‘SENSELESS AND WRONG’
The main themes of the past few weeks have once again dominated proceedings overnight. Numerous publications are leading on Treasurer Jim Chalmers’ budget preview speech in Queensland later, while others are focussed on US tariffs and some on the latest election polling. Basically, same stuff, different day.
Let’s start with Chalmers, shall we? Guardian Australia reports the treasurer will brand US President Donald Trump’s tariff regime “self-defeating and self-sabotaging” in his Brisbane address today. He is expected to warn: “It’s clear the rules that underpinned global economic engagement for more than 40 years are being rewritten. The whole world has changed.”
Chalmers will say Australia won’t be sucked into “a race to the bottom” on tariffs, saying it would harm businesses and the economy. “In a world of retaliation and escalation, the impacts of tariffs are amplified. They linger for longer, resulting in a bigger reduction in GDP and a bigger increase in prices,” he will say. The treasurer will also highlight yesterday’s OECD warning that the world economy will grow more slowly due to the US trade wars. Guardian Australia says OECD economists have cut their estimates for Australian real GDP growth from 2.5% in 2026 to 1.8% (the Reserve Bank’s forecast is 2.3%).
Trump imposed 25% tariffs on all American steel and aluminium imports last week, with more tariffs expected next month and Australian pharmaceutical and beef exports seen as being particularly vulnerable. The Nine newspapers also say Chalmers will warn of the impact of a trade war on the Australian economy: “Over a range of scenarios, Treasury found the indirect GDP impacts of a trade war could be up to four times larger than the direct effects of tariffs on our economy.”
On the fact the Albanese government was unable to get an exemption last week, Chalmers will also say: “The decision not to exempt Australia from American tariffs on steel and aluminium was disappointing, unnecessary, senseless and wrong, as the PM rightly pointed out. We are not uniquely disadvantaged by these tariffs, but we deserve better as a long-term partner and ally.”
Guardian Australia says Chalmers is not expected to reveal any major new spending promises in next week’s budget with the Albanese government instead hoping to sell itself as a responsible fiscal manager as it announces the first in an expected string of deficits. On Monday, the treasurer said the much-discussed deficit “will be much, much smaller than what we inherited from our political opponents”.
Tariffs led the way at The Australian Financial Review overnight, with Trade Minister Don Farrell set to speak with US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer later today, apparently “to get a better understanding of the Trump administration’s plans and specific US-Australian trade issues”. The paper claims Farrell and other government ministers remain hopeful of securing an exemption from the next round of Trump tariffs — threatened from April 2 — having offered up Australia’s critical minerals in return (ICYMI my colleague Bernard Keane’s piece last week on this approach from the Albanese government is well worth a read).
The AFR says trade experts and government sources have estimated Australia faces a potential tariff of between 2% and 8% on the $30 billion of exports sold to America if an exemption isn’t secured.
Meanwhile, Guardian Australia leads with the theme of the last few days, that of a growing approval rating for the prime minister. The site says of its latest Essential poll: “More Australians approve of Anthony Albanese as the country’s leader than disapprove of him for the first time in almost 18 months since the referendum on the proposed Indigenous Voice to Parliament.” Meanwhile, Coalition leader Peter Dutton recorded his highest disapproval rating since the polling began tracking his rating in April 2023.
Elsewhere, The Conversation says there has been an improvement for Labor across a range of polls in the past few weeks as it looks at all the recent surveys. The latest Roy Morgan survey has found Labor’s two-party preferred lead has increased after Trump’s tariffs and Cyclone Alfred.
In a news release, the market research company states: “If a federal election were held now, the ALP would be returned to government with an increased majority, with the ALP on 54.5% (up 3%) ahead of the LNP Coalition on 45.5% (down 3%) on a two-party preferred basis.”
Some may wonder if Albanese regrets not calling that election already…
DUTTON’S ‘POLICIES’
If you’re wondering what Dutton thinks of his recent change in fortunes, Phil Coorey over at The Australian Financial Review says the opposition leader reckons it all down to a Labor smear campaign.
