Australian news and politics recap March 24: Teal MP Monique Ryan’s husband allegedly takes down rival’s sign

Following the removal of Liberal candidate signage by Teal MP Monique Ryan’s husband, caught on video, social media has erupted over the shocking act.

“He’s the archetypal Teal. Self-righteous, condescending, and oozing arrogance. Essentially, a male Karen,” one user wrote.

“The dirty games of grassroots Aussie politics,” said another.

Replying to The Nightly’s social media post which included the video of Peter Jordan in an argument after he removed the sign, commentator Caroline Di Russo said “When people show you who they are, believe them.”

“The Teals and their respective coteries moralise and set very high standards for all the lowly mere mortals, standards which they evidently have no intention of meeting themselves,” she wrote.

They haven’t even called an election yet and already things are getting tetchy.

The Nightly has just received this message from a reader that they say was taken at the corner of Orrong and Malvern roads in Toorak, within the seat of Kooyong.

The reader said it was “the sort of illegal sign that should deeply concern Dr Ryan and her husband”.

We’re reaching out to the Teal MP’s office as we type.

Kooyong MP Monique Ryan and her husband have both apologised via individual statements for the sign removal.

“I apologise for the removal of the sign. It should not have happened,” Dr Ryan said.

“All concerns around signage should be reported to council.”

Her husband, meanwhile, said he “unreservedly” apologised for the sign removal.

“It was a mistake,” he said.

“I believed the sign was illegally placed but I should have reported my concerns to council.”

Someone’s sleeping on the couch tonight.

The husband of Teal MP Monique Ryan has been filmed allegedly removing a rival candidate’s sign from a busy street in Kooyong.

The video footage, which has been published on X, shows Peter Jordan walking down the street with a large sign promoting Liberal candidate Amelia Hamer tucked under his arm.

The person filming Mr Jordan, who appears to be from Ms Hamer’s team, questioned why he was removing the sign.

He said he was doing so because it was “illegally” placed on public land.

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More to come.

Nationals Leader David Littleproud has blamed former Prime Minister Scott Morrison for Coalition Leader Peter Dutton’s poor polling with young women.

“I think we lost a lot of female voters at the last election,” Mr Littleproud told Sky News.

“They weren’t happy with how Scott Morrison handled it. I think that’s pretty public.

“I don’t think that there was a great love of Scott Morrison, particularly the way he handled some of the incidents that happened here in Parliament House.

“You’ve got to put your hand up and acknowledge that. So Peter is wearing that legacy.”

Newspoll’s latest data showed support for Mr Dutton with women aged 18-34 was only 21 per cent.

Read the full story.

The Government is continuing to “engage constructively with the Trump administration,” as an April deadline looms for a fresh round of US tariffs, the Prime Minister has confirmed.

“We were engaged over the weekend again in some of those discussions,” he said.

“My ministers are engaged. Our people in the United States are engaged as well. We’re advancing Australia’s national interest, as you would expect.”

Australia’s aluminium and steel industry has already been hit by a 25 per cent levy on exports to the US, and the pharmaceuticals and agriculture sectors fear they could be next to face punishing new taxes ahead of a White House decision on April 2.

The Prime Minister has set the scene for a May election, challenging the Opposition to reveal its major economic policies this week.

“I say consistently, as I have said privately and publicly, three years is too short,” he said of the parliamentary term.

“I can now confirm the election will be in May … I continue to govern. We’ve got a budget to hand out tomorrow night. It is an important budget that will set Australia up on the path to a better future,” he said.

He questioned whether the Coalition had more policies to announce beyond its nuclear energy plans, $20,000 tax breaks for small businesses and undefined cuts to the Budget.

“We’re very clear about what our agenda is and it’s an agenda of governing and what I’m doing today is governing, putting in place these important reforms.”

The Prime Minister says most of the additional education funding for Queensland has been accounted for in the Budget.

“This is an investment in our young Australians. I can’t think of anything that is more worthwhile investing in the opportunity of a young Australian, and this will make an enormous difference,” he said.

Slamming $30bn “ripped out of education” under the Coalition, Mr Albanese said school completions had since declined from 83 per cent to 73 per cent.

“In public schools, overwhelmingly, we need to make sure that we compete, not on the basis of driving down wages, but we compete on the basis of how smart we are,” he said.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has fired the starting gun on a week heavily focussed on finance by announcing $2.8bn in additional funding for Queensland public schools over the next decade.

Standing next to Queensland Premier David Crisafulli, he praised the deal as “historic” and called it the biggest-ever investment in Queensland public schools by an Australian government.

“We expect this to support some 560,000 public school students,” he said but insisted that, “It isn’t a blank cheque” and would be tied to real reforms like evidence-based teaching practices and mental health support.

Mr Albanese said the announcement contributes to an estimated $16.5 billion in additional Commonwealth funding to public schools across the nation from 2025 to 2026.

It comes ahead of the unveiling of a Federal budget on Tuesday that will focus on cost-of-living measures as well as health and education funding.

Mr Crisafulli said the 10-year deal would “see an immediate investment, but also will deliver long-term generational reform that’s important for Queensland.”

Anthony Albanese and Peter Dutton face a growing problem with young and female voters, as the final Newspoll State breakdown before the next election shows Australia is headed for a hung parliament.

Published in The Australian, the breakdown of the last three months of polling shows a narrow contest across battleground states NSW and Victoria, while Queenslanders have shifted hard against Labor, with 57 per cent over voters preferring the Coalition.

Labor recorded a marginal improvement in its vote in Victoria, where the Coalition is confident of picking up seats to 51 per cent to 49 per cent.

In both NSW and South Australia, the race is now evenly split between the two majors, after a swing against the Government.

Only Western Australia — which emphatically re-elected the Cook Labor Government two weeks ago — did the Government hold up its vote, recording a primary of 37 per cent to the Coalition’s 34 per cent.

But the figures also show a growing divide amongst women and young voters, with Labor’s primary vote dipping to below 30 per cent for the first time with females.

Young voters aged 18 to 34 are almost evenly split between Labor, the Liberals and the Greens, with the Government holding a narrow edge over its competitors.

Read the full story.