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