Australian news and politics recap: Jim Chalmers and Angus Taylor face off in tetchy treasurers’ debate

To Perth, where senior WA Liberal Michaelia Cash has spoken about an email sent to the party’s Forrest candidate Ben Small about an event on Friday.

The town hall-style meeting included special guest Coalition Indigenous Affairs spokeswoman and prominent “No” advocate Jacinta Nampijinpa Price .

The Nightly revealed on Tuesday that academic Renae Isaacs-Guthridge had written to Mr Small calling for the event to be cancelled, and demanding consultation with local elders before Ms Nampijinpa Price was invited to the region.

Senator Cash labelled the email as “ludicrous”, vowing to attend along with Mr Small.

“It is really disappointing, though, that a small group of activists have sought to politicise this event for their own personal event, their own personal benefit,” Senator Cash said.

“The idea that anybody in Australia, including Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, needs to seek permission from someone else to hold an event anywhere in Australia, in this case in Bunbury, is utterly ludicrous.”

Mr Small said he was disgusted by the email, and called on other candidates to support her right to freedom of speech.

“Someone in our community has asserted that they have a veto right over the freedom of movement of a fellow Australian,” he said.

“Now that is particularly offensive in the case of any ordinary Australian but I believe even more so when we are talking about someone who holds high elected office and who happens to be a proud indigenous woman

“I don’t think I’ve ever received an email in a political sense that has been a direct assault against the very freedoms on which this country is built.”

President Trump has signalled his administration will place a tariff on imported pharmaceuticals, a policy that is expected to directly hit Australia’s second largest export to the United States.

Speaking at a Republican Congressional Committee dinner, the President declared; “We are going to tariff our pharmaceuticals and once we do that they’re going to come rushing back into our country because we’re the big market.”

The news sent shares in CSL, one of Australia’s largest and most successful companies crashing as much as 5 per cent on the Australian Securities Exchange before regaining ground to hover 3.43 per cent lower.

Pharmaceuticals are the second highest export to the USA, with star biotech CSL a key exporter, sending vaccines, plasma and iron infusions into the US from both its Australian factory and from overseas locations.

Pharmaceuticals were originally exempt from tariffs in President Trump’s original plan but that policy appears set to change.

​Read the full story here.​

Greens Leader Adam Bandt has labelled US President Donald Trump a bully and says Australia should be working with other countries instead of seeking to get even closer to the US.

“We are in a position to now start joining with those other countries that Donald Trump is attacking and saying, ‘We need a new way of doing things that puts peace first,’” Mr Bandt said.

“Instead, what we’ve got is Peter Dutton, who wants to bring Trump-style politics to Australia, and Anthony Albanese, in the middle of all of this, going out and inviting Trump to come out to Australia.

“As if sucking up to these bullies is going to change the way they do things.”

The first question to Adam Bandt is why – given he’s announcing a big housing policy – the Greens’ housing spokesman Max Chandler-Mather isn’t in Canberra watching the speech.

The outspoken Member for Griffith has stridently positioned the Greens as the party of renters and got under Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s skin.

He’s also in a tight contest to retain his seat, which Labor dearly wants to win back.

Mr Bandt says Mr Chandler-Mather has given “the third of the country who rents … a voice at the table” in the political conversation.

“Max Chandler-Mather has helped us craft this policy and is the reason that we are having a national discussion about how to make sure that renters and first-home buyers have a chance,” he says.

Peter Dutton has spoken about the “toll” the election campaign has had on his family after his dad has a heart attack on Tuesday night.

Just before the opposition leader had went into last night’s Western Sydney leaders’ debate he received news his dad was hospitalised in Queensland.

On Wednesday, Mr Dutton revealed he had considered pulling out of the debate due to the medical emergency.

Asked about the impact politics had on his family, Mr Dutton said his family were often worried.

“Our families take a big toll in this business. There’s no doubt about that,” he said.

“Our spouses, our kids, our parents, you know, they all watch what goes on.

“Dad’s had prexisting health conditions for a long time and as I say, is in the best of care.

“I love him very much and he’s a great dad to me it’s my four siblings and an amazing grandfather.