“All I can do is be honest with the Australian people about the fact that we have a plan to get our country back on track. The Labor Party spent $2 million over the past two months personally slandering me because they don’t have a good story to tell themselves,” Dutton claimed.
The piece states that amid reports of Coalition backbench unrest over the lack of policy announcements and clear economic strategy, Dutton has assured his colleagues he remains committed to cutting taxes.
“If we can afford to do tax cuts, we will. But it will depend on how much money is in the budget, what’s going to be inflationary, what other measures are floating around at the time, and I think that’s the prudent approach that you would expect us to take,” Dutton has said.
The ABC reports shadow treasurer Angus Taylor is touring electorates this week and raising income tax as an issue. Mind you, in the very same sentence, the broadcaster adds “the Coalition is yet to state any policy of its own to reduce income tax”.
The Sydney Morning Herald has led overnight on the fact Dutton is reportedly considering an election pledge to hold a referendum on deporting criminal dual nationals. The piece states: “As former prime minister Tony Abbott calls for a stricter citizenship test, Dutton and his senior MPs have held high-level talks about changing the constitution to allow ministers to cancel the citizenship of people guilty of crimes such as terrorism, in what would be the second referendum in as many terms of Parliament.”
Apparently, Dutton has not yet decided whether to make it part of the campaign ahead of May’s federal election, with “top Coalition figures” thinking Labor would find it hard to oppose.
The ABC has flagged Dutton plans to “introduce new racketeering laws next week in a bid to stamp out ‘union corruption’, after fresh media reports of violence and organised crime within the embattled CFMEU”.
Guardian Australia says Dutton has demanded the construction division of the CFMEU be immediately deregistered and said a Coalition government would re-establish the building industry watchdog. Writing on social media in response, Industrial Relations Minister Murray Watt said: “Peter Dutton’s reckless plan for the CFMEU would hand control of the union back to the very criminals we are beginning to remove. Deregistering the union would allow it to operate without ANY regulation, with the worst elements free to run rampant on construction sites again.”
In world news, China has said military exercises near Taiwan were punishment for Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te’s continued promotion of “separatism”, the ABC reports. Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council has labelled the Chinese Communist Party a “troublemaker” and urged allies to stop China’s military expansion, the national broadcaster adds. On Monday, Beijing sent more than 50 warplanes to areas surrounding Taiwan.
Finally, the BBC reports White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt has said of Trump and Vladimir Putin’s planned talks about the war in Ukraine on Tuesday (US time): “We’ve never been closer to peace than at this moment. The president is determined.”
At the same time, The Guardian reports the Trump administration is withdrawing from an international body set up to investigate responsibility for the invasion of Ukraine “in the latest sign that the White House is adopting a posture favouring Vladimir Putin”.
ON A LIGHTER NOTE…
Let’s take a pause from the news cycle and enjoy videos of very happy dogs riding on buses, shall we
The Washington Post has a feature on the rising number of dog-walking companies using customised buses to move their canine customers around.
And this being 2025, a load of them are documenting the fun online.
The paper spoke to Emma Godley, the owner of Escape to the Country, about her mega viral clip of the dogs she looks after looking very excited on their fun bus and then utterly exhausted after an adventure walk. It’s tremendous.
“I didn’t realise that people would like them as much as they do,” Godley said. But they really do; that one clip alone has around 85 million views and more than 15,500 comments on Instagram.
There’s a load of other detail in the piece about how different companies have used their customised buses for viral fame. Really though it’s all about watching clips. Enjoy.
Say What?
DJing at home is my stress relief. I’ve played at some friends’ parties before but this will be my public debut.
Adam Bandt
The Greens leader played at The Night Cat in Fitzroy on Sunday as part of an attempt to woo younger voters.
CRIKEY RECAP
The News Corp-owned Herald Sun ran 21 stories and launched a petition pushing for reforms in the week before Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan unveiled the “toughest bail laws in Australia”. These changes include a requirement to consider community safety above all other factors, the removal of remand as a last resort for children, a new “extremely hard to pass” bail test for serious offences and a second-strike rule for offenders.
