From The Australian. Here's what's on the front. I'm Christinamio. It's Monday, March thirty one, twenty twenty five. Students from Papua New Guinea are being strongly encouraged to study climate change, gender studies and disability policy if they want to receive a scholarship funded by Australian taxpayers. That's in contrast to previous rounds when the focus was on agriculture, medicine and education. That exclusive story is live right now at the Australian
dot com dot au. The election campaign is officially on and new data from Newspoll has Labor in pole position. That's despite a huge fail grade from voters on last week's budget. They've ranked it as the worst budget for the economy in a decade. Today, our chief political correspondent Jeff Chambers unpacks who's pitching, what and where?
Ready to go?
You bet born ready?
After months of voe campaigning and at the end of an intense budget week, it's now on.
The date is set and Australia will go to the polls on the third of May.
It'll mark the beginning of a five week campaign centered around the cost of living the Prime.
Minister around in the Albaneze. He's looking to become the first prime minister since John Howard in two thousand and four to be re elected.
Now you choose the way forward. Your vote has never been more important and your choice has never been more clear.
On Saturday morning, Anthony Albanezi popped up in northwest Brisbane, in the heart of Peter Dutton's electorate of Dixon, where he was heckled in the middle of his very first official campaign. Pres con friends well about the fact that people my age can't get any housing, We can't get rentals anymore.
We have no future in this country anymore than everything.
That's kind of ridiculous. No, just down the road in Milton, at Brisbane's famed for Ex brewery, Peter Dutton targeted Labour's performance on energy and was targeted himself by anti nuclear energy protesters. Mister, why you like the people? That's cost of nuclear and gas.
It's going to cook the country.
So, Jeff, what do you make of Anthony Albanese's decision to kick off his election campaign in enemy territory.
Yeah, so the Prime Minister is feeling very confident.
Jeff Chambers is the Australian's chief political correspondent.
You'll recall before tropical cyclone our for it emerged that in the polls Labor and the Prime Minister were going not great and he made that big decision to hold off plans that have been put in place for an April twelve election and decided to press on for a
March twenty five budget. And in that time we've seen Peter Dutton lose a fair bit of momentum that he had post the Voice all the way up to probably February and March this year, and we saw it last week just ahead of his budget reply he announced a halving of the fuel excise and that has been observed as a very populous move. That was an attempt to try and regather some of that momentum and he is now trying to play catch up. Because that is the
power of incumbency for a government. They can decide the election timing and Anthony Albanezi has used that to his advantage.
Yeah, Peter Dutton wasn't exactly home free either. He made his start in the Greens held seat of Milton, which is one of the three Queensland seats the Greens won in twenty twenty two, So what's the calculus there for him?
That's Southeast Queensland corner.
There's a few seats that are up for grabs and for lab they really want to put the pressure on Peter Dutton in his own seat of Dixon, which for a long time has been a marginal seat, but at that twenty twenty two election it became one of the most marginal seats in Queensland. You've got the climate two hundred tiers running there, You've got a Labor candidate running for i think the third time, and then you've got all the unions. Will just pump a lot of resources
and money into the seat of Dixon. And the reason that they do that is to distract a leader. The leader has to spend some time at home and has to do some sandbagging of his seat. So I don't think that Labour think that they can win it, but they just want to really distract Peter Dutton from the broader competition.
On Sunday, the campaign bus is headed south Albo to the Canberra suburb of Downer by way of Beager and Peter Dutton to the Western Sydney seat of Fowler. It's there that the battle lines are being drawn. Fowler was a safe Labor seat until twenty twenty two when Independent daily former Liberal flipped it in a race against Christina Kinnely, who'd been parachuted in by Labor. These days, it's held on the slimmest of margins. There's just two percent in it.
What are the key battlegrounds in your view?