“I’m sure he’s been worried about me for 50 years.”

It’s understood his father is in a stable condition in hospital today.

Adam Bandt has arrived at the central point of his speech: getting rid of negative gearing and capital gains tax.

He says John Howard’s changes to the tax breaks for property investors were a “time bomb” that needed to be defused.

The Greens plan would grandfather existing arrangements for “mun and dad investors” who only have one investment properly, but Mr Bandt says those looking to buy their “third, fourth or fifteenth house” shouldn’t be getting “a government cheque” to help.

Parliamentary Library data pulled together for the Greens suggests dumping the two tax breaks would lead to 850,000 more Australians living in their own home.

But earlier this morning, Housing Minister Clare O’Neil said the Treasury examination of the two measures that caused a kerfuffle last year showed scrapping them wouldn’t help housing supply at all.

“The Prime Minister looked at the negative gearing capital gains tax proposals during this term in office, and he wasn’t convinced that it would not have a negative impact on supply,” she said.

Adam Bandt is playing all the Greens’ biggest hits, touching on big business, coal and gas companies and billionaires.

He says beer drinkers will be $4.8 billion more in taxes over the next four years than gas companies, before turning his attention to the dangers beyond Australia’s shores.

“We must stop Peter Dutton bringing Trumpian politics to Australia, just as we must stop Anthony Albanese bringing Trump himself here,” the Greens leader says, to laughter as he claims “extreme wealth distorts and damages the economy”.

“In the time that it takes me to give this speech, Trump fan, Liberal Party donor and climate change denier Gina Rinehart will have made more money than many working people in the country make in an entire year.”

Greens leader Adam Bandt is speaking at the National Press Club to outline the minor party’s plans and what it would be seeking if it holds the balance of power in a minority government.

He starts by saying the two major parties are engaged in a “battle of the bandaids” and not offering real solutions to the big problems the nation is grappling with.

“It’s more important than ever that government puts up a big umbrella to protect us from Trump’s fallout,” he said.

The Greens pitch so far has four main planks: dental into Medicare, ending native forest logging, free childcare for everyone, and stronger protections for renters.

Mr Bandt promises the party will have more to say about its raison d’etre, environment and climate action, down the track.

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton is spruiking the Coalition’s energy plan, insisting households and commercial users will see a benefit by the end of 2025.

Mr Dutton was in Sydney at Bluescope and has claimed his gas policy will have “immediate impact”, benefiting households and industries.

But when asked when households will see the discounts, Mr Dutton said “we have said by the end of this calendar year.”

“It depends on when people are contracted and what their individual arrangements are. Across the economy, we reduce the cost of gas and we start negotiations with companies from day one.

“What we’re saying is we want to address the structural problem, the real foundational problem that is in the economy at the moment and that is that Labor’s renewables is an energy train wreck.”

“We are going to help consumers. Helping industrial users like BlueScope and Brickwork and others bring the costdown and consumers not only benefitin their own households but they also benefit because they are purchasing products in the economy.

Mr Dutton says negotiations with companies will begin within the first 100 days, if he becomes Prime Minister.

Modelling released on Tuesday proposes that the Coaltion will impose a gas security charge on gas exporters which will force them to divert gas to the domestic market.

This is how the Coaltion says it will bring down wholesale gas prices, then lowering gasbills for industrial users by 15 per cent and households by around 7 per cent.

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton reckons he’d do a better job at having a relationship with the US amid market turmoil.

It comes as Prime Minister Anthony Albanese refused to answer a question on Wednesday about whether he has spoken to US President Donald Trump directly, following the 10 per cent tariff announcement and the huge market slump.

Mr Dutton says “I think what Australians are worried about at the moment is - who is better to manage our economy and bring down the cost of living? Who can deal with economic headwinds?”.

“If we have a recession in the United States, if there is a global recession, if there’s a broader war in Europe, a Labor-Greens government with a weak and incompetent prime minister is not going to be able to deal with that.

“The Prime Minister has demonstrated that he’s always weak, always late to the game

“We have the contacts, we have the ability, we make sure that we work on relationships”.