Speaker 1: Gilda.
Speaker 2: I'm Chelsea Daniels and this is the Front Page, a
Speaker 2: daily podcast presented by The New Zealand Herald. The Australian
Speaker 2: federal election is heating up. Anthony Alberizi is facing the
Speaker 2: challenge of becoming the first PM to be re elected
Speaker 2: since John Howard. Alberizi has been an MP since nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety six, when he was the youngest labor member of
Speaker 2: the House.
Speaker 3: For myself, I will be satisfied if I can be
Speaker 3: remembered as someone who will stand up for the interests
Speaker 3: of my electorate, for working class people, for the labor movement,
Speaker 3: and for our progressive advancement as a nation into the
Speaker 3: next century.
Speaker 2: Meanwhile, Opposition leader Peter Dutton brings with him a wealth
Speaker 2: of experience, having been elected to the House of Representatives
Speaker 2: in two thousand and one aged thirty.
Speaker 4: Mister Speaker of the Silent Majority, the forgotten people, or
Speaker 4: the aspirational voter of our generations, some like to term
Speaker 4: it fed up with bodies like the Civil Liberties Council
Speaker 4: and the Refugee Action Collective, and certainly the dictatorship of
Speaker 4: the trade union movement.
Speaker 2: Both men have sat across the aisle from each other
Speaker 2: for years, and this Saturday, Australians will vote which will lead.
Speaker 1: Their country for the next three years. Today on the.
Speaker 2: Front page, ABC News political reporter Claudia Long takes a
Speaker 2: break from following around the candidates and joins us from
Speaker 2: Melbourne to talk polls, policies and what Kiwi's and Aussie
Speaker 2: need to know. First off, Claudia, how's the campaign been
Speaker 2: thus far?
Speaker 5: Long? Well, it feels long, it's actually been relatively short,
Speaker 5: so they've been five weeks. But it's been a bit
Speaker 5: of a bumpy road, I think for a number of
Speaker 5: the leaders, particularly for the Opposition leader Peter Glotvin, so
Speaker 5: he's had a few stumbles over the last week. But
Speaker 5: the Prime Minister is also, you know, had a not
Speaker 5: quite perfect campaign either. I think it's not exactly what
Speaker 5: either of them we're hoping for that we're getting to
Speaker 5: crunch point now. A lot of people have already voted here.
Speaker 5: Early voting is a big thing in Australia and only
Speaker 5: getting bigger, and so these last few days, even though
Speaker 5: lots of lots of people have already voted, I think
Speaker 5: there's still at least half of the voting population who hasn't,
Speaker 5: so there's still some time for leaders to make their pictures,
Speaker 5: for local candidates to get out there and meet potential
Speaker 5: constituents who were almost at the end, which is a
Speaker 5: little bit of a relief.
Speaker 2: At the start of twenty twenty five, it looked like
Speaker 2: the coalition was going to make Albernezia one term prime minister.
Speaker 2: But in the last few weeks though, the polling is
Speaker 2: flipped and now Labor and Elbow are ahead in most categories.
Speaker 2: So what's gone on there?
Speaker 1: Do you think?
Speaker 5: Well, I think there's been some of those stumbles from
Speaker 5: the opposition, whether that they had a policy around springing
Speaker 5: all public servants back into the office, so getting rid
Speaker 5: of working from home provisions if you're at the public service. Now,
Speaker 5: that went down like a lead balloon basically, well beyond
Speaker 5: public service as well, because there's a lot of folks
Speaker 5: here who, you know, like having a flexibility to work
Speaker 5: from home whether or not they're in the public service,
Speaker 5: and I think a lot of people were really put
Speaker 5: off by that policy. Now that's since been reversed, but
Speaker 5: the damage was really a done there. I think the
Speaker 5: federal government's also had a number of things their way
Speaker 5: as well during the campaign that has sort of exacerbated
Speaker 5: that problem for Peter Dutton, the coalition leader. So they've
Speaker 5: had policy announcements that have been quite well received, particularly
Speaker 5: around housing, but also around tax deductions as well, and
Speaker 5: so I think that sort of all contributes to that
Speaker 5: slide that you've seen for Peter Dutton in the polls. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I read somewhere as well.
Speaker 2: I mean, the Trump effect really took Europe by a storm.
Speaker 2: I know, a lot of far right parties in Europe
Speaker 2: gained a lot from Trump's success. Has done kind of
Speaker 2: gotten the tail end of it. So when he's talking
Speaker 2: about immigration and things, I mean, and then we saw
Speaker 2: the tariff wars that have erupted since Trump announced those
Speaker 2: earlier this year. Has he just kind of got in
Speaker 2: at the tail end of it.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think you're exactly right, and I think in
Speaker 5: this case it's actually a good Trump effect, but it's negative.