I think that Victoria is really important for Peter Dutton. It's a seat that Labor thought that Peter Dutton would never have a chance in. But the state of play there for Victorian Labor, as we've seen in some of the recent state by elections, show that there is a
mood against the Labor brand down there. But in saying that, the best case scenario would be for Peter Dutton to pick up seats like Aston, which they lost in that by election in twenty twenty three, seats like McEwen and seats like Chisol which has a high Chinese Australian population. So there's a handful of seats that they want to win. And they also have some really super marginal seats down there and Deacon and Menzie, so they have to hold their seats and win. But this election will be one
lost in the big state of New South Wales. The issues vary depending on where you are. I think that Labor now resigned to the fact that they'll lose that New South Wales South Coast seat of Gilmour, which is
super marginal. And then there's other battlegrounds like the New South Wales Hunter region, particularly the seed of Patterson which is based around Port Stephens and in the redistribution lost Curry to Hunter next door and that's the site of where Chris Bowen was looking to put the Hunter offshore wind zone, which is really if you're.
Aated some locals there.
So there'll be some pressure for the labor there in the Hunter and also on the Central Coast in the seats of Robertson and Doebell, but it's not going to be easy for Peter Dutton and they're the seats he has to win. Then you go into Sydney, and in Western Sydney it's a huge battleground seats like Benelong. Redistributions
have made that notionally a liberal seed. That's the former seat of John Howard and it looks like the Liberals will win there, but they're also facing challenges with the Teals.
And then you look at labor.
Seats in Western Sydney, particularly those with high Muslim Australian populations. So Tony Burke's seed of Watson, Jason Clare seed of Blaxland Labor hold those traditionally by a massive margin, but there has been this Muslim vote movement, so you'd expect some of those senior ministers having to really work very hard to make sure that whatever swing is coming against them, that they can retain their seeds.
Coming up Labor and the Liberals make their pitch to voters, So what's this selection actually about?
Healthcare is so important and what this election is about is strengthening the economy, strengthening Medicare versus Peter Dutton's plan for cuts to everything except your taxes. They realize that at this election the contest really is about whoop and lower petroprisis. By the end of this year, we will introduce legislation to make supermarket price gadging illegal in Australia.
He is it's weitness word and the supermarkets in Australia snow we're not seeing any sort of really deep and meaningful, comprehensive bold courageous, whatever you want to call it. Economic reforms. We're looking at fairly big spending populist type of policies like cheaper medicines, urgent care, clinics, mental health funding important areas.
But ultimately both sides know that the top tier issue who remained are still cost of living and housing, and then you have health, national security, defense or sitting under that. So the onus is on Peter Dutton and this will happen soon, I believe, to start rolling out some substantive policies in areas that he wants to have a fight on.
Because without that.
And once that sort of real blow torch of the campaign trial really amplifies, you don't want to be sitting there talking about things that happened months ago or responding to what the other party is doing. You have to start setting out your own agenda and start to try and reclaim the narrative.
In last week's federal budget, the government pulled off a genuine surprise, announcing a teeny tiny tax cut of two percent for all Australians. The Coalition says it won't support the cuts if it wins on May three, but it's small businesses who say they need all the help they can get.
There's about two point six million small businesses across Australia and when you look at insolvency statistics since the twenty twenty two election, there's been i think up to now around twenty nine thousand companies that have plunged into insolvency, and the vast majority of those are small businesses and through COVID and then beyond, it's been really tough with the cost of living crisis and it's becoming really hard for these mum and dab operators to keep their doors open.
And one of the pushes that they're going to really.
Amplify in this election campaign is around a reduction in the corporate tax rate for small businesses, which the focus is generally on personal income tax cuts, but given their importance often described as the engine room of Australia, they believe that measure, along with other measures that they're calling for, would provide some help and relief to try and keep the doors open for small businesses that really do prop up commune.
It is in the suburbs and the regions across the country.
Jeff Chambers is The Australian's Chief Political correspondent. You can keep up with all the laters from the campaign trail at the Australian dot com dot au