Australian news and politics live: Albanese claims Labor can ‘certainly win’ Dutton’s seat of Dickson

Monday saw the busiest day at early voting centres across the country, with 830,000 Australians casting their ballots.

The rush of voters after the long weekend brought the total across the first five days of voting to 3.23 million.

Add in the now 776,000 returned postal votes brings the total ballots returned to more than four million - or 22 per cent of all enrolled voters.

The Electoral Commission expects more than half of Australians to cast their vote before Saturday.

The Prime Minister stood face-to-face with Labor’s opposition at a pre-polling booth today handing out flyers and voting advice to punters in Queensland.

Anthony Albanese is in the sunshine state to ram home the Labor message leading into Saturday’s election and interacted with The Nightly’s Latika Bourke and People First Senator Ross Vasta.

When asked about having the PM handing out voting advice today, the current Member for Bonner said he had a good relationship with the PM.

Mr Albanese chimed in saying his presence was “nothing personal”, he just wants Labor candidate Kara Cook “to win”.

Ellen Ransley reports that the PM has stopped for a flying visit at a pre-poll booth at Wynnum, in the LNP marginal electorate of Bonner.

Mr Albanese spent time cuddling a Labor volunteer’s baby before meeting with voters lining up to enter the centre.

A Libertarian volunteer heckled him as he was shaking hands, asking the PM “what’s a woman” and “what are you going to do about the price of housing Albo”.

The PM ignored him and posed for a few selfies.

Anthony Albanese said earlier that Labor could “certainly win” the seat of Dickson – currently held by one Peter Dutton.

The Opposition Leader’s seat is the most marginal in Queensland, held by a slim 1.7 per cent or 3363 votes at the last election.

It’s the tightest margin for any Opposition Leader’s seat since John Curtin heading into the 1937 election (Mr Curtin increased his margin but Labor lost the election).

Labor candidate Ali France is having her third crack at the seat.

This time, there is also a Climate200-backed independent in the mix, Ellie Smith.

Throughout the campaign, Labor has sent its supporters multiple messages using the tight contest in Dickson to generate donations.

Ahead of the campaign proper, though, party insiders said they thought Mr Dutton would hold on, especially since he has had a higher profile over the past term as the Liberal leader.

If Mr Dutton were to lose, it would throw the Coalition into turmoil since the Liberals would have to find a new leader.

That would be even more so should the Coalition form a majority government.

However, this is a highly unlikely scenario since the swing towards the Coalition needed for such a victory would almost certainly mean Mr Dutton keeps his seat.

Sportsbet has Mr Dutton the favourite to retain the seat, paying $1.52 to $2.80 for Labor and $9.50 for Ms Smith.

Anthony Albanese is doubling down on claims Peter Dutton plans to build a nuclear reactor in his seat, despite there being no plans to do so.

During a press conference today, both the Prime Minister and Treasurer Jim Chalmers made the claim that Mr Dutton was going to build a nuclear reactor in his Queensland seat of Dickson.

“Ali France is committed to the electorate and what’s more, Peter Dutton is now saying he wants a nuclear reactor and that electorate as well,” Mr Albanese said, with Mr Chalmers repeating the statements.

While Mr Dutton said he would be happy to live near a nuclear reactor during the final Leaders Debate on Channel 7 on Sunday, Dickson is not among the seven sites proposed for the reactors by the Coalition.

Three unionists dressed as nuclear power workers have prompted Opposition Leader Peter Dutton to axe his planned press conference in the seat of Gilmore.

Armed with measuring tapes, the men pretended to measure up a local sporting oval for a nuclear reactor site in Sanctuary Point, where Mr Dutton was expected to make a funding announcement to upgrade facilities.

“Don’t be scared. This is what the future looks like,” one man said.

“Get used to the face mask. Get used to the radiation suits. This is the energy in Australia under a Dutton government,” he said.

They were asked by a reporter if it “was a Labor scare campaign” and “if it was fair on the kids” who were expecting a funding announcement today for their junior footy club St Georges Basin Dragons.

