Australian news and politics recap April 3: Anthony Albanese falls off stage on campaign trail in NSW

Ellen Ransley reports that the Opposition leader Peter Dutton is at a drilling manufacturer in the Labor held seat of Hasluck, where he’s expected to make an announcement about critical minerals.

Hasluck was previously held by the former Morrison government’s Minister for Indigenous Affairs, Ken Wyatt, before he lost it at the last election to Tania Lawrence.

Labor holds the seat with a 6 per cent margin.

From Nicola Smith on the campaign trail in NSW:

The Prime Minister is heading to Maitland Hospital in the Labor-held electorate of Paterson to promote the Government’s investment in urgent care clinics.

If re-elected, the Labor Government has promised to add an additional 50 Medicare Urgent Care Clinics all around Australia.

One of those would be located in Maitland to help take the pressure off the Maitland Hospital emergency department by diverting non-critical but still urgent cases to the UCC instead.

The Prime Minister will be joined by Heath Minister Mark Butler, Meryl Swanson, Member for Paterson and Dr Thiha Kyaw - Clinical Director of General Medicine at Maitland Hospital.

The NSW electorate was seized by Labor in 2016 and the party holds a 2.5 per cent margin.

Former prime minister Paul Keating has blasted Donald Trump’s move as the “death-knell of NATO” and “neo-Monroeism”, in reference to US founding father and fifth president James Monroe whose foreign policy strategy isolated the American and European spheres of influence.

Mr Keating says the tariff announcements change the world’s geo-economic and geo-strategic settings.

He cautions it will be a rallying point for developing countries.

“Trump’s new economic fortress America, by its design, winds off its principal economic and strategic partner, Europe, leaving China as the sole promoter of free and open international trade,” he says.

“The announcement represents the effective death knell of NATO, a severing that will inform all other allied relationships with America including ANZUS with Australia. If NATO, America’s principal strategic alliance, is expendable, what credible rationale could underpin US fidelity to ANZUS and with it, to Australia?

“Australia’s clutch of Austral-Americans, that phalanx of American acolytes, must have choked on their breakfasts, as Donald Trump laid out his blitzkrieg on globalisation, with all its implications for the rupture of cooperation and goodwill among nations.”

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has been left puzzled by US President Donald Trump’s decision to impose tariffs on Norfolk island, the Australian Territory with a population of just 2200.

The small island, nearly 1600km northeast of Sydney, has been dealt a tariff on imports into the US, three times the amount of the rest of Australia at 29 per cent, compared to Australia 10 percent tariff.

When asked about it on Thursday, Mr Albanese said it “shows and exemplifies the fact that nowhere on Earth is exempt from this”.

During a speech in the White House Rose Garden on Wednesday evening US time, Mr Trump unveiled a tariff chart, listing 185 countries, impacting industries across the world.

Mr Albanese said he wasn’t “quite sure that Norfolk Island, with respect to it, is a trade competitor with the giant economy of the United States”.

“President Trump has been determined to put this in place. He has indicated that that was the case and we will continue to argue Australia’s case.”

Even places with no populations are not exempt from Mr Trump’s tariff measures, with the president announcing a 10 per cent tariff on the Heard and McDonald Islands, a remote and uninhabited Australian territory in the Southern Ocean.

Read the full story.

Former Northern Territory chief minister Adam Giles, who now runs Gina Rinehart’s Hancock Agriculture, has hit out at those complaining about the tariffs, likening them to petulant children.

“A lot of people are complaining about the US tariffs on a range of products, including Australian beef,” the CEO of one of the country’s biggest beef producers said in a post on LinkedIn.

“The whinging and moaning is like a petulant child, with a government acting in a mendicant mindset.

“Flip the issue on its head. Isn’t it great to see a government standing up for its own manufacturing industry.

“It’s a pity we don’t do the same in Australia.”

Mr Giles went on to suggest the country looked at cutting similar deals by cutting the price of energy and gas to make Aussie beef more competitive to the world.

“Now is the time to think different and get our country back on track.”

The ABC is reporting that it will host the second leaders’ debate on Wednesday, April 16 at its Parramatta studio.

It will be hosted by David Speers and scheduled for 8pm AEST.

Sky News is hosting the first debate this coming Tuesday (April 8).

The ABC has promised a “gimmick-free” debate.

From The Nightly’s Nicola Smith on the campaign trail:

Anthony Albanese has confirmed that Australian beef exports will not be banned by the US, while visiting a local pharmacy in the inner Melbourne suburb of Pascoe Vale.

The Prime Minister said he had received confirmation that beef exports would be subject to the 10 per cent tariffs similarly to other products.

“We have received confirmation on what we thought was the case, it is just the 10 per cent tariff,” he said.

“I just spoke with the head of the National Farmers Federation and confirmed that with him… I’ve also spoken with beef producers and confirmed it with them.

“In terms of the competitive position it is maintained.”

Mr Albanese went on to say “no country” had received a better outcome than Australia.

“Australia has been presenting our case to the United States across the board,” he said.

“We’ll continue to put our case for what we regard is a reciprocal arrangement which is for our products to be tariff free, just as products into Australia from the US are tariff-free.”

Well that was a testy one!

Peter Dutton held his line but he copped a grilling from the reporters who had been travelling with him in the campaign pack.

His assertion that the outcome would have been different if he was PM is one that will remain untested for now, but he raised some good points on the work that needed to be done to get a deal over the line.

Now’s the time for Kevin Rudd to really be earning his keep in Washington.

The Opposition Leader has repeatedly said critical minerals are an important plank of any deal that could be made with the Trump administration.

He’s asked how he could get a critical minerals deal off the ground when the Albanese Government hadn’t been able to.

“If you look at what we were able to do in government, we were able to negotiate an outcome with Trump Mark 1.

“A Coalition government got access to the administration, was able to talk to key players and the people of influence in the sphere of the West Wing and that achieved an outcome.

“This Prime Minister hasn’t been able to do that. We need to look at the decision which has been made which is bad for our country and I condemn it. T

“he question is what do we do now to rectify the situation and turn it to a positive? There’s no doubt that we can do that.

“The Prime Minister has it surely in front of him to be able to do over the course of the next few weeks and that’s an outcome that will be in the better interests.”

“I don’t think that people, if you read the language, know what is on the table before us.

“There is a pathway to resolve a bad outcome for our country and the deal is there to be done but the Prime Minister hasn’t been capable of doing it.

“I want to make sure we can stand up for our country’s best interests and we’re saying if there had been a normalised relationship, firstly, there would have been discussion and engagement.

“Secondly, the Prime Minister would have known about it before it was announced to the rest of the world. That’s shows where the relationship is at the moment.”