Australia news live: Labor and Liberals decline to back Gina Rinehart’s call to increase defence spending to 5% of GDP (2025)

The prime minister has released a statement condemning the booing at an Anzac day service in Melbourne this morning.

The PM says there is “no place” for this type of incident in Australia.

There is no place in Australia for what occurred in Melbourne this morning. A neo-Nazi disrupting Anzac day is abhorrent, un-Australian, and disgraceful. The people responsible must face the full force of the law.

Albanese attended the dawn service in Canberra.

The view from the outer suburbs

The verdict of voters in the outer suburbs of capital cities will be crucial in next Saturday’s election and both parties have thrown a lot of resources at trying to win them.

Henry Belot travelled to Hawke on Melbourne’s north-western fringe where he hears that people feel short-changed on services which haven’t kept pace with population growth.

“People just want a fair go,” one campaigner says. Here’s his full piece:

Greens continue push for dental into Medicare

As experts warn young Australians will remain victims of an oral health “blindspot” because of the “stubbornly agnostic” attitudes of major political parties to include dental in Medicare, the Greens leader, Adam Bandt, says their party would push Labor to act on getting dental into Medicare.

Bandt, whose party’s policy is to see dental covered under Medicare, told Guardian Australia:

It’s critical that we expand Medicare so it covers everything, for everyone - and that includes your mouth.

As anyone who’s ever had a tooth ache knows, dental care isn’t optional. It’s ridiculous that this doesn’t already exist.

This election the Greens will keep Dutton out and get Labor to act on getting dental into Medicare.

In pictures: Peter Dutton at a second Anzac day ceremony in Samford

Roy Morgan releases latest trust rankings in Australian politics

As we get to the pointy end of this election campaign – which the leaders have been trying to boil down to “who do you trust” – well, it turns out that the trust isn’t with the federal major parties.

According to pollsters Roy Morgan, back in March 2022 (just before the last election), Labor Senator and now foreign minister Penny Wong took the top gong for the highest net trust score.

She was followed by Anthony Albanese, then Tanya Plibersek, then WA premier Mark McGowan and the independent senator Jacqui Lambie.

In April 2025, none bar Lambie sit in the top five.

The most trusted pollie is now independent ACT senator David Pocock, followed by Lambie, then Queensland’s premier, David Crisfulli, NSW’s premier, Chris Minns, and WA’s premier, Roger Cook.

In terms of who voters distrust the most (and according to Roy Morgan, voters are being driven by distrust more than trust in their voting choices): In March 2022, it was Clive Palmer who was the least trusted, then Scott Morrison, and Peter Dutton.

Dutton has now become the most distrusted leader in April 2025, followed by Palmer, then Donald Trump and Anthony Albanese. The Greens leader, Adam Bandt, sits down in sixth place. Rounding out the top ten most distrusted are Pauline Hanson, Angus Taylor, Barnaby Joyce and Michaelia Cash.

Joyce, Hanson, Taylor and Cash were all in the top ten back in 2022 as well.

Labor’s lead on a two-party-preferred basis has grown again, according to our poll model, after another big result in a YouGov poll released overnight. Labor currently sits just over 51%, but even with a week to go there is still a lot of uncertainty, as you can see in the chart below.

Over the past few weeks, our model shows the two-party-preferred measure trending towards a repeat of the 2022 results. But there have been big changes in the primary vote. Both Labor and the Coalition are down more than two points on their 2022 results - which was already an all time low.

The biggest beneficiaries were Other/independent. But independents have also seen large primary vote drops in both the YouGov and Roy Morgan polls released this week - possibly because the declaration of candidates has taken place and pollsters are now asking tailored questions for each electorate.

You can find more granular breakdowns of the polling on our tracking page.

Earlier this morning, cabinet minister Jason Clare and the deputy Liberal leader, Sussan Ley, were reluctant to trade barbs on defence spending (given the day) on their regular Sunrise panel, which can sometimes get a bit heated.

Host Nat Barr asked them whether they’d support mining magnate Gina Rinehart’s call to increase defence spending to 5% of GDP. Clare was hesitant to go into the issue:

The investments that we make in our defence force and in the defence of Australia are very, very important. But I don’t want to get into the politics of that today …

I think the last thing that Australians want to see this morning is Sussan and myself going tit for tat talking about this, or getting involved in some sort of political fight. I think that’d be really disrespectful.

Clare was asked about Rinehart’s comments that Australia should boost defence manufacturing, which he said was already being done, and wouldn’t comment further. Ley wouldn’t back the call to increase spending to 5%, but took a small swipe at Labor.

Nat, we agree with the prime minister that we live in the most complex geo-strategic circumstances since world war two. But respectfully, it’s not enough to state that without taking action. And our plan [is] to increase defence spending to 3% in the next decade.

Bluesky fix begins rolling out

Just an update on our previous post on Bluesky being down.

The social media site reports the root cause of the outage has been identified and a fix is being rolled out.

The main rival to X, Bluesky, has suffered an outage this morning, with services being down for around half an hour now.

