Anthony Albanese has vowed to represent the entire nation during a visit to Western Australia to shore up support as a rift emerges between federal Labor on key state issues.
The prime minister is visiting the mining state for the 30th time in the top job as he tries to sandbag seats in the first week of the election campaign.
“I don’t take Australians for granted, and as Australia’s prime minister, my job is to represent the country,” he told reporters in Perth on Monday.
“One of the frustrations, I think, that was felt from people in the west was that previous occupants of the lodge of the prime ministership saw themselves as being prime minister for Sydney.”
Mr Albanese has worked hard to court WA’s voters, shelving a 2022 election pledge to set up a federal environment protection agency after a backlash.
WA Labor won a landslide victory earlier in March, securing a third term.
Labor holds most of WA’s federal seats and is expected to retain them.
But a battle is brewing in the new electorate of Bullwinkel, where Labor hopes to wrestle the marginal seat of Moore from the Liberals.
Ian Goodenough, who has held Moore for more than a decade, will recontest his seat as an independent at the May 3 election after he was ousted as the Liberal candidate.
Labor candidate for Bullwinkel Trish Cook is a nurse, as was revered World War II army nurse Vivian Bullwinkel, after whom the electorate was named.
“Nothing says Western Australia more than a nurse who worked in the offshore resources sector,” Albanese said.
The federal government has again delayed its decision on a proposed extension of a gas project in WA’s north amid Labor MPs’ concerns about the party’s environmental credentials with voters worried about climate change.
Asked if approvals would be delayed by Labor’s fresh promise to establish an environmental protection agency, Albanese said “no”.
“They’ll be considered in accordance with the law,” he said.
Albanese joined WA Premier Roger Cook to announce an election pledge of $200 million towards the redevelopment of the St John of God Midland Public Hospital.
The state government will cover the rest of the cost of the $355 million upgrade, which will deliver more hospital beds, operating theatres and a new intensive care and emergency department.
Albanese said only his party was strengthening Medicare with the largest spend in more than four decades.
During his tour of the hospital he cuddled newborn baby Amber, who was just 27 hours old.
“She’s beautiful. The highlight of my day for sure,” he said.
Outside the hospital, Keep the Sheep protester Helen Quaife shouted Labor needed to be placed last by voters and that it didn’t care about regional Australians or agriculture.
Labor has angered WA’s industry and farmers by introducing a ban on live sheep exports by sea by 2028.
The government has announced $8.5 billion in funding to strengthen Medicare and make nine out of 10 GP visits free by the end of the decade.
Opposition Leader Peter Dutton has promised to match that, with an additional $500 million to boost mental health support.
Dutton becomes the Hunter
The coalition’s nuclear power pledge has come under scrutiny as the opposition leader toured a must-win seat near the proposed site of one-of-seven reactors.
Peter Dutton has pledged to build seven nuclear reactors at a cost of at least $330 billion, saying it will bring power prices down, despite the claim being disputed by experts who say wind and solar are Australia’s cheapest renewable resources.
One of those sites is at the Liddell coal-fired power plant near the seats of Hunter and Paterson on the NSW north coast.
Speaking at a Cougar Mining factory in Tomago, Mr Dutton said transitioning the decommissioned coal plant to a nuclear site would sustain the local economy.
“In the Hunter and elsewhere, to be honest, people realise that if there’s not a replacement industry for coal, then these jobs go,” he said.
“As we’ve seen in the UK, in the US and in Canada, there’s about almost an 80 per cent transfer of jobs from the coal sector across to the nuclear sector.”
But key parts of the policy remain unanswered including the size of the reactor, how much waste it would produce and where the waste would go.
Dutton has previously said the waste would be the size of a coke can but when asked on Monday, said the amount “depends on the size of the reactor”.
Estimates put waste at many thousands of times more than the size of a coke can.
He pointed to the government’s commitment to dispose of waste from nuclear-powered submarines in the 2050s and the safe disposal of waste from the medical nuclear site at Lucas Heights.
“That’s all dealt with safely,” he said.
Labor has savaged the nuclear policy, with Energy Minister Chris Bowen having his department run the numbers from the coalition’s modelling.
It found the coalition’s costings were based on the assumption the power grid would be significantly smaller than Labor’s renewable energy plan.
Massive chunks of capital costs had been pushed outside the period modelled and the cost of extending coal plants set to close, such as refurbishments, until nuclear came online weren’t reflected in the price tag, Bowen added.
“Peter Dutton is desperately trying to hide the true cost of his $600 billion nuclear scheme,” Bowen said.
But Dutton remained focused on selling his gas policy as an interim measure to bring down energy prices until his nuclear plan comes into effect.
Both Hunter and Paterson are held by Labor on slim margins of less than five per cent and 2.6 per cent respectively, with the coalition looking to pick up the blue-collar seats that traditionally rely on mining.
Dutton also visited flood-affected areas in western Queensland alongside Nationals Leader David Littleproud on his way back home to Brisbane.
Dutton and Littleproud landed in Thargomindah and toured the town with Bulloo Shire Council mayor John Ferguson while meeting locals.
About 70 people have been evacuated with the levee expected to break.
Source: AAP