Labelled as knee-jerk, draconian and harmful by civil rights, legal and community organisations, the reforms were announced following a short campaign by the state’s most-read newspaper and a two-week push by radio show Fifi, Fev & Nick on Fox FM. Both campaigns focused on emotive stories of the victims of crime, raised concerns about Victorian suburbs being “under siege”, and labelled the current bail laws as being “broken”.
Despite these alarmist campaigns, Victoria’s youth crime rate is the third lowest in the country, behind just the ACT and South Australia. When population growth is taken into account, overall crime rates are also lower than they were 10 years ago.
The US under Donald Trump continues to fracture and untether itself from its democratic norms at a pace almost impossible to keep up with.
This weekend alone, Trump gutted government-funded news, ramped up deportations in apparent defiance of the courts, and launched military attacks on Houthi rebels in Yemen.
Such times call for a decisive opposition, propelled by a mix of strategic organisation and moral clarity. The Democrats’ response? Waving Republican legislation through, a bold strategy that’s been rewarded with the party’s lowest popularity rating in history.
So the maximalist vs minimalist debate partly proceeds from a false assumption — that Australia can increase its defence spending in a way that is actually going to achieve the kinds of strategic goals we want — whether we think the Americans will still come to our rescue and AUKUS will ever deliver a single boat, or whether we think we’re now in a Hobbesian world where we need to arm ourselves quickly.
And as always, the Defence Department sits silent in all this, magisterially non-transparent, refusing to respond to the most basic requests for information, gleefully delaying and blocking FOI requests and pushing back against auditor-general pressure to be publicly accountable for its major projects. Its position is very much business as usual.
READ ALL ABOUT IT
Private childcare whistleblowers’ disturbing experiences inside a sector putting profits before kids (ABC)
Australia’s new $5 note to reflect First Nations connection to country instead of King Charles (Guardian Australia)
Canada’s Carney makes statement by choosing Europe, not US, for first foreign trip (BBC)
Judge plans to press White House over deportation flights (The New York Times) ($)
Here’s when astronauts Butch and Suni are expected to come home (Mashable)
Have humans passed peak brain power? (Financial Times) ($)
THE COMMENTARIAT
Trump and the teals have a lot in common — Sean Kelly (The Age): In recent weeks, there has been much focus on whether Dutton is our Trump figure. But it is possible this obscures the possibility that, in Australian political terms, our independents and minor parties are the real Trump, allowing voters a way to genuinely challenge the status quo. In this context, the rapid rise of the teals is perhaps most interesting. Not because they are anything like Trump in temperament or policy, but because their appeal to Australians depends on not being part of the system. They are a very different proposition from Trump — but then in many ways Australia is a very different place. A more moderate place, in which extremes rarely triumph.
One of last week’s most striking stories appeared in the Australian Financial Review. Reportedly, the Australian Hotels Association and their corporate partners — gambling being one of their major concerns — will throw their support behind major party candidates running against independents. Coal Australia seems to be pursuing a similar approach. Could the independents have designed a better ad for themselves? Unsurprisingly, some teals have been pointing to the story publicly.
As commentators like Tim Dunlop have pointed out, the appeal of the independents does not lie only in what they oppose: they have policies, and to some, they offer the attraction of local community and “a different way of doing politics”. Still, difference remains key: and what they are most obviously different from is the major parties.
Talking points kept the Coalition’s tariff message clear but failed to read the room on Trump — Patricia Karvelas (ABC): Australians are rusted on to the view that Trump is a problem and a narrative that the Australian government can somehow win under his reign is becoming less plausible.
Voters who identify as Coalition voters are much more sympathetic to the job Trump is doing — and herein exists the issue for Peter Dutton. Of those identifying as Liberal/National voters, 48% approve of the job Trump is doing.
It puts the dilemma for Peter Dutton in perspective: almost half his supporters think Trump is a net positive. The rest of the nation, including voters who he needs to capture, are less convinced.
Dutton must distance himself from Trump and the Trump agenda if he intends to speak to a wider section of the electorate. Yet he remains under pressure from his own rusted-on voters who are sympathetic to Trump.