Speaker 1: From Schwartz Media. I'm Daniel James. This is seven am.
Speaker 1: It's only been a week, but the election campaign is
Speaker 1: already offscript. Trump's terrorists of land aloger grenade in the
Speaker 1: middle of the campaign, sending shockwaves through the economy and
Speaker 1: testing both leaders as they try to deal with the fallout.
Speaker 1: As polls show, Alberanizi is finding his stride, Dunton still
Speaker 1: struggling to give detail the many of his policies, though
Speaker 1: he's clear on one thing. He'd quite like to live
Speaker 1: in Curabillity Today Communists for the Saturday Paper Paul bon
Speaker 1: Giorno on Dunton's missteps, Albanese's reset and the global forces
Speaker 1: shaping the campaign. It's Saturday, April five, Paul. This week
Speaker 1: we finally saw the long threatened Liberation Day tarriffs and
Speaker 1: for Australia that meant a ten per sent tariff and
Speaker 1: all products we send to the United States. So how's
Speaker 1: the Prime Minister reacted to this?
Speaker 2: Well, I'd have to say that he's reacted calmly, but
Speaker 2: he's reacted in a way that he was absolutely aware
Speaker 2: that he was. Well, if not the middle of an
Speaker 2: election campaign, the beginning of a very serious election campaign
Speaker 2: and he was fast out of the blocks. On the
Speaker 2: day of the announcement, he held a full scale news
Speaker 2: conference with the Foreign Minister and the Trade Minister, and
Speaker 2: he read a very carefully prepared response.
Speaker 3: The innilateral action that the Trump administration has taken today
Speaker 3: against every nation in the world does not come as
Speaker 3: a surprise.
Speaker 2: But in that response he was careful not to personally
Speaker 2: attack or denigrate the President of the United States. This
Speaker 2: was all about business, not personalities, and he stuck to the.
Speaker 3: Core business President Trump referred to with typical tariffs, a
Speaker 3: reciprocal tariff would be zero, not ten percent. The administration's
Speaker 3: tariffs have no basis in logic, and they go against
Speaker 3: the basis of our two nations partnership.
Speaker 2: He concluded. This is not the act of a friend, but.
Speaker 3: The Australian people have every right to view this action
Speaker 3: by the Trump administration as undermining our free and fair
Speaker 3: trading relationship and counter to the shared values that have
Speaker 3: always been at the heart of our two nations longstanding friendship.
Speaker 2: As Albanese he said in his news conference, it's not logic,
Speaker 2: it's politics that explains this.
Speaker 1: So Anthony Albanezi said, this is not how friends act,
Speaker 1: but what's he going to actually do about these tariffs?
Speaker 2: Well, his response has to be on two levels. First
Speaker 2: of all, you might recall Trump also said that you know,
Speaker 2: he expecting the phones to ring, so some have said, oh, well,
Speaker 2: maybe these tariffs are an amb but you know, for
Speaker 2: Trump to give some people a bit more here or
Speaker 2: a bit more there. So Australia will certainly and is
Speaker 2: taking up that invitation or that opening, if it's a
Speaker 2: real opening at all. But the other thing is that
Speaker 2: the Prime Minister came to his early morning news conference
Speaker 2: with a five point plan.
Speaker 3: We will stand up for Australia. We will continue to
Speaker 3: make the strongest cage, which went.
Speaker 2: To offering millions of dollars to our exporters, interest free
Speaker 2: loans and other things to help them find other markets
Speaker 2: and to develop markets, particularly in our region. And also
Speaker 2: a policy to buy Australian first. So yeah, there's a
Speaker 2: multi pronged approach to it. I guess we're trying to
Speaker 2: make the best of a very bad situation.
Speaker 1: And this happened in the first week of the election campaign.
Speaker 1: So what Darton and now a bit easy to do
Speaker 1: now is a real world test of what we can
Speaker 1: expect for each of them should they win in a
Speaker 1: month's time. How has Dutton handled this moment.
Speaker 2: Well, the first reaction from Dutton on Thursday morning was
Speaker 2: that he would stand shoulder to shoulder with Albanzi.
