Australia’s No.1 family newszine The Bug continues its exhaustive and exhausting coverage of the federal election campaign with a look at the policy speeches delivered yesterday by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Opposition Leader Peter Dutton, as well as our usual wrap-up of poll trends and betting markets.

Fresh from its Sunday campaign launch, the federal Labor Party is not yet finished announcing big-ticket cash incentives to ease the housing crisis in its bid to win the votes of sufficient Australians to win a second term in office.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was in Perth yesterday for his campaign launch at which he promised voters a $1,000 no-questions-asked tax deduction worth around $200 to most workers and costing an estimated $2.4 billion over four years, plus a $10 billion home-building stimulus package to fund 100,00 new homes, and a government guarantee to meet any gap in a home lender’s deposit requirement above 5% – meaning new home buyers would not need to meet the traditional 20% deposit for a loan.

But The Bug understands that Labor Party campaign strategists have been spooked by Opposition Leader Peter Dutton’s pitch to home buyers also revealed yesterday at his own campaign launch in western Sydney – a plan to allow first-time home buyers to deduct mortgage interest payments up to $650,000 from their taxable income at a cost to the budget of $1.3 billion over four years.

Dutton also offered a one-off $1,200 cost-of-living tax offset in 2026 costing the budget $10 billion.

“Albo and the rest of us in the campaign team were not expecting Dutton to be as bold as he was in his promises to home buyers and on tax,” one Labor strategist confided on the condition of anonymity.

“So since our own launch yesterday we’ve been working on yet another election promise which the PM will unveil on the campaign trail very soon.

“It will involve giving every household an official Commonwealth Treasury printer enabling them to run off their own $100 bills. All they’ll need to do is head to Officeworks and buy the proper paper. (main picture)

“Let’s face it, the whole campaign has come down to which side can bribe voters the most. We think this latest idea will seal that deal for us.

“Of course we’ll release this latest promise with appropriate costings which as usual we’ll make on the back of an envelope because since the COVID pandemic nobody – not even the Libs if they’re honest about it – gives a flying fuck about fiscal integrity, deficits, or government debt,” the source said.

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The key messages to voters in Opposition Leader Peter Dutton’s campaign launch in Sydney aimed at easing the burden on new home buyers were overshadowed by an incident in which several Liberal Party members were seriously injured.

Mr Dutton spoke at the launch for almost a full hour, but in a bid to yet again underline his earlier $6 billion campaign promise to scrap federal fuel tax for 12 months to help ease the cost of living for motorists, he pumped unleaded fuel from a bowser under the stage for the duration of his speech. (below)

A senior Liberal Party source who did not wish to be identified admitted that the party’s campaign advance team which organised the stunt had not addressed the problem of what to do with the fuel Mr Dutton was pumping.

“At the standard rate of delivery by fuel pumps, we reckon around 2,500 litres of unleaded was splashed onto the floor of the hall,” the spokesperson said.

“The advance team had relied on the carpet just soaking it up. But unfortunately some of it – well a lot of it – landed on several of our members in the first few rows of the audience.

“Luckily the petrol didn’t splash on former PM John Howard who was in pride of place in a front row seat.

“That’s not to say he wasn’t unaffected by the fumes. He clearly was because halfway through Peter’s speech he started to get very woozy, began swaying in his seat, and started muttering endlessly ‘We will decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come’.

“Those who did get splashed sustained significant petrol burns but were taken to hospital for treatment and should be discharged in a week or two after some major skin grafts,” the Liberal Party source said.

Mr Dutton later lashed out at the Albanese Government saying the hospital stay for the petrol burns victim as “far too long” and blamed Prime Minister Albanese for their plight.

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Can we perfectly honest – as The Bug always strives to be … we’re still not fucking sure we’ve got today’s winner right.

If we’ve got the Opposition’s two housing affordability policies announced at yesterday’s LNP launch clear in our heads, SkyNews’ Andrew Clennell and LNP campaign frontman James Patterson have gotten things horribly mixed up.

Our still-uncertain claim: Sky LNPNews yesterday boasted the LNP was promising “immediate relief” from a policy that doesn’t kick in for another 14 months.

Below is that shamelessly pro-LNP SkyLNP News online plug and the text it contained..

Coalition offering Australians ‘immediate relief’ with tax cut policy

Coalition campaign spokesman James Paterson says the Opposition’s proposed $1,200 tax offset is the “real relief” that Australians need.

The $10 billion policy will save taxpayers 25 dollars a week – five times the amount Labor has promised.

“What we are offering is immediate relief and a long-term plan to restore the standard of living that Australians used to enjoy in this country before the Albanese government did so much harm to it,” Mr Paterson told Sky News Political Editor Andrew Clennell.

And here is the ONLY reference we could find ANWHERE to when a certain LNP policy will kick in.

Maybe at the LNP launch they should have called them Shonky Housing Affordability Plan A and Shonky Housing Affordability Plan B? Maybe Albanese at his launch should have given similar titles to Labor’s offerings, given fairly widespread condemnation by experts to both camps’ policy pitches, seeing neither appears to address supply issues as commonsense would suggest. Heck, even The Australian bagged both sides and we all had to have a Bex and a good lie down after that.

So, are we right or are we wrong. If rusted-on right-wing-spruiking, LNP publicist Clennell and the LNP’s master communicator Paterson have indeed fucked up so badly with a nonsense promise based on bullshit, what chance do we have of understanding what’s going on?

Apologies to both if we’ve got this badly wrong. But until then, we at The Bug are wondering if Sky LNPNews already has our two arse-licking journalism awards – our week 3 campaign gong and our monthly Janet Albrechtsen trophy – already sewn up? Shirley, they are going to be hard to beat?

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With overnight’s Newspoll staying at 52-48 2PP to Labor, our 2PP averages on the five pollsters we are monitoring – Newspoll, Resolve, Roy Morgan, YouGov and Redbridge – remained Labor’s way at 52; Coalition 48. Labor in 2022 got a parliamentary majority by the slenderest of margins on a similar 2PP.

The unchanged 2PP in Newspoll would be of little comfort to Dutton and mob; the LNP primary vote has dipped one, and Albanese has improved on the rather meaningless better PM figure.

As mentioned before, Guardian‘s Essential Poll thinks it’s professional or clever or somehow responsible not to publish a two-party-preferred figure. The Bug again calls bullshit on that. Nevertheless, its latest primary figures suggest however a slight Labor lead.

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And how did the punters react to every MAGAnificent thing that happened on the hustings yesterday? On the betting front, the LNPs odds shortened a bit during Sunday afternoon, perhaps as some silly punters saw merit in what Dutton had to say on housing at the Coalition launch.

By 9.35pm and 53 seconds last night – the time when our late-stop collects such data, here are the odds from the betting agencies that we are monitoring!

Sportsbet: Labor $1.31 ($1.29); Coalition $3.48 (3.70)
Ladbrokes: Labor $1.30 ($1.28 ); Coalition $3.50 ( $3.70)
TAB: Labor $1.26 ($1.26); Coalition $3.80 ($3.80)
bet365: Labor $1.28 ($1.28) Coalition $3.75 ($3.75).
neds: Labor $1.30 ($1.28); Coalition $3.50 ($3.70).

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