First full week of campaigning ahead of May 3 election

ABC NEWS (Australia)

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.

Transcript

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.

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