Australian news and politics recap March 28: Dutton launches election bid from Qld as May 3 battle begins

This concludes our live politics and news coverage of the day.

Scroll back through for all the updates on Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s election date announcement speech as well as Peter Dutton’s reply.

Tune in tomorrow as the election campaign battle continues.

Enjoy your weekend!

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is set to start his campaign in Queensland with travelling media arriving in Brisbane this afternoon, jetting in on an RAAF plane.

Mr Albanese is not expected to campaign publicly any further on Friday night.

The Prime Minister is heading to Queensland after delivering his election date announcement speech at Parliament House in Canberra earlier today.

After announcing the Federal election date this morning, Anthony Albanese’s Labor party has released a fresh advertising campaign.

The short ad shows Albo all smiles meeting with healthcare professionals, chatting with various business workers and visiting childcare centres and TAFEs as he spruiks the bright future Labor has in store for the country.

He claims Labor is “well on the way to building Australia’s future”.

“Repairing an economy takes time but Australia is turning the corner,” Mr Albanese says, going on to boast about Labor’s success.

“In just three years we’ve opened 87 free Medicare urgent care clinics across the country, given tax cuts to every tax payer and energy bill relief to every household to help ease cost-of-living pressure.

“We’ve also halved inflation and got wages moving after a decade of lows and next term we will build on these strong foundations.”

The Prime Minister promises Labor will cut HECS debt by 20 per cent and make free TAFE permanent, to boost Australia’s workforce and ease financial pressure.

The ad has a real focus on drilling in that Labor will make healthcare more affordable for Aussies.

“We’ll deliver more bulk billing for all Australians and open more free Medicare urgent care clinics so Australians can once again see a GP for free,” Mr Albanese says.

He adds that Labor will also continue the biggest housing build in Australia’s history, give another tax cut to every taxpayer and extend energy bill relief.

The election gun has fired and the politicans are busy selling themselves and their policies to a disengaged electorate.

Ben Harvey has cut through the ego-stroking and blatant bribes to write the election speech he wishes Anthony Albanese and Peter Dutton had actually made.

You’re probably not going to like it.

Read it here

One of Australia’s most experienced economists has described the Coalition’s attempt to stymie Labor’s $5 a week tax cut with a $14-a-tank cut in the fuel excise as “bonkers”.

AMP’s Shane Oliver told The Nightly’s business reporter Jackson Hewett there was no economic justification for the program, which would have made sense during the spike in energy prices during Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but is now being proposed at a time when the oil price is 40 per cent lower than that peak.

“It’s just a sugar hit that doesn’t deal with any of the fundamental problems we have with our tax system,” Mr Oliver said.

“I think it’s really just aimed at winning votes, there’s no economic justification for it. We should be looking at more fundamental things like indexing our tax scales, rather than just this silly little fiddle.”

Read Jackson Hewett’s full report here.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Opposition Leader Peter Dutton are on the offensive for the election but punters aren’t buying what’s on offer, according to pollster Kos Samaras.

Albo used his first campaign address to the nation to call for a political contest “about policy substance and about hope and optimism for our country”.

While Dutton’s Budget reply speech outlined how he would address the cost-of-living issue, pledging to lower power bills by pumping gas into the energy grid and reduce inflation by cutting government spending.

But Mr Samaras told AAP neither leaders’ messages are cutting through as Australians aren’t seeing structural solutions to their problems.

“Both are struggling at the moment because they’re both farming out bandaids,” he said.

Communities in Western Australia are being warned to prepare for flooding and damaging winds, with the risk of a tropical low becoming a cyclone.

The weather system is about 600 kilometres north of Broome in WA’s Kimberley region on Friday, the Bureau of Meteorology says.

It’s expected to turn southeast during the day and reach tropical cyclone intensity before crossing the coast northeast of Derby overnight or Saturday morning as a category one system.

People between Troughton Island and Beagle Bay, including those in Derby have been told to prepare their properties and emergency kits.

Gales with damaging wind gusts up to 100 km/h are likely to develop in coastal areas between Mitchell Plateau and Beagle Bay during the evening and Saturday morning, the Department of Fire and Emergency Services has warned.

Heavy rainfall could lead to flash flooding in parts of the northern and western Kimberley from Friday, extending further inland during the weekend.

Travellers, visitors and tourists have been told to watch for alerts and reassess their travel plans.

The Nightly’s chief writer Aaron Patrick has labelled Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s Medicare swipe at Peter Dutton a “deceptively brazen attack”:

Peter Dutton “will start by cutting Medicare and he won’t stop there,” the Prime Minister said outside his Parliament House office after calling the May 3 poll. “We want to keep building. The Liberals and Nationals just want to start cutting”.

Brandishing a Medicare card, Mr Albanese ignored reality. On February 23, the day it was announced, the Coalition matched the government’s $8.5 billion bulk-billing policy.

Later an analysis found most of the money will go to doctors rather than patients, which could have given the Coalition entirely legitimate reasons to oppose it.

​Read Aaron’s full analysis here.​

Peter Dutton was asked about reports that Anthony Albanese is trying to compare the Coalition Leader to Donald Trump.

“What you will see from the Prime Minister is all of the negative stuff day after day,” Mr Dutton said.

“The ads are out there, the Prime Minister has written, and the sledging is on by the Prime Minister because he doesn’t have a good story to tell about his three years in Government.

“If the Prime Minister had done really good things for our country, people were better today than they were three years ago, he’d be talking about the plan, but obviously is not.

“The trouble is that the Prime Minister has done a lot of damage to our country.

“He has hurt a lot of people and a lot of people are really under the pump financially at the moment.”

Peter Dutton blamed Labor’s migration policy for Australian housing costs in his election pitch to the nation, saying over a million people are fighting Aussies for homes.

“Now, all of those people need homes to live in. That’s why Australians have found it really hard to find housing, either by owning or renting a house under Mr Albanese.

“When we are out there, whether it is here in Brisbane or Sydney, Melbourne, Perth, wherever it is, when you talk to young Australians, many of them have lost the dream of home ownership and that is because Mr Albanese has created this housing crisis where people can’t afford rents.”

“They can’t afford to buy a home.”

“We need to reduce the permanent migration program by 25 per cent.”