Prime Minister's Department accidentally published caretaker announcement too early

Prime Minister and Cabinet published and deleted caretaker notice before the election was called.

Transcript

00:00Are we in caretaker right now?

00:02Senator, no, we're not in caretaker right now.

00:04Why did PM&C nine minutes ago, or probably ten minutes ago now,

00:09put online that the government is now operating in accordance with caretaker conventions?

00:14Does that mean I can leave?

00:16I think we can all leave, exactly.

00:18The bad news is the Prime Minister didn't get to call the election, PM&C did.

00:22I don't know who's running the country, good God.

00:28Senator, my colleagues are trying to work out why this occurred,

00:32so I will just say that obviously this is an error, and we apologise for that.

00:39It was up for a period of four minutes.

00:42I became aware of it approximately nine minutes ago,

00:46and my corporate colleagues are addressing how this occurred.

00:54I can assure you we're not in caretaker.

00:56I can say that there is, of course, the guidance on the caretaker conventions,

01:01which is available on our website, and has been available on our website since mid-December.

01:06So that is available, but yes, we are not in caretaker.

01:11This is clearly an error.

01:12We are trying to find out why it occurred, and we apologise.