Speaker 5: So he has been really trying to existence himself from
Speaker 5: Donald Trump. This is after you know, earlier in his
Speaker 5: time as opposition leader saying that he's a think out,
Speaker 5: really kind of praising the United States president almost. I
Speaker 5: think that also a lot of his campaign has been
Speaker 5: likened to Trump. So for example, we've seen that the
Speaker 5: opposition we're going to introduce a DOGE, you know, a
Speaker 5: Department of Government deficiency. In fact, I'm pretty sure that's
Speaker 5: still on their list of things that they want to do,
Speaker 5: which was immediately likely to Trump. I mean, even the
Speaker 5: name is the same as the American one, which has
Speaker 5: obviously been associated with a lot of job losses, with
Speaker 5: a lot of cuts in the United States, and of
Speaker 5: course with Elon Musks, who I think it's fair to
Speaker 5: say a lot of voters find quite off putting. And
Speaker 5: that's what I say. The privateness has been perfect on
Speaker 5: this either. You know, I've seen, particularly online in one
Speaker 5: of the debates, the Prime Minister said Donald Trump hasn't
Speaker 5: given him a reason not to trust him. Now, I've
Speaker 5: seen a lot of women I'll negatively react to that,
Speaker 5: particularly quoting for example, when he's bragged about sexually harassing
Speaker 5: or groping live for instance. So I think you know
Speaker 5: that the Trump factor is definitely a factor, but it's
Speaker 5: been more of a problem for Peter Duncktt.
Speaker 4: This election is all about who can best manage the
Speaker 4: Australian economy and if we can manage the economy well,
Speaker 4: it means that we can bring inflation down. It means
Speaker 4: that we can help families with the cost of living
Speaker 4: crisis that this government's created. We live in the best
Speaker 4: country in the world, but we do know that many
Speaker 4: families are doing it tough.
Speaker 6: Australians have a real choice this Saturday to continue building
Speaker 6: Australia's future or go back to the past. Labor has
Speaker 6: a real plan for cost of living support today whilst
Speaker 6: building with investment for tomorrow.
Speaker 2: What are the key policies from each party?
Speaker 5: Most of it, really SAICH is around possibly the Labor
Speaker 5: that's been around increasing Medicare bulk billing rebates. So the
Speaker 5: way that menkey works in Australia is that a rebate
Speaker 5: is set for doctors who bolt bill, which is see
Speaker 5: the patients for free, so doctors will get more backed
Speaker 5: for that. They've got a whole women's health package that's
Speaker 5: particularly focused on contraception but also on menopause treatment, as
Speaker 5: well as expanding their first home buyers home deposit scheme,
Speaker 5: so that's when you can get a five percent house
Speaker 5: rather than ten percent the mortgage and then the government
Speaker 5: will guarantee your loon on the Polis side. They've also
Speaker 5: got a lot around housing and cost of living, so
Speaker 5: they have been arguing that our first home buyers should
Speaker 5: be able to deduct their mortgage payments from their taxes.
Speaker 5: That's been one of their key policies in selected and
Speaker 5: they're also proposing a twenty five percent migration cut which
Speaker 5: has been a highly controversial. It's been fascinating to see
Speaker 5: the impact that that policy has on Saturday, particularly when
Speaker 5: you know our economy but also our care sector in
Speaker 5: particular here in Australia relies a lot on skilled migration
Speaker 5: quite heavily. That would have a far reaching key packed
Speaker 5: that policy. And who've been trying to get questions Actually
Speaker 5: two Peter don't about whether or not care workers will
Speaker 5: be exempt, and he won't answer when we've asked. So
Speaker 5: I think that's that's a point of interest as well.
Speaker 5: That the migration puts is definitely one of those big
Speaker 5: policies which they link to housing too. They claim the
Speaker 5: housing shortage is a bit exacerbated particularly by international students.
Speaker 5: And then they also are pitching a national gas reservation
Speaker 5: of policy, so they see gas as very much a
Speaker 5: part of their plans to get to zero along with
Speaker 5: building a number of nuclear power plants as well.
Speaker 2: So here in New Zealand, the big issues when it
Speaker 2: comes to Australia is the five h one deportees coming
Speaker 2: back here and on the pathways to citizenship for those
Speaker 2: Kiwis who do live there. What have the major parties
Speaker 2: said about the rights of New Zealanders in Australia.
