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DAY SIX: WEDNESDAY APRIL 1

Boy, oh boy! Is our panel of experts starting to feel sorry for you BUGgers out there! Our cracked-up team of experts actually enjoy politics yett even they are starting to get just a bit fidgety and forlorn over how much of this campaign still stretches ahead of us all.

So, our assessment of Day Six, Wednesday April 2?

We’ll give it to Labor, but only because Angus Taylor fronted the National Press Club and showed he’s still one of the Anthony Albanese government’s best performers.

Albanese smiled a lot but what is it with this guy? Just when you start to warm to him again, he stumbles just before the post by dining with Greg Norman. With his close friendship with Trump, the Great White Nark might have helped lessen tariff blows in Trump’s first term but it’s pretty clear that won’t happen this time round. We wouldn’t get within a broomstick putter of Norman.

It was a so-so day on the hustings, with the mainstream media focussing more and more on Donald Trump’s Liberation Day tariff announcements as the day dragged on.

Labor kept hammering away at Dutton’s planned 41,000 public service cuts.

This mean various Coalition figures needed to defend Dutton’s plans for Trump-style cuts to the Commonwealth health and education departments, a Trump-style attack on the ABC via its budget, his Trump-style drive for government efficiency, and his Trump-style stated aim to eliminate “woke” agendas in schools.

People like Nationals Senator Bridget McKenzie in her appearance from Brisbane on the ABC’s 7.30 were left to defend Dutton’s plans and deny he was just replicating Trump-style tactics.

By the end of her interview with Sarah Ferguson the Victorian Senator was barely a dot in the middle of the TV screen as her nose had constantly pushed back the camera being used to shoot her answers to Sydney-based Ferguson.

Dutton kept painting Albo as weak and indecisive, with nice little to-camera assaults on the PM’s personality flaws, courtesy of a meek and compliant media. More on that below!

That said, we’re not sure Labor’s attempts to portray the Opposition Leader as “DOGE-y Dutton” to further link him with Trump’s savage workforce cuts under his DOGE policy is going to fly either. Too clever by half; worse still, it relies on Australian voters knowing what DOGE is in the first place.

***

Very little change in the online betting company markets from Tuesday. Only one in fact; at 8pm last night, bet365 had reduced Labor’s odds from $1.72 to $1.66.

Sportsbet: Labor $1.72 Coalition $2.10
Ladbrokes: Labor $1.70 Coalition $2.10
TAB: Labor $1.65 Coalition $2.20
bet365: Labor $1.66 Coalition $2.20.

***

No changes to the two-party preferred averages of the four current opinion polls we’re keeping an eye on – Newspoll, Resolve, Roy Morgan and YouGov.

Labor: 51.25; Coalition 48.75

We should have mentioned yesterday that the Guardian’s Essential Poll thinks it’s professional or clever not to publish a two-party preferred figure. Its latest primary figures suggest however a slight Labor lead.

***

And finally, we’ll give the award below a break ….

… and give you a glimpse of how our mainstream mediocre politics reporters are fascinated by…

Can you all guess out there how Nine News Queensland’s Charles Croucher and the ABC’s Greg Jennett both began their federal poll reports on the tele last night?

Yep, PETER DUTTON SAYS!

Croucher kicks off with some 24 seconds of Dutton vision and comments with Croucher opining that Dutton “was constructing a picture of pain in the suburbs of Melbourne.

Over on Aunty an hour later, Jennett sounded more like an LNP publicist than a professional, senior, journalist. He kicked off with images of Dutton conducting a “tea and billshock for breakfast” (Jennett’s words) in the Melbourne electorate of McEwan. Dutton says “it’s just layer upon layer of pressure. His words obviously impressed Jennett who added that Dutton was “peeling through layer upon layer of domestic burden and sheeting blame home”. Really, Jennett?

But Jennett was not finished there. How about some to-camera stuff from Dutton himself: “I just don’t think Mister Albanese understands. The guy in so far out of touch.”

Okay, okay, some of you BUGgers out there think perhaps that these professional journalists were giving Dutton first run for it was his turn and Albanese will get first go tonight. Let’ see, shall we?

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