Australia politics live update: George Christensen to stand for One Nation, Scott Morrison confronted by activist

Hello and welcome to what is only day three of the federal election campaign.

Hard to believe it is only Wednesday given what a year we have already had, but here we are.

Making news this morning – NewsCorp is reporting George Christensen is set to be announced as a One Nation candidate later today. Turns out he is not retiring, just moving further to the right.

Anthony Albanese and the Labor campaign are still in Melbourne, while Scott Morrison and the Liberal campaign is in western Sydney.

Morrison ran into more trouble at the pub, when a man (whose social media shows he supports Labor) filmed himself gatecrashing what Morrison can be heard describing as him “hosting drinks for the media”. The man, who uploaded his video to TikTok said he was detained, but was later freed.

It is not unusual for campaigns to host events for the travelling media – all sides of politics does it. But the optics of hearing the prime minister say “I’m hosting drinks for the media” is not going to go down great with an already skeptical public. Most of the time it is required as part of ‘work’. But I think there is a change slowly coming through parts of the media, where attending these events is not encouraged. No doubt last night’s event will spark wider conversation.

Meanwhile, after revealing it has no plans to raise the Jobseeker rate yesterday, Labor is sticking to health today, with an announcement it plans to spend $135 million on a trial which would see 50 urgent care clinics opened across Australia.

After not really having an announcement yesterday (the 1.3m jobs promise is baked into existing and already announced measures) we’re waiting to hear what the Liberal campaign comes up with today – it’s around fuel security. Last time we heard a fuel security announcement from the Liberals, it was that the government spent $94m when fuel was cheap to buy up some barrels for the strategic fuel reserve – which is being stored offshore. In America.

You’ll have Katharine Murphy, Sarah Martin, Daniel Hurst, Paul Karp and Josh Butler watching, as well as me, Amy Remeikis on the blog for most of the day. Gabrielle Chan and Mike Bowers are looking at what is happening in the regions and the entire Guardian brains trust is looking at what is happening in each state.

I’ve already had three coffees and an easter egg.

Ready?

Let’s get into it.

source: theguardian.com