Speaker 5: So the Coalition have actually adopted the policy that Labor
Speaker 5: put in place in twenty twenty three, which is about
Speaker 5: making getting citizenship here akili so you get it up
Speaker 5: to four years. I believe it's a permanent resident in
Speaker 5: Australia with very few exceptions. Now, when Labor introduced that,
Speaker 5: the Coalition book highly critical again on this sort of
Speaker 5: housing front related to migration. They said they were concerned
Speaker 5: that increased migration of people from New Zealand to Australia
Speaker 5: would exacerbate the housing shortage here. But they've changed their
Speaker 5: gin on that at the election. They've now said that
Speaker 5: they will not reverse what the Albanezy government did, So
Speaker 5: that permanent residency to citizenship pathway for New Zealanders is
Speaker 5: going to stay as it is now no matter which
Speaker 5: party ends up.
Speaker 1: For me governments so the.
Speaker 2: Pair faced off for the final time in a debate
Speaker 2: before Australia heads to the polls. Of course, on Saturday,
Speaker 2: I saw Dustin singled out China as the biggest threat
Speaker 2: to Australia's national security and it's not the first time
Speaker 2: is said that as well. National security featured heavily in
Speaker 2: the debate. Hey, is this something that Australians are quite
Speaker 2: worried about?
Speaker 5: I think it's definitely at the forefront of people's minds.
Speaker 5: I mean not as much as possibly, to be honest,
Speaker 5: that's the big, big, BIGI big thing here at the moment,
Speaker 5: because I think when you can't afford to pay your rent,
Speaker 5: or you can't afford to eat, or you're having to
Speaker 5: take on extra shifts at work, like you haven't actually
Speaker 5: really got time or the brain space to think about
Speaker 5: a lot else when it comes to longer term and
Speaker 5: more wide branching policies. But you're right, like it is
Speaker 5: definitely on people's minds. I think it's an interesting choice
Speaker 5: from Peter Dunnell to go there. And the reason that
Speaker 5: I think it's an interesting choice is that the Liberals
Speaker 5: are fighting really really hard to try and win a
Speaker 5: seat called Ben Along which is on the North Shore
Speaker 5: in Sydney. It's the seat that used to belong to
Speaker 5: John Howard. It was a very long serving Prime Minister
Speaker 5: in Australia in the late nineties and early two thousand
Speaker 5: and It's got a really substantial Chinese population and in
Speaker 5: that seat it used to be a safe Liberal seat.
Speaker 5: At the last election, following the Morrison governments rhetoric on China,
Speaker 5: there was a huge swing among Chinese Australian voters in
Speaker 5: that seat against the Coalition. I'm surprised that they're going
Speaker 5: back to this sort of rhetoric so close to the election,
Speaker 5: particularly when that's a seat that has the margin between
Speaker 5: the two candidates They're right, if eighty four votes, it
Speaker 5: is tiny. It's also one that they really need to
Speaker 5: win if they want to form government. So I'm surprised
Speaker 5: to see him going back to that rhetoric because I
Speaker 5: would imagine that would be quite off putting, I think
Speaker 5: to a number of people in that community, if last
Speaker 5: elections results are anything to go by. But we'll have
Speaker 5: to see. I have to see on Saturday. I'm excited.
Speaker 5: I can't wait to see all of the results.
Speaker 2: And I guess we can't mention the debate without mentioning
Speaker 2: Dunn and saying the Indigenous welcome to country is overdone.
Speaker 4: For the start of every meeting at work or the
Speaker 4: start of a football game. I think a lot of
Speaker 4: Australians think it's overdone and it cheapens the significance of
Speaker 4: what it was meant to do. It divides the country.
Speaker 2: Why has this come about? And for those who don't know,
Speaker 2: what is the welcome to country?
Speaker 5: So welcomes to country are when an indigenous traditional owner
Speaker 5: of the country that you're on essentially does a welcome
Speaker 5: and they sometimes will speak about the land that you're on.
Speaker 5: They might tell you a bit about its history, about
Speaker 5: their people and their relationship to that land. It happens
Speaker 5: often like pretty official ceremonies, so for example, like it
Speaker 5: happens at the opening of Parliament or major events, and
Speaker 5: it's something that has to be done by somebody who
Speaker 5: is indigenous, like so for example in Australia, either Aboriginal
Speaker 5: or to Austraight islander from the land that they are
Speaker 5: welcoming you to. It's different to an acknowledgment of countries.
Speaker 5: So that like when someone like me who is an
Speaker 5: indigenous for example, would say like, you know, I work
Speaker 5: on Nunea Wall and Nambry.
