Australian news and politics recap: Albanese hits out at Dutton for lack of detail, Coalition says it's clear

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has declared Australia’s support for a National Rugby League PNG side is the “best example of soft diplomacy”.

The PM was asked about the team while in Perth on Thursday, just hours after it was revealed the NRL approved a fresh WA bid to bring back the Bears in the west.

“The PNG side is the best example of soft diplomacy that I’ve been engaged with,” he said.

“The PNG side is about economic development as well. It’s transformational. It’s about… getting young people in the most significant nation in the Pacific, that has a population greater than the rest of the Pacific combined, getting those young kids to school.

“That’s what it’s about. It’s about economic development through tourism.

“It’s about lifting them up. It’s about integration with Australia, and no better time to do it.”

While the PM was speaking in Perth, Nationals leader David Littleproud was addressing the National Press Club in Canberra. He’s the second party boss to use the forum this election campaign after Greens leader Adam Bandt.

Mr Littleproud’s speech canvasses the Nationals’ role in leading policy development for the Coalition, including in opposing the Indigenous Voice to Parliament and putting up plans for divestiture powers to break up the big supermarkets.

“At the moment, we have a Prime Minister that is talking about everything else other than cost of living because he created it,” Mr Littleproud says.

“He’s a Prime Minister that is looking for diversions, rather than solutions.”

He accuses Mr Albanese of “running around with a little green card, when every Australian knows that little green card, you can’t use without your credit card” during the election campaign.

He said this would mean cuts to Services Australia, who have its headquarters in Canberra, and who deliver payments to pensioners and to people who are out of work.

He added that it would also impact emergency payments for people who’ve been through natural disasters at the National Emergency Management Agency, as well as the country’s security and intelligence agencies.

“Where does Peter Dutton think they are based? They are based in Canberra, in our national capital,” he said, also pointing to the defence and foreign ministries as potential targets.

“Two-thirds of Canberra public servants sacked,” he said.

“I think it’s impossible to actually be too outraged on the comments that they are making in this campaign. They are showing, Peter Dutton is showing, that they are just not ready for government.”

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has attacked Opposition Leader Peter Dutton’s “outrageous” planned cuts to the public service.

The Coalition has repeatedly said it would cut 41,000 public service jobs, although it has shifted position from proposing redundancies to saying the workforce would be reduced through natural attrition and a hiring freeze.

It says the measure will save $7 billion annually, although the reduction in numbers will happen over five years.

Pressed on the issue in Hobart on Thursday, Mr Dutton said all reductions to the public service would be focused only on the Canberra workforce.

About 70,000 of the almost 200,000 Commonwealth public servants are based in Canberra, the latest statistics show.

Mr Albanese hit back that this would mean “two-thirds of the Commonwealth public servants of Australia are going to be out of a job.”

While Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has tried to move on from the stepping off vs falling off the stage debacle.

Another journalist in a press pack in Perth has asked him why the issue matters so much to him and why he doesn’t move on from it, given the Coalition are using it as an attack line to paint him as a liar.

He blamed the media and the Coalition for being obsessed with it rather than the bigger issues that matter in this election.

“It says something about their (Coalition’s) character,” he said.

“Frankly, it says something about their character.

“I think, in an interesting way, the response, you know, I stepped off the stage. I didn’t fall over on my backside. I stumbled. That’s what happened. I laughed about it at the time. I laughed about it, since it’s no big deal.

“If the Coalition is spending time on memes and on media about that issue.

“It says that my government’s economic policy, social policy, environmental policy, foreign policy, and national security policy are going okay. That’s the message it sends.”

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has told a journalist to “chill out” after questioning him about backflipping on his claim he didn’t fall off a stage earlier in the election campaign.

His snappy remark was at a press conference in Forrestfield in Perth’s outer seat of Bullwinkel on Thursday after he had admitted at The West Australian’s Leadership Matters event that he did indeed fall rather than step off stage, as he had previously claimed.

The journalist started her question: “You said this morning, at the breakfast event, that falling off the stage had been the worst moment of the campaign for you when you were in the Hunter Valley…”

Before she was cut off by the PM, who said, “It was a joke”.

Before adding “chill out” and attempting to move on to the next journalist.

Anthony Albanese condemns reports of a string of violent incidents on polling booths around the country, saying there is no place for violence in Australia’s political system.

“We’re a democracy. It’s important that people engage in a respectful way,” he says.

“That includes people that are candidates but it includes everyone on poling booths as well.”

​A teenager has been charged with assaulting an elderly man​ after an incident on Wednesday afternoon at a polling place in Mr Albanese’s electorate of Grayndler.

Police allege a 17-year-old boy punched a 79-year-old man at the Ashfield Town Hall polling centre, leading to the man being taken to Royal Alfred Hospital where he remains in a serious condition.

Mr Albanese addressed the incident directly: “To the person who was hurt in my electorate, my thoughts go out to him and I hope that there is a very swift recovery.”

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has been asked if he sees his new critical minerals plan as a ”bargaining chip” in any negotiations with the US under Donald Trump’s new tariffs agenda.

The Labor leader is speaking in WA, where the PM travelled to announce his $1.2 billion plan to buy critical minerals to stockpile.

“We see it as just an element that is in demand,” he said.

“We know that our critical minerals are in demand and one of the things that I’ve said very clearly is we won’t negotiate over.

“What it does is enable us to use our national power that we have.

“We have everything that is on the periodic table, including the 31 critical minerals that have been identified.

“This is a comprehensive plan. We have had discussions with the United States as part of the bilateral meetings that we have had going back to the Biden administration as well.

“This is something that is in demand, critical minerals are important for it, for everything that will drive the economy of the 21st century.”

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has accused the Coalition of “flogging off” the rail freight network and has promised to bring it back into government hands.

On Thursday, he visited CBH Group’s rail-linked grain storage and handling facility in Forrestfield in Perth’s outer seat of Bullwinkel to announce strengthening the network if re-elected.

“The Liberal and National Party flogged off this route, networked off,” he said.

“This is about how we can improve the network to make sure that WA benefits.

“If we are elected next Saturday, we’ll invest $2.5 million to support ARTC (Australian Rail Track Corporation) to work with the WA Government on the feasibility study for taking back control of parts of the rail front network, since it was privatised.”

Mr Albanese has been joined by WA Premier Roger Cook and his Bullwinkel candidate Trish Cook at the press conference.

Mr Cook said the privatisation of the rail network had “crippled” WA businesses, including those linked in the agricultural sector.

Asked if the rules should be tightened, Ms Gallagher said that these matters would be addressed by the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters after the election.

“I imagine that committee will look at pre-poll and any issues around pre-poll, and that would be a matter for the 48

parliament,” she said.

Ms Gallagher downplayed the suggestion that voters were heading to the polls without the full information on Labor’s budgeting proposals.

“Election Day is the 3rd of May. People make a decision about whether they want to vote ahead of that,” she said.

“We have been very clear getting our major policies out well, well in advance of that, including outlining the cost of those policies,” she added.

“And I think that stands in sharp contrast to Mr. Dutton, who’s not explaining how what he’s going to cut to pay for his $600 billion nuclear reactor scheme.”