Australian news and politics live: Peter Dutton savages Tanya Plibersek, says shes interested in votes not WA

Anthony Albanese gives credit to all Australians for making “incredible progress” together over recent years.

Asked if he thinks he’ll win, he replies: “Yeah, I do.”

His optimistic outlook comes from a belief that voters “faced with a clear choice between Labor building Australia’s future and providing immediate relief, and Peter Duttons plan for cuts” will opt for the former.

“Peter Dutton will always appeal to the darker side… I want to be optimistic and positive about Australia’s future,” he says.

On the question of the reciprocal tariffs the US is planning to impose across the board this week, Anthony Albanese says Australia has been engaging constructively at official level.

He points out again that no country won exemptions to the earlier steel and aluminium tariffs, despite the fact they’re more likely to hurt American consumers than those overseas.

“We regard the United States as a friend and partner,” Mr Albanese says.

He says he believes Australia can rely on Donald Trump, and denies he is using the US President as a political weapon against Peter Dutton.

“Am I? Or am I talking about Scott Morrison or Tony Abbott or John Howard? When it comes to fuel excise, for example, what we saw was the same playbook we saw prior to the 2022 election,” he says.

Following Ted O’Brien’s comments earlier, Anthony Albanese accuses the Coalition of stumping up this east coast gas reservation policy as “a search for a distraction from his $600 billion nuclear plants”.

“Peter Dutton can’t explain anything about his policy, what it is, how it will make a difference,” he says.

He describes the gas policies Labor has put in place already as effectively being a reservation, given the Government has the power to direct gas companies to secure domestic supply if needed.

“When we came to power the spot price on gas was $30, today it’s $13,” he says.

Asked multiple times if electricity prices will go up at the end of the year once the household power bill rebates end, Mr Albanese says repeatedly his Govenrment has provided three lots of energy relief.

Anthony Albanese is on the ABC’s Insiders for his first interview of the campaign.

He’s jumping right into policy first up, talking about Labor’s plan to make supermarket price gouging illegal.

“If they’re ripping people off, then they’re in the gun to pay a heavy penalty for it,” the Prime Minister says.

Earlier, Liberal frontbencher Ted O’Brien ridiculed the Government’s announcement today as just another taskforce.

Mr Albanese says they’ll look to the UK and European Union where price gouging is already illegal to work out the best way forward but one thing is certain: supermarket will face “heavy fines” if they do the wrong thing.

Read how Labor plans to crackdown on supermarket price-gouging.

Shadow energy minister Ted O’Brien says the Coalition’s promise to bring power bills down through cheaper gas will not be “anything like” Labor’s pledge at the last election to lower them by $275.

But Mr O’Brien is refusing – as Peter Dutton did yesterday – to say how much the Opposition’s gas plan will bring down power prices, instead saying modelling will be released down the track.

The Coalition is determined to use Labor’s unmet $275 promise to paint the Government as untrustworthy on energy policy.

“I think everybody’s seen the folly of it,” Mr O’Brien tells Sky News when asked if he would nominate a dollar figure saving for households.

“We will not be doing what Labor did and making a promise about a $275 reduction to household power bills or anything like that.”

He is being more specific in his promises for nuclear power, though, pledging that “you’ll have the first electrons from the first unit, the first plant” in 2035 if it’s a small modular reactor and 2037 if the first one is a larger modern reactor.

Experts have widely said a 10-year time frame to establish and build a nuclear power plant in a country that has no nuclear industry is very ambitious.

Labor’s campaign spokesman Jason Clare, the education minister, is first out of the blocks this morning on the TV shows.

He’s asked first about the hecklers that disrupted both leaders yesterday, along with a report that cabinet colleague Tony Burke had to pull out of a Muslim community event in his own seat last minute.

“I think all of us agree that we’re lucky in Australia, that we haven’t seen what happened in the US or UK,” Mr Clare says, referencing the violence and assassination attempts in those countries.

“The nature of Australia, if you’re a politician or a contender, is you stand there, people will come up to you if they like you, they’ll have a chat.

“If they don’t, they’ll mumble something I can’t repeat on Sky News or they’ll cross the road just to avoid talking to you.”

Latika M Bourke has exclusively revealed that a top labor stratergist fears Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is heamorgaing support for the Party with a major early campaign misstep.

She writes: One of the Labor Party’s most respected campaign strategists has questioned Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s decision to campaign in an ultra-safe Coalition central Queensland seat on day one of the federal election campaign, given Labor is haemorrhaging support in the battleground state of Victoria.

The criticisms by Kos Samaras, made on the first day of the campaign proper, point to the deep concerns held by Labor Party supporters about the Prime Minister’s campaigning tactics, the deterioration of Labor’s vote in Victoria and the ability to hold onto power.

It was backed by former Labor MP Michael Danby, who also urged the Prime Minister to “pound the streets of Port Melbourne” to implore wharfies to stick with Labor.

Mr Albanese went on the offensive on day one of his campaign, starting with a visit to a Medicare-funded Urgent Care Clinic in Peter Dutton’s electorate of Dickson — the most marginal seat in Queensland, which the Opposition Leader, who also campaigned on his home turf, holds by just 1.7 per cent.

Read the full exclusive story on The Nightly.

Aspirational Australians are at the heart of Peter Dutton’s pitch as he launches his election campaign around giving battlers a fair go.

The opposition leader was off to a rocky start on the first full day of campaigning, with two events interrupted by climate activists chastising him about his gas and nuclear policies before being forcibly removed.

But Mr Dutton is looking to get back on track on Sunday as he tries to appeal to small business owners and people in outer suburbs struggling to make ends meet.

His camp is set to start the day in Brisbane as the coalition works to win back inner-city seats from the Greens and go on the attack in the outer suburbs where the cost of living is biting harder.

At the centre of his cost-of-living pitch is cheaper electricity bills through a proposal to pump more gas into the energy grid.

“There is a sliding door for Australians as they head to the polls,” Mr Dutton said on Saturday.

“It’s a choice for Australia to decide who can deliver a sustainable energy system that will see prices come down.”