Speaker 1: Land in Camber.
Speaker 5: And I think that's the thing about this debate that
Speaker 5: has sort of gotten loss, which is that there seems
Speaker 5: to be a conflation of these two things, are welcome
Speaker 5: to country and an acknowledgment of country, which are very different.
Speaker 5: They're not the same, but they're being conflated at the moment.
Speaker 5: And so we've then seen this sort of a vowle
Speaker 5: all through the last debate into Peter Dunel saying that
Speaker 5: these things are overdone. Now what he's seen to be
Speaker 5: actually referring to his acknowledgments of country not welcomes to country,
Speaker 5: but he's using the language of welcome to country. So
Speaker 5: to be honest, it's actually not entirely clear to me
Speaker 5: exactly what he's talking about, but he believes that it's
Speaker 5: something that is overdone in his view, for example, at
Speaker 5: sans Ac Day or on planes or at football matches.
Speaker 5: But that hasn't been particularly well received by a big
Speaker 5: portion of the community. But at the same time, you know,
Speaker 5: on the debate night at Channel seven when there was
Speaker 5: a flash bowl of a group of people who've been
Speaker 5: watching the debate afterwards, people did seem to really respond
Speaker 5: to what he was saying. They seem to view it positively.
Speaker 5: They have this thing called the false which means that
Speaker 5: viewers are basically logging in real time like how they
Speaker 5: feel about what a candidate is saying. And there was
Speaker 5: an uptick as he was talking about it in a
Speaker 5: positive direction. So it did really resonate with some people
Speaker 5: as well. But it's a complicated discussion, that's for sure.
Speaker 2: Australia has a lot more more independence and minor parties
Speaker 2: than New Zealand. I read that in twenty twenty two
Speaker 2: there were twenty four seats where they beat both Labor
Speaker 2: and the Coalition and cross benches one fifteen of those.
Speaker 2: In the end, it was the highest number of independent
Speaker 2: minor party MPs elected in the modern political era. Now,
Speaker 2: why is there such a movement towards smaller parties or
Speaker 2: one party MPs.
Speaker 5: Well, I think it's a reflective of a broader movement
Speaker 5: around the world where we've seen people really moving away
Speaker 5: from these major parties who were really stalwarts about political
Speaker 5: system and towards people who might be in all firebrands,
Speaker 5: you know, or perhaps very different sort of like to
Speaker 5: position themselves as being outside of politics while simultaneously inside politics.
Speaker 5: It's going to be very interesting to see if the
Speaker 5: so called teal independents can maintain the momentum that they
Speaker 5: had at the last election. There's a number of seats
Speaker 5: where they're facing really fierce contests against growths, which it
Speaker 5: looks like some of them may lose their seats, but
Speaker 5: if they managed to hold on, that will be fascinating
Speaker 5: because once you've had an independent who's been in normally
Speaker 5: about two terms, so basically gets elected the first time
Speaker 5: and then re elected from being an incumbent, they are
Speaker 5: really hard to shift. And at least that's what history
Speaker 5: has shown us is it's very difficult. Once they're in,
Speaker 5: they're in. And what that means for the Liberal Party
Speaker 5: and the coalition will broadly, but also the Parliament as
Speaker 5: a whole, is that that could really change the face
Speaker 5: of Australian politics for decades to come, not just the
Speaker 5: next election, not just the next term, but for a
Speaker 5: really long time. And so I think that's going to
Speaker 5: be one of the key things to look for on
Speaker 5: Saturday Night, is if they can keep those seats and
Speaker 5: also grow their numbers, and.
Speaker 2: We've delved into Australia's appolling rate of femicide on this
Speaker 2: podcast before.
Speaker 7: Yeah, there is a much more laser focus on the
Speaker 7: issue at the moment, but we also know that within
Speaker 7: a week or two this focus will die down and
Speaker 7: we'll be back to the normal level of indifference from
Speaker 7: many media outlets and all so many politicians.
Speaker 2: On Albanese's promise to end violence against women in a generation,
Speaker 2: what was the public's reaction to.
Speaker 5: That, well, I think at the time there was a
Speaker 5: lot of hope that that could happen. When the National
Speaker 5: Plan was introduced, you know, there's bipartisanship, it's been a
Speaker 5: long running thing.
Speaker 1: I think there's grown to be.
