NITV's Sarah Collard and SBS News' Naveen Razik are on the 2022 federal election campaign trail with Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Opposition leader Anthony Albanese respectively.
Each week, our correspondents will bring you the moments not to miss from both sides on the road to polling day.
On the road with Scott Morrison: Sarah Collard
Indigenous people make up an estimated 40 percent of voters in the vast Northern Territory seat of Lingiari. It’s held by a slim margin of 5.5 per cent by retiring longtime Labor MP Warren Snowdon and it’s in that seat that his opponents see opportunity.
Both major parties started the week in Central Australia and Darwin, with Labor pledging millions for homeland housing in remote communities while the Coalition slated funds for community safety to address social problems.
Mr Morrison, who visited Alice Springs on Sunday, is staying on message that the Coalition are experienced economic managers and Australians can’t afford a Labor victory, arguing inflation and rising costs are worse abroad than they are at home.
As inflation makes its biggest jump in more than 20 years and wages stagnate, Mr Morrison acknowledged First Nations people in remote and regional Australia are bearing the brunt, with far higher costs than in towns and cities.
“They are greater, 'cause they're always greater because of the remoteness and the costs of getting stores and supplies to those areas, ” Mr Morrison told NITV in Cairns on Wednesday.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison with local member Warren Entsch in Cairns on 28 April, 2022. Source: AAP / MICK TSIKAS/AAPIMAGE
Money is being poured into healthcare and housing programs to address social issues in Alice Springs. Donna Ah Chee the CEO of Central Australian Aboriginal Congress says it’s unprecedented.
“I've never seen this kind of investment at all, in this way, leading up into an election,” Ms Ah Chee told NITV News.
“It’s welcomed but it's been a neglect on both sides of the political sphere, where we're now seeing that you need to invest a lot more than is currently being invested in housing.”
After the Lingiari trip, Mr Morrison headed back to contested territory in Queensland. He campaigned in Rockhampton, where he promised millions for local infrastructure in a bid to boost jobs and the economy, before a quick flight to Cairns on Wednesday in the Far North Queensland seat of Leichhardt.
In Cairns, flanked by long-term MP Warren Entsch, Mr Morrison promised investment in tourism and the marine precinct in the marginal seat that has been devastated by pandemic restrictions and a lack of tourists.
Mr Morrison also acknowledged in his visit that common ground on a Voice to Parliament has not yet been found — despite a promise for a vote on the matter in the last term.
“Until we can get to that point where there is a greater consensus about what that is, then I think it would be unwise to try and force something along those lines, 'cause I fear ultimately that would just see us go backwards, not forwards.”
On the road with Anthony Albanese: Naveen Razik
Just over a week ago, pandemic politics came crashing back into the election campaign, when Anthony Albanese tested positive to COVID-19.
The Opposition leader emerged from isolation on Friday, after spending seven days in his home in Sydney’s Marrickville, with his dog, Toto.
"It's good to be out of iso, " he said in an interview with ABC TV at a park near his home.
He contracted COVID-19 despite measures put in place by his campaign team, which included requiring journalists and camera operators covering the opposition leader’s movements to undertake rapid antigen tests every three days.
Wearing masks on board the media charter jet and the campaign buses was also strongly recommended, but not strictly enforced.
At least three members of the press pack following the Opposition leader across the country had tested positive before Mr Albanese’s positive diagnosis.
After his positive test was confirmed last Friday, four further media members came down with the virus over the following days.
Opposition leader Anthony Albanese emerged from isolation in Sydney on Friday and flew to Perth to to continue his election campaign. Credit: STEVEN SIEWERT/AAPIMAGE
But there were many other campaign events where the Opposition leader could have contracted the virus, having shaken hands with members of the public — as one does during an election campaign.
Mr Albanese’s final campaign event before his positive test was at aged care centre on the NSW south coast, where he admitted to a resident that he was “very lucky” not to have got the virus yet.
While Labor strategists are said to have ‘war gamed’ a plan if their leader was forced into isolation, the timing of the diagnosis had knock-on logistical complications.
A planned trip to Perth had to be scrapped, with new campaign events hastily organised in Sydney and Brisbane for Friday and Saturday.
The Opposition leader began isolation with a media blitz but cut back commitments as his condition worsened, with a rotating cast of Labor frontbenchers taking questions from gallery journalists.
While the Labor campaign has been afflicted by COVID-19 cases — deputy leader Richard Marles and fellow frontbencher Madelein King both tested positive on Friday — Prime Minister Scott Morrison and his team are yet to suffer such disruption.
Mr Morrison contracted COVID-19 in February.