After the men interrupted, Shoalhaven City Councillor Selena Clancy, who was also attending, encouraged local children to yell at the men.

“We want a new skate park,” one yelled. Another played along and said he could sense the radiation too.

A football club official confronted the men and called them “muppets” for interrupting the funding announcement aimed at supporting kids sports.

“We represent the workers that Mr Dutton (is expecting) to subject themselves to danger in servicing, building and running these (nuclear) plants,” said Secretary of the South Coast Trades and Labour Council Arthur Rorris.

“We’re just doing him a favour but letting everyone know. This could become a reality.”

Police were called, but only monitored the protest and didn’t intervene.

Media were called back to the bus several times by Liberal staff shortly after.

Mr Albanese has denied Labor intends to cut jobs after its own announcement on Monday to make $6.4b in savings from cutting spending on consultants in the public service.

He justified the move as “cutting out some of the waste” from 54,000 consultants.

Mr Albanese doubled down on his argument that the Coalition’s plan will impact veteran support and emergency responses, although the Opposition has previously stressed it will not target frontline services.

Treasurer Jim Chalmers denied the Government is cooking the books with its own proposal.

“We’ve made billions of dollars of progress on this already, and the announcement that Katie (Gallagher) and I made yesterday is about building on that progress,” Dr Chalmers said.

“We have actually wound back substantially by billions of dollars in spending on external labour and contracts to invest in the capacity of the public service.”

Anthony Albanese was asked about a report in The Australian on Tuesday that said the tanks Australia previously promised to send to Ukraine still haven’t gone because the US Congress was slow in signing off on their transfer.

The Prime Minister said Australia is “working on providing further support for Ukraine” and has already contributed $1.5 billion, the bulk of which was direct military support.

“There are logistical issues, of course,” he said.

“Tanks aren’t something you can put on a fax machine, and you need to make sure that you get it right, but we’re continuing to back Ukraine.”

Anthony Albanese has leaned heavily into personal swipes at Peter Dutton in his press conference on Tuesday, not just over the Coalition’s policies.

First of all, he says he’s not afraid of doing combative media interviews while “Peter Dutton is courageously showing strength” with a second campaign interview with Sky News host Paul Murray.

Mr Albanese went on ABC’s 7.30 last night, while at the same time Mr Dutton appeared on A Current Affair and Sharri Markson’s show on Sky News. Sky is also promoting a separate Paul Murray interview with the Opposition Leader.

Mr Albanese also declares he is “not frightened of getting out there and talking to people in environments that aren’t controlled”, pre-empting a reporter’s question that references the street walks he did in several Sydney electorates yesterday.

He was asked whether Labor is just making trouble by noisily targeting Mr Dutton’s seat of Dickson, which has a margin of 1.7 per cent.

“Labor can certainly win what is the most marginal seat in Queensland,” he says.

“If we get the same swing that we got in the 2022 election, Ali France will be elected the member for Dickson.”

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Treasurer Jim Chalmers have defended their budget bottom line at a press conference in Brisbane.

Their comments come after international rating agency S&P Global warned Australia’s top-tier ‘AAA’ rating could be jeopardised as election spending commitments pile up.

Labor’s own costings show a $1b improvement over the Pre-Election Economic and Fiscal Outlook, with additional savings of $6.4b from reducing spending on consultants in the public service and an additional $760m in revenue from higher visa application fees for international students.

“I think the ratings agencies should be very reassured by the fact that we finished this election campaign with the budget in a stronger position than when we started the election campaign,” says Dr Chalmers.

“We’ve made about ten billion worth of commitments. Four billion of those were in the budget or the PEFO, and the other 6 billion have been more than offset by the budget improvements that Katie Gallagher and I announced,” he said.

“Our opponents won’t tell Australians where the cuts are coming from,” he said, turning on Opposition Leader Peter Dutton.

“[He] has said on multiple occasions now he’ll tell you after the election, which is obviously unacceptable. They have secret costs, savage cuts, and they should come clean,” he said.