Speaker 5: Frustration, particularly in some sectors of the community around the
Speaker 5: national Plan and whether it's working and what the actual
Speaker 5: benchmarks are because within a generation is a fairly non
Speaker 5: specific phrase. It's not very well defined necessarily. And we've
Speaker 5: also seen here over the past few weeks while this
Speaker 5: campaign has been going on, there have been a number
Speaker 5: of women who've been killed and what it is to
Speaker 5: be domestic violence incidents now we can't say that for
Speaker 5: sure or for a lot of them, like just like
Speaker 5: to add, there's a lot of questions that still need
Speaker 5: to be answered. These things have to go through the courts.
Speaker 5: That's not for us to say yet. But there has
Speaker 5: been a lot of discussion and debate around jend Violenceustralia
Speaker 5: and where the governments are doing enough.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 5: Last year we saw a real uptic in community frustration
Speaker 5: anger around this because there were again a number of
Speaker 5: women who were killed, and there were a number of
Speaker 5: women who were killed in a really horrible incident at
Speaker 5: a shopping center here, and that really had sent shock
Speaker 5: waves around the country. Since then, we've seen the government,
Speaker 5: federal government but also the state government's come together and
Speaker 5: put out these very you know, big packages around spending
Speaker 5: and reform. But what we also saw was that following
Speaker 5: the federal budget where that happened, a number of frontline
Speaker 5: workers were furious and frustrated and they said that the
Speaker 5: government actually wasn't following through on their rhetoric, that a
Speaker 5: lot of the money that they said they allocated was
Speaker 5: for things that were already being spent on. You know,
Speaker 5: one person described it to us as trickery and deception.
Speaker 5: I mean, I don't think there's any two ways around that.
Speaker 5: That's pretty unambiguously clear how they felt about it. We've
Speaker 5: seen some movement on the campaign around this, So we
Speaker 5: saw Labor announce a package around gender violence again and
Speaker 5: in this election a couple of weeks ago, which was
Speaker 5: then matched and expanded by the Coalition, which is much
Speaker 5: more about like tracking and things like that. So for example,
Speaker 5: it has commitments around ankle bracelets and offenders or a
Speaker 5: national domestic violence registry for example. And I think there's
Speaker 5: a lot of experts who will have questions around how
Speaker 5: this will work and what some of the unintentional flow
Speaker 5: and effects as well might be. But also a lot
Speaker 5: of this stuff has been welcomed as well, because I
Speaker 5: think people are frustrated and angry and upset that this
Speaker 5: is still happening and that it took so long, to
Speaker 5: be perfectly frank, for our leaders to be asked about
Speaker 5: it and for them to say anything about it. So
Speaker 5: I think we shall definitely keep being an issue after
Speaker 5: the election is done and we have in your government.
Speaker 2: So, Claudia, how likely is it that we will know
Speaker 2: who the prime minister will be on the night or
Speaker 2: could we have to wait for some coalition negotiations?
Speaker 5: So it looks like if the polls are anything to
Speaker 5: go by, and you know, they don't tell the future, unfortunately,
Speaker 5: make my job a lot easier. But it looks like
Speaker 5: that we could expect a minority government or a hung parliament,
Speaker 5: so that you're right, it will take time to negotiate
Speaker 5: what that looks like. Now, last time this happened in
Speaker 5: twenty ten, that took a few weeks, so it wasn't
Speaker 5: just one had done an election night. It went for
Speaker 5: quite a while and there was a lot of back
Speaker 5: and forth. So typically the party that has the most
Speaker 5: seats in its own rights those negotiations. But you know,
Speaker 5: I mean that's not to say everyone's always going to
Speaker 5: play by the rules all the time. You can expect
Speaker 5: that if that does happen, there'd probably be a few
Speaker 5: tear independents in the mix. But you've also got independence
Speaker 5: like Ellen Haynes, who's a regional Victorian independent. You've got
Speaker 5: Bob Catter as well, who's very, you know, incredibly different
Speaker 5: to the Teals, and so there's a lot of different
Speaker 5: interests that would be bubbling away there. It's a sort
Speaker 5: of thing where you wish you could be a fly
Speaker 5: on the wall to what's it all happened?
Speaker 2: Thanks for joining us, Claudia, thanks for having me. That's
Speaker 2: it for this episode of the Front Page. You can
Speaker 2: read more about today's stories and extensive news coverage at
Speaker 2: enzidherld dot co dot nz. The Front Page is produced
Speaker 2: by Ethan Sills and Richard Martin, who is also a
Speaker 2: sound engineer.
Speaker 1: I'm Chelsea Daniels.
Speaker 2: Subscribe to the Front Page on iHeartRadio or wherever you
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Speaker 1: And tune in tomorrow for another look behind the headlines.