Speaker 4: Well, I happy to stand shoulder to shoulder with the
Speaker 4: Prime Minister to make sure that we send a very
Speaker 4: clear message to the Americans that we don't find it
Speaker 4: acceptable at all, and we are.
Speaker 2: But as the day progressed a couple more news conferences,
Speaker 2: the Dutton of old emerged again.
Speaker 4: The Prime Minister has been weak and missing in action,
Speaker 4: and that's why we find ourselves in the position that
Speaker 4: we're in today.
Speaker 2: The Prime Minister, so the villain here was not Trump
Speaker 2: imposing these tariffs, but Albanesi for failing to have the
Speaker 2: tariffs withheld. Dutton claims that the Prime Minister hasn't been
Speaker 2: able to even get a call or a meeting with
Speaker 2: President Trump. They even suggested that Albanese should have hopped
Speaker 2: on a plane and gone immediately to Washington.
Speaker 4: And he needs to do everything he can to leverage
Speaker 4: them Ba and others to get the relationship normalized. It's
Speaker 4: obvious that the Prime.
Speaker 2: Minister, you know, ignoring the fact that you just don't
Speaker 2: lob on the President's door, you actually have to be
Speaker 2: invited to the White House. But he also then raised
Speaker 2: that we should have leveraged our strategic relationship, the fact
Speaker 2: that we have an Anders treaty, the fact that we've
Speaker 2: got Pine Gap, and then as well the minerals needed
Speaker 2: for modern technology. This should have all been put on
Speaker 2: the table.
Speaker 4: And that's exactly what we would do. And that's of
Speaker 4: huge benefit to the United States and a huge financial
Speaker 4: benefit to Australia and that's why it's a no brainer.
Speaker 4: But the Prime Minister hasn't spoken a word about it.
Speaker 2: Again, a rather reckless suggestion. Should we try to make
Speaker 2: our strategic alliance with the Americans hostage to the whims
Speaker 2: of Trump on trade? To what extent can you have
Speaker 2: a meaningful negotiation with Trump who operates as a New
Speaker 2: York real estate agent? You know, what do you going
Speaker 2: to give me type of stuff? How much more would
Speaker 2: we be prepared to trade away to get Trump to
Speaker 2: drop the ten percent tariffs?
Speaker 1: And wouldn't be an election campaign of course without other
Speaker 1: pms giving their thoughts on the campaign and other world maders,
Speaker 1: how have they shaped the week's debate well.
Speaker 2: Interestingly, at the beginning of the week, Malcolm Turnbull gave
Speaker 2: a key address at the National Press Club.
Speaker 5: Simply stated, the United States under President Trump does not
Speaker 5: share the values we've shared with every single one of
Speaker 5: his predecessors, Republican and Democrat for over eighty years, and
Speaker 5: he does not prepare.
Speaker 2: And the basic message was you can't trust the Trump administration.
Speaker 2: We need to be more realistic about the Orchest submarine
Speaker 2: deal as an expensive white elephant. He even joked it.
Speaker 2: No wonder Trump likes it. He always likes a good deal.
Speaker 2: And this is a deal where Australia basically has been
Speaker 2: taken for an extremely expensive ride.
Speaker 5: Leaving to another marine metaphor, there is a big while
Speaker 5: in the bay called Donald Trump splashing around, whetting everybody
Speaker 5: and creating mayhem and our political class of offending, pretending
Speaker 5: it's not there.
Speaker 1: Coming up after the break, Dunton dangles his feet in
Speaker 1: Sydney Harbor.
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Speaker 1: Work, Paul, It's hard to believe it's only been a
Speaker 1: week since the election was called. What's been your overall
Speaker 1: assessment of the two leaders' performances.
Speaker 2: Before the election was called, everybody in the Labor camp
Speaker 2: was worried that Anthony Albanesi could not possibly turn in
Speaker 2: another campaign as badly as the one he did in
Speaker 2: twenty twenty two. But we did begin to see this
Speaker 2: year a different Anthony Albanesi and some of his firmust
Speaker 2: critics within the government have breed the sigh of relief
Speaker 2: that elbow has ditched the habit of a lifetime and
Speaker 2: begin to tighten his act, and we've seen this in
Speaker 2: the first week of the campaign. On the other hand,
Speaker 2: it appears that Peter Dutton has been caught with his
Speaker 2: pants down. I think he got two relaxed talking to
Speaker 2: Kyle and Jackie Oh on Kiss FM in Sydney.
