This was published 3 years ago
And that’s it for today.
Read more: Election fight over economy fires up as jobless rate nears 50-year low
Read more: Fewer public servants to cover election promises but deficits remain
Climate change activist Simon Holmes a Court has apologised for confronting Liberal senator Jane Hume at Kooyong’s early voting booth on Wednesday.
Channel Nine reported on Thursday night Holmes a Court had apologised, running a statement from him that said: “Despite remaining calm throughout the conversation, it is clear that a public space was not the forum to ask her to retract her lies and, for that, I apologise to Senator Hume.”
Our reporter Paul Sakkal wrote about the confrontation on Wednesday.
The Liberal Party on Wednesday released footage of Holmes a Court in a heated discussion with Senator Jane Hume at Kooyong’s early voting centre.
The final IPSOS poll published by The Australian Financial Review shows that the opposition will win government comfortably if it is replicated on Saturday night.
The poll shows that while Labor’s primary vote has fallen 2 points to 36 per cent, the Coalition’s first preferences jumped 3 points from 32 per cent to 35 per cent.
The survey said the Greens were polling 13 per cent, One Nation 5 per cent, the United Australia Party 3 per cent and others and independents are on 8 per cent.
Based on 2019 preference flows that would see Labor leading the Coalition 53 to 47 per cent.
The Australian Electoral Commission says more than 5000 people have signed up to man polling booths on Saturday, amid concerns that people contracting COVID-19 could see some booths closed altogether.
Commissioner Tom Rogers said that some areas where booths might have to have been closed would now be guaranteed to open on Saturday, but he could not rule out other closures.
“For those areas of concern, people are putting their hand up to help deliver democracy in their community, which is great, but we need more,” he said.
“The new registrations mean some of the locations we identified yesterday are no longer of critical concern but others are still falling short and, given the current environment, there could be new areas of concern arise,” he said.
“However, the impact will be limited. We will have the absolute vast majority of the 7000 polling places we operate across the nation on election day open and operating as per usual.”
Howard has strongly defended Scott Morrison against attacks that the security pact signed between Solomon Islands and China is a foreign policy failure from the prime minister.
He told the ABC that the prime minister of the Solomon Islands has always been “lukewarm” about Australian prime ministers, himself included.
“The current leadership of the Solomon Islands has always been lukewarm, the current Prime Minister, about Australia,” Howard told Andrew Probyn.
“He was lukewarm about Australia when I was prime minister, so it’s not something that can be blamed on Scott Morrison.”
Former prime minister John Howard has brushed aside suggestions one of the campaign’s most controversial candidates Katherine Deves will do the party any damage.
Some moderate Liberals called for Deves to stand down as their candidate in Warringah claiming her past comments about transgender issues would cause them to lose their inner-city seats.
Deves rejected this and yesterday Howard became the third Liberal prime minister to endorse her, by campaigning alongside her in Manly.
Speaking on the ABC, he said that Deves was an excellent candidate and someone who answered questions with poise.
Labor’s Tanya Plibersek is talking up the opposition’s prospects of winning a key Queensland seat.
She is campaigning in the seat of Leichhardt, in far north Queensland. The seat is held by the LNP’s Warren Entsch with a 4.2 per cent margin.
Asked by ABC presenter Fran Kelly if the party can win turn the electorate red, Plibersek was emphatic.
“Oh yeah, I wouldn’t be here otherwise,” she said. “This is a seat that is well within reach for Labor.”
This would be a totemic victory for Labor - the last time they clinched this seat was in the 2007 Ruddslide, when Kevin Rudd became the most recent prime minister to win the Labor party majority government.
The latest data from online search engine Google reveals the top party people are searching for in Australia in the final week of the election campaign is ... the Australian Labor Party.
Labor enjoyed 34 per cent of the searches for political parties in the week between May 10 and May 17.
The next party most frequently searched for was Clive Palmer’s United Australia Party with 21 per cent of the searches followed by 13 per cent for the Liberal Party.
The search question that enjoyed the most growth - 56 per cent - was “How to vote for the United Australia Party” followed by 41 per cent growth in those asking “How to vote for Labor.”
The only search question to have lost momentum this past week was “What is a teal independent.”
Sky presenter Kieran Gilbert asked Albanese what he would say to people deciding tonight or tomorrow night and are wavering because of his repeated gaffes.
These include the opposition leader’s bad start to the campaign when he forgot the unemployment rate and thought it was around five per cent and not four per cent, as well as not knowing the cash rate.
This morning, when interviewed on ABC News Breakfast, he was asked about the historically low unemployment rate and said that one of the reasons for this was because the “borders are closed”.
He said that twice. Of course the borders have been open since the end of last year.
At his earlier news conference he clarified this and said he meant to say that the borders “were closed”.
When asked about this latest error he questioned what the government was offering voters.
Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese is being interviewed on Sky News.
He is asked if it presumptuous to have publicly canvassed interim government arrangements that would enable him to attend the Quad leaders meeting in Tokyo next week.
He says it is simply part of contingency plans drawn up in conjunction with the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet.
And he says that this scenario has only come about because of Scott Morrison’s decision to hold the election so close to the Quad meeting.
He said that he thought the election would be held on May 14 to avoid any uncertainty in the event the election outcome is unclear or a hung parliament.