘not an ode to Donald Trump’
Price is asked about her role as the head of government efficiency, another seemingly clear nod to Trump made before he became wildly unpopular (given its similarity to the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency). She says:
Let me just clarify. The Department of Government Efficiency, it’s not a department. It’s got nothing to do with the department. In fact, it will sit in Prime Minister and Cabinet. And just to clarify, it is not an ode to Donald Trump.
So let’s be very, very clear. The media, you’re all obsessed with Donald Trump. We’re not obsessed with Donald Trump.
Dutton seems particularly keen for reporters to ask more questions of Price, who was seen as a highly effective spokesperson during the voice referendum.
She says she will consider “waste” in the Albanese government if Dutton is elected.
Among the things she rails against are “socialist enclaves in remote communities”, grants about decolonising breastfeeding, and a “reset” of school curriculums which are “teaching people that Indigenous Australians are victims and that white Australians are oppressors”.
Dutton claims Anthony Albanese is ‘anti-WA’
Dutton pivots from a question about some issues with preselected candidates into an attack on Albanese.
Dutton says Albanese won’t be photographed with the Victorian premier, Jacinta Allan, (who Albanese did a media event with on Monday) but that, somewhat conversely, Western Australians should know that far more popular premiers Mark McGowan and current leader Roger Cook were not running in the federal election. He said:
Anthony Albanese won’t be photographed now with Jacinta Allen in Victoria. They used to be joined at the hip and behind the scenes they are joined at the hip.
The prime minister’s been a leader of the left of the Labor party for his entire adult life and so when people see … the real Anthony Albanese, which I think they’re starting to see, they see somebody who is anti-WA, they see somebody who is not lived up to the promises that he’s made.
Teals 'a con job': Dutton
Dutton says a vote for the teals is a vote for the Greens, which is a vote for Albanese. A bit hard to get your head around but there it is.
He was asked: “Allegra Spender [is] paying social media influencers to promote her cause. Has she crossed a line?”
He responds:
Look, I just think when it comes to the whole teal movement the whole thing is a con job.
And that’s why people are now seeing through the teals, they’re Greens in disguise. And if you vote for a teal, you’re voting for a Green, which means you’re voting for Anthony Albanese.
The teals will only support Anthony Albanese in government. That’s the reality. So a Labor-Greens-teal government is a disaster for WA. It’s a disaster for the economy. It’ll mean interest rates go back up. And I just don’t think Australians can afford that.
Jacinta Price pledges to 'make Australia great again'
Price, who earlier said she wanted “to make Australia great again”, is asked whether it was a nod to Donald Trump. She says:
If I said that, I don’t even realise I said that, but no, I’m an Australian and I want to ensure that we get Australia back on track. Absolutely.
Dutton is asked about the quote, and whether he also wants to MAGA. He says he “wants to get rid of a bad government”.
Dutton denies Andrew Hastie being kept away from campaign
Dutton is being pressed on whether Andrew Hastie, the Liberal MP for Canning, one of the most marginal seats in WA, is being deliberately kept away from the campaign.
Reporters ask whether this is because it was revealed this week that Hastie previously said women should not serve in ADF combat roles.
Dutton denies this, saying he saw a TikTok of Hastie “just yesterday”.
Price also says she attended Hastie’s campaign launch yesterday.
Dutton is trying to link the voice to bad economic decisions. It is not immediately clear what the link is.
I think people are starting to see through the lies of the Labor campaign and realise that it started with the voice, and then it went to bad economic decisions, and that has really hurt many parts of our country.
Opposition leader says treasurer ‘doesn’t know whether there’s a recession coming or not’
Dutton also speaks about how the Morrison government supported WA during the pandemic, before saying:
This prime minister, I think, is out of his depth. And the treasurer too, doesn’t know how to respond to the world’s circumstances at the moment, doesn’t know whether there’s a recession coming or not. They chop and change their position. But what Australians know is that we stand up for what we believe in, that we will fight for what we believe in.
Peter Dutton says voters ‘have not forgotten’ Albanese’s role in voice referendum
He starts by criticising Albanese for not making the country better in the past three years.
Dutton then says Australians “have not forgotten” that Albanese tried to “divide the country” with the voice referendum.
I’ll get back to some of Albanese’s comments, but Peter Dutton is also speaking live from Perth now. He is joined by Michaelia Cash and Jacinta Nampijinpa Price.
Asked about his confidence that Labor will hold seats in Western Australia, Albanese says it’s because his candidates are “guns”.
He draws a contrast between Labor’s candidates and a series of people who have been preselected by Liberal, including one he labels “a cooker”.
Albanese is asked about “nature positive” environment laws, which have been unpopular in WA:
Nature positive laws didn’t have a majority support in the Senate.
They’re not on the table, they’re off the table.
Nothing newsy in that, I’ve said it completely.
It was a regular love-in in Perth.
Albanese shares that he has known Cook for more than 40 years, after having first met over beers at a conference in 1984. He said:
I reckon there would have been pretty good odds we would have been breath-tested if we said we’d be back here today as prime minister and premier.
Cook welcomes Albanese as “a WA local” saying “Albo gets WA”.
Albanese says Labor will ‘back WA’
Albanese was with the WA premier, Roger Cook, and Perth MP Patrick Gorman.
Albanese started his comments to the media by praising Cook’s efforts in the state election last month.
Labor won several WA seats in 2022 that were seen as key in it wresting control from the Morrison government.
Albanese is appealing to a particularly strong WA sentiment – the idea they’re forgotten by the rest of the country:
We understand Australia isn’t just Kirribilli House, isn’t just the east coast … we need to represent the whole of Australia.
We need to make sure we back WA.