Speaker 4: Good morning Peter, that morning, I'm very well, Thank you, Heleny.
Speaker 2: They sort of just lobbed in a gentle question and
Speaker 2: Dutton walked headlong into it. He was asked where he
Speaker 2: would live when he became Prime minister.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we would, we would live in Kirabilly. It's a
Speaker 4: you know, we love Sydney, you love the harbor. It's
Speaker 4: a great city. And so yes, that's the answer.
Speaker 1: You've got a choice.
Speaker 4: Between kiabillitya living in camber in Lodge. It takes I
Speaker 4: think it takes Sydney any day over over cam.
Speaker 2: Because well Alberanisi and the labor camp couldn't believe their luck.
Speaker 2: I mean, the response was tineered on so many levels.
Speaker 2: This is a comment coming from Peter Dutton who has
Speaker 2: put out there and now we don't know whether it's
Speaker 2: a policy or top off head, but they've repeated it
Speaker 2: a few times that he wants to force public servants
Speaker 2: not to work from home and he wants to cut
Speaker 2: forty one thousand public service jobs because he wants efficiency
Speaker 2: cost efficiency in the public service. Well, the Prime Minister said, well,
Speaker 2: when your job is to be close to where the
Speaker 2: Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet is and where meetings
Speaker 2: happen almost every day, that's where you need to be
Speaker 2: unless you're going to work from home on zoom.
Speaker 1: What sense do we have about where he's going to
Speaker 1: cut those jobs.
Speaker 2: He keeps repeating he's going to cut those jobs in Canberra. Now,
Speaker 2: if he cut forty one thousand jobs in Canberra, he
Speaker 2: would decimate the engine room of the Australian government because
Speaker 2: the fact of the matter is two thirds of all
Speaker 2: public servants are actually outside the national capital. But the
Speaker 2: ones that are inside the national capital are absolutely critical
Speaker 2: to departments like Treasury, Finance and Foreign Affairs and of
Speaker 2: course Prime Minister and Cabinet. But there was some analysis
Speaker 2: done which was quite interesting that if as the Liberals
Speaker 2: and the Nationals have been talking about the forty one
Speaker 2: thousand new positions that Labor has brought on, then an
Speaker 2: analysis done in the nine newspapers found that at least
Speaker 2: twenty thousand of these new public service positions will come
Speaker 2: from other capital cities and more than four thousand will
Speaker 2: come from the regions. You can see why he wants
Speaker 2: to keep attacking. It's hardly going to win in votes
Speaker 2: if he threatens to sack literally thousands of voters in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane,
Speaker 2: and elsewhere.
Speaker 1: Paul, it's only a week in, but what are the
Speaker 1: polls saying at this point and how much are they
Speaker 1: likely to move as the campaign continues.
Speaker 2: Well, the polls show that the Labor went into the
Speaker 2: election far better positioned than it had been for the
Speaker 2: previous well eighteen months. We saw a slew of polls
Speaker 2: at the beginning of the week. The most important of
Speaker 2: them was a you gov poll released by the ABC.
Speaker 2: It's concluded that an election held last weekend would have
Speaker 2: Labor gained seventy five seats. Now seventy five seats is
Speaker 2: in fact one short of the seventy six seats needed
Speaker 2: for a majority and providing a speaker. The poll then
Speaker 2: found that the coalition would return sixty seats, so that's
Speaker 2: a long way behind now. While Albernizi has regained his
Speaker 2: own major personally, and while he's improved his position in
Speaker 2: the polls, he like Dutton, even though Dutton on the
Speaker 2: latest polls, is more unpopular than Albanezi. Neither of them
Speaker 2: have set the world on fire. Neither of them are
Speaker 2: very popular leaders. There is a vulnerability there that could
Speaker 2: tip those undecided voters one way or the other.
Speaker 1: Paul, thank you so much for your analysis and for
Speaker 1: your time.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Daniel.
Speaker 7: Bye.
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