Australian news and politics recap March 31: Albo says revamped Nature Positive laws to return to Parliament

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

Scroll back through for all the updates on the Federal election campaign trail and more.

Thanks for joining us! Check back in tomorrow for more live news action on thenightly.com.au.

Enjoy your evening.

The latest episode of our Newsworthy podcast has dropped. Tune in via the link below to listen to Ben O’Shea’s take on the Chinese spy ship and the Greens coalition stories from today.

https://omny.fm/shows/news-worthy/china-spy-ship-albo-shoots-down-labor-greens-coali

The Nightly’s Ellen Ransley reports that Peter Dutton’s campaign party has headed to the area of Thargomindah near Queensland’s south-west border:

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton and Nationals Leader David Littleproud have just arrived in Thargomindah, about 1100 km west of Brisbane.

The Bulloo River is continuing to rise, and the levee is due to break later tonight.

About 70 people have so far been evacuated from their homes.

Mr Dutton and Mr Littleproud will tour the town with Bulloo Shire Council mayor John Ferguson. They’re expected to meet with some locals later this afternoon.

Anyone who has watched an Anthony Albanese press conference since Friday will have noticed a bit of a spring in the step of the PM.

He loves a scrap, and is probably feeling the slightest hint of momentum, writes Nicola Smith:

Dressed in a sharp navy suit and a pink tie, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese strode into his fifth press conference of the Election campaign with a confident bounce on Monday.

It’s only day three on the hustings but the Prime Minister has found his campaign legs from the get-go with a slickly organised five-week operation focused so far on ramming home Labor’s cost-of-living pitches rather than scrambling to secure marginal seats.

The contrast could not be more different to the first day of his 2022 bid for office when he stumbled in Launceston while trying to recall the official Reserve Bank cash rate and the national jobless figure, leaving Labor apparatchiks with their heads in their hands.

This time round, Mr Albanese is aiming to resign that floundering image firmly to the past, presenting himself as leader honed by three years in office with a firm grasp on the details.

​Read the full piece here.​

The Nightly’s Latika M Bourke has written an analysis piece asking whether the Opposition Leader is already falling behind in the election race:

One of the Coalition’s campaign attack lines last election was: ‘It won’t be easy under Albanese’. But voters could be forgiven for thinking Mr Dutton appears set on making things very easy indeed for Anthony Albanese, after the Opposition Leader’s mediocre start to the campaign.

In an incredible unforced error on Monday, Mr Dutton started measuring the curtains, telling a radio interviewer he would prefer to live at Kirribili on Sydney Harbour rather than the homely Lodge in Canberra.

“When you’ve got a choice between Kirribilli and living in Canberra and the Lodge, I think you’d take Sydney any day,” Mr Dutton told radio KIIS 1065.

Taking the electorate for granted is political self-harm, especially when you’re already up against history in trying to end a one-term government and win back 19 seats.

It gave Mr Albanese, who has long looked like he enjoys the spoils of being Prime Minister much more than he does actually doing the job, a total free kick.

​Read the full article here.​

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has defended the right of the Chinese to deploy off the South Australian coast, a research vessel capable of scanning the seabed for undersea data cables, saying he would “prefer” it wasn’t there, adding Australia does the same in the Taiwan Strait.

The opposition said the Prime Minister had again falsely equated Australia’s actions to China’s and demanded he apologise for claiming the Australian Defence Force behaved in the same way as the Chinese Communist Party.

The CCP submarine research vessel Tan Suo Yi Hao is currently positioned inside Australia’s exclusive economic zone off the South Australian coast.

It has been following a similar course to the Chinese Navy’s fleet of warships that recently lapped the country after conducting live firing exercises in the Tasman Sea, that the government only found out about by a Virgin Airlines pilot flying overhead at the time.

The vessel has a high-tech submersible that can be sent to the seabed to scan the area as well as look for undersea cables. China last week unveiled technology to cut submarine cables and has been accused of cutting cables to deprive Taiwan of communciations. There have also been several high-profile incidents of Chinese-flagged commercial vessels passing overhead underwater cables in the Baltic that have subsequently been cut, however it is unclear if the actions were deliberate or accidental.

Read the full story.

The Prime Minister confirms Labor intends to revamp its Nature Positive plans for an independent environmental watchdog and to overhaul the approvals processes after the election.

He pledges to sit down with both industry and environmental groups and work through the recommendations from the Samuel review of the EPBC Act that was commissioned by the Morrison government.

“We’ll consult widely make sure that we get it right,” he says, saying the aim is to land “something that provides certainty for industry and the way that processes occur, but also provides for sustainability”.

Peter Dutton has promised he would approve the extension of the North West Shelf gas export facility, which has proven a flashpoint for critics of the existing environmental processes on both sides.

Asked whether pursuing EPBC reforms would further delay that project, Mr Albanese lashes out at the Opposition for pre-judging it.

“In him declaring and pre-empting an announcement and a decision on North West Shelf, what he is doing is ensuring that it gets delayed,” Mr Albanese says.

“If you go out there and you pre-empt the law, which says that consideration must be given objectively by the minister, then you, by definition, put yourself in a position of legal challenge.

“There is no question that if the Coalition were to succeed and Peter Dutton were to move to Kirribilli on the harbour, then what would happen would be there would be a legal challenge, which is a bit of a lay-down misere, frankly.”

Mr Albanese reiterates his consistent statements that he won’t negotiate any kind of coalition deal with the Greens in the event of a hung Parliament – and again says he believes he can win a majority for Labor, despite the indications of all opinion polls at the moment.

“There was some reporting of something, in spite of the 385 times that I have said we will not govern in coalition with anyone, including the Greens,” he says.

“I don’t negotiate with the Greens.”

He points out his campaign in Grandler in inner-city Sydney has long been a battle between him and the Greens.

The recent local government election in NSW returned a majority Labor council in his local areas, despite the demographics, he says.

“If the inner west of Sydney can deliver a majority of the Labor Party to govern the Inner West Council then I’m pretty confident that I can deliver a majority of Labor members of the House of Representatives to govern the nation.”

Anthony Albanese says the Australian Defence Force is monitoring a Chinese research vessel that is making its way home from new Zelaand via the southern coast of Australia.

“We won’t, for obvious reasons, broadcast everything we’re doing but we’ll keep an eye on it as we do,” he says.

“Of course I would prefer that it wasn’t there.”

He says a similar research ship travelled around Australia in 2020, under the previous government.

Earlier this morning Peter Dutton doubled down on comments to The Australian newspaper over the weekend that he would live at Kirribilli House in Sydney, not The Lodge in Canberra, by telling a Sydney radio station he liked Kirribilli’s harbour views.

Anthony Albanese accused Mr Dutton of “measuring up the curtains”.

“One of the frustrations, I think, that was felt from people in the west was that previous occupants of the Lodge … saw themselves as being prime minister for Sydney,” he says.

“It’s extraordinary that I’m a Sydneysider who’s lived there my whole life, but I’ve chosen to work and live in the national capital.

“I do spend time in Sydney – obviously, my electorate is there – but I believe the prime minister should live in the Lodge.

“He says he likes the harbour. Everyone likes the harbour, but your job is to be close to where the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet is, where meetings happen. Almost every day when I’m in Canberra, I’m at a meeting, I’m in the cabinet room, I’m in a secure room, working away.”