Bluesky, which many former Twitter users fled to after the site was taken over by Elon Musk, stated on Friday that the company was investigating “a major outage with Bluesky hosted PDS [personal data server] instances”.

Basically what this means is the place where peoples posts are stored aren’t accessible at the moment, so while the site appears to load, albeit blankly, you can’t see posts or notifications or anything else.

China’s ambassador to Australia has called on Anthony Albanese and Peter Dutton to stand with Beijing against the “bullying” Trump administration.

Writing in the Australian this morning, Xiao Qian warned Australia’s leaders against giving the Trump administration a “free pass” on trade just because of a longstanding alliance. He writes:

Faced with unilateral bullying, China will resolutely stand its ground, not only to safeguard its legitimate rights and interests but also to prevent the world from descending into a lawless “jungle” where might makes right.

Both China and Australia are important countries in the Asia-Pacific region and beneficiaries as well as upholders of the multilateral system and free trade.

Amidst the changing international landscape, China stands ready to work with all parties to resolutely oppose all forms of ­hegemony and bullying, firmly uphold the UN-centred international system and the international order based on inter­national law, and contribute to the prosperity and stability of the region and the world at large.

Peter Dutton has called the booing at an Anzac Day ceremony in Melbourne by alleged neo-Nazis a disgrace, adding that the extremist ideology was a “stain on our national fabric”.

Shortly after visiting an Anzac day ceremony in his seat of Dickson this morning, the opposition leader delivered a brief statement to media on this morning’s events.

We should never take for granted what we have in this country, and the work of the diggers, fighting the Nazis and fighting tyranny and autocrats … to see any, any instance whatsoever, of neo-Nazis in our country is just a disgrace, and I commend the police for the work that they’re doing, particularly in New South Wales and Victoria but across the country, to quash any presence of neo-Nazis in our country.

Dutton added “they have no place at all, and they’re a stain on our national fabric, and they are not part of the Australian culture, and nothing should overshadow what it is to be here to commemorate and to celebrate the contribution over successive generations of those that have served in uniform”.

Asked to comment directly on the boos while the ceremony’s welcome to country was being delivered, Dutton said the Indigenous acknowlegement “should be respected”:

We have a proud Indigenous heritage in this country, and we should be proud to celebrate it as part of today. And we should always remember too that and remind ourselves, as we did at the [Sydney] Opera House last night, that Indigenous Australians played a very significant part [in Australia’s military conflicts] and still do today in the ranks of the Australian Defence Force.

Jacinta Allan says dawn service booing ‘dishonours all who have served’

The Victorian premier Jacinta Allan has released a statement responding to the booing this morning.

Allan said: “I strongly condemn the hateful disruption of this morning’s Dawn Service.”

A neo-Nazi disrupting this day is appalling - it has no place here… To pierce the sombre silence of the Dawn Service is more than disrespect - it dishonours all who have served, fought and fallen.

And to boo the Aboriginal servicemen and women who served our nation shows ignorance, hatred, and a complete lack of respect – for them, and for everything Anzac Day stands for.

The Victorian opposition leader, Brad Battin, also made a statement on the incident.

It was also very appropriate to acknowledge the contribution of Aboriginal Australians to our armed services.

To those who used the dawn service as a place to protest you have disrespected the thousands who have given you the gift to protest, and for that you should be ashamed and stand condemned by the 50,000 people who stood there in respect ...

Marles says focus should be on Anzac sacrifices and not hecklers

The deputy PM and defence minister, Richard Marles, has also condemned the booing heard in Melbourne this morning at a dawn service, calling it “terrible” and “deplorable”.

Marles was at that service, but also said he didn’t want to give the incident “any more airtime”. He told the Today show the country needed to focus on the sacrifice made by men and women who have served.

What we saw was obviously terrible and it is deplorable.

I was here this morning and witnessed it, and I absolutely feel that sense of outrage. And I know that people in the in the crowd did today as well. It is a small number of people. And you know what? Like we should not be giving them airtime.

Adam Bandt joins condemnation of welcome to country booing

Greens leader Adam Bandt attended a dawn service ceremony in Brisbane this morning, in the electorate of Ryan, with the Greens MP Elizabeth Watson-Brown.

Bandt has condemned the booing heard in Melbourne at the dawn service, telling Guardian Australia in a statement:

This behaviour is disgraceful and I’m glad to see politicians of all stripes calling it out. There’s no room for hate, division or racism on this day or any day.

I send my love and support to Uncle Mark Brown and First Nations people around the country. This always was and always will be Aboriginal land.

Earlier, Bandt posted on X (formally Twitter ), to commemorate the day stating:

We pay our respects to all those who have endured the horrors of war - and the many who still do today. We remind ourselves of the need to stop wars and prevent them from happening again. We recommit to strive for peace. Lest we forget.

Victorian police interview man for offensive behaviour after welcome to country heckling

Victorian police have interviewed a man for offensive behaviour after attendees at an Anzac Day dawn service booed and heckled during a welcome to country.

Police interviewed a 26-year-old Kensington man for offensive behaviour and directed him to leave the Shrine of Remembrance. Victorian police will proceed with a case via summons, a spokesperson said.