Anthony Albanese says Peter Dutton is purposefully leaving a key women’s issue out of the national conversation as the public counts down to one of Australia’s most consequential federal elections.
The Prime Minister appeared in a wide-ranging interview with news influencer Hannah Ferguson on an episode of her podcast, Big Small Talk, on Monday.
After being questioned by Ferguson on whether the Opposition Leader was actively avoiding abortion given his “voting history on women’s issues”, Mr Albanese said: “He has said himself that he’s trying to do that.
“Abortion is something that is regulated by state and territory governments. That’s true, but what my government has done is to address the whole issue of women’s reproductive health and the fact that it imposes a cost.”
Mr Dutton told the ABC in October that while he supported “a woman’s right to choose”, he believed abortion was a state issue and should not in debated nationally.
“If Labor chooses to use the issue of abortion at the next election, people know that it is probably the cheapest, most crass political effort in our recent history because abortion laws are not an issue for the federal government, as you well know,” he said.
Mr Albanese said women’s issues faced double standards on a federal level due to a lack of female representation.
“I have no doubt that if the reverse was the case, and you had men had the same sort of costs that are there for a range of health issues and a parliament that was dominated by men, it would have been addressed a long time ago,” he said.
“One of the distinctions, I think, between my government and governments that have come beforehand is, firstly, the makeup of it’s very different.
“Twelve men, 12 women in the cabinet, a majority of our government caucus members being women … it’s not something that’s an afterthought.”
Women’s issues are a particular focus for the Labor government, which made headlines last week after inviting a group of influencers, including podcast host Ferguson, to the federal budget lockup in Parliament House.
The lockup is traditionally attended by the press gallery who are given privileged access to the budget to produce embargoed stories before the Treasurer’s announcement later that evening.
Many of the invited influencers had large audiences with majority female viewership and created content on financial education, mental health advocacy and feminism across social media.
Ferguson has described her audience as mostly “progressive women” and the platform, including its flagship podcast Big Small Talk, as a “challenge to legacy media”.
The influencer cohort’s invite marked a significant shift in the government’s outreach to young Australians to match the rapid, social-media driven changes in news consumption habits.
In 2023, the Australian Communications and Media Authority found 46 per cent of 18-24 year-olds said social media was their main source of news, with 31 per cent of that cohort largely getting their news from influencers and celebrities rather than traditional media outlets.