News update for Fri 2 May 2025

Your trusted guide to the top independent news and views of the day...

May 02, 2025

1 day until the May 3 federal election

Welcome to your TrueNorth news update where every weekday afternoon we share curated articles from Australia’s independent news media sector.

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TODAY’S BREAKING NEWS UPDATES: See all the breaking news of the day through The Guardian here - Amy Remeikis for The Australia Institute here - and through 6 News here

Watch The Sunday Shot - LIVE STREAMED - this Sunday morning at 9am - with Jo Dyer, Dave Milner, Michael West and Cheryl Kernot. Subscribe to The Sunday Shot’s Youtube channel for a notification as the panel goes live.

Liberal-aligned thinktank running anti-Greens ads received $600,000 from coal industry in Queensland election - The Guardian

The Australian Institute for Progress’s ‘Can you afford the Greens?’ ads claim minor party’s housing policies would lead to increased rents.

A Liberal-aligned thinktank running last-minute anti-Greens advertisements targeting young voters received more than $600,000 from the coal industry during last year’s Queensland election, disclosures show.

On Monday evening, the Australian Institute for Progress released a “Can you afford the Greens?” video advertisement pushing claims, based on its own commissioned research, that the Greens’ housing policies would lead to increased rents.

Newsroom edition: have Labor or the Coalition done enough to earn your vote - Full Story Podcast

With one day to go before the election, the polls paint a rosy picture for Labor. Governing with a majority is still a live option for the incumbent government – but pollsters have been wrong before, and a late night surprise is not off the table. So, after a long campaign which left many voters frustrated with the lack of big promises and big policy – have the major parties earned your vote? Bridie Jabour talks to editor Lenore Taylor and head of newsroom Mike Ticher about the choices progressive voters face as they head to the polls

Listen to the Full Story Podcast

Also >

Dutton should not be our PM. But the Albanese government needs to be so much better - The SMH/Age Editorial
Why the major parties won’t fix the domestic violence crisis - 7am Podcast
One Nation’s resurgence will change Australian politics - Crikey's Electioncast
Grattan on Friday: Key markers on the bumpy road to this election - The Conversation
The work is far from over if we keep Peter Dutton and the Coalition out - Women’s Agenda

‘What’s going on?’: Why the Exclusive Brethren are out in force this election - The SMH/Age

This is what’s going on: a systematic, lavishly funded attempt by an organisation with a strong financial agenda to influence the federal election without disclosing who they are or what they want.

Its campaign is part of a long history of attempted political influence, money politics and secrecy, from the sect once known as the Exclusive Brethren.

In 2004, its global leader, Sydney businessman Bruce D. Hales, feared Labor’s Mark Latham might win power and urged followers to act in support of John Howard.

Letters, witnesses and public documents emerged two years later showing that, within days of Hales’ callout, Brethren businessmen had set up a holding company, raised hundreds of thousands of dollars from mystery sources, funded anti-Labor and anti-Greens advertising and put boots on the ground.

The Liberal government at the same time provided a favourable environment for the church.

The rise of right-wing Christian populism and its powerful impact on Australian politics - The Conversation

As Australians cast pre-poll votes in record numbers, it is not only political parties and candidates who are trying to influence votes.

Australian Christian Right (ACR) groups have produced “scorecards” that rate party policies according to so-called Christian values. And they have organised candidate forums designed for Christian audiences.

The Plymouth Brethren Christian Church has deployed hundreds of its members to pre-polling booths in marginal seats to campaign for the Coalition.

Independents would push to end 'taboo' on tax reform in minority government - The ABC

Several key independent MPs say if they are returned to parliament on May 3 and neither Labor nor the Coalition win an outright majority, they will seek a review of Australia's tax base through a "broad-ranging" process, saying the "taboo" on tax must end.

Independent MPs Allegra Spender, Kate Chaney, Zoe Daniel, Zali Steggall and Sophie Scamps have all named tax reform as an issue at the front of their priority list, with Australia's ageing working population posing a threat to future federal budgets.

But for the women: Ali France, Peter Dutton, Ellie Smith in the big seat of Dickson - Michael West Media

Peter Dutton has gone from putting everything into the Coalition’s flailing election campaign, in a matter of weeks, to fighting for his political life as the Member for Dickson. Andrew Gardiner reports.

Will Peter Dutton be the first ever Opposition Leader to lose his own seat? What a difference a month makes. In late February, Opposition Leader Peter Dutton was riding high in the polls, jetting around the country, prepping for a national campaign and largely ignoring his own seat of Dickson (during a cyclone, no less) to go visit wealthy donors in Sydney.

Nine's feeble bid for a China poll beat-up fails miserably: Anti-China Media Watch - Pearls and Irritations

Chinese Communist Party-linked minions are being employed to quash Dutton’s hopes of electoral victory; LNP senator free to make spy allegations; Chinese-built tugboats threaten our sovereignty; and the awful truth emerges – most Australians don’t fear China.

In the dying days of a flagging election campaign, Nine Newspapers is complicit in the Liberal Party’s appeal to xenophobia in order to win back the seat of Kooyong from independent Dr Monique Ryan. A report headlined “Watch: Group with historical CCP links ‘required’ Chinese Australians to vote for Ryan” is rubbish and supported by half-truths and innuendo.

What the Coalition’s costings won’t tell you: slashing net migration will smash a $24bn hole in the budget - The Guardian

Angus Taylor again confused cutting permanent migration with reducing net overseas migration. That shatters the Coalition’s pitch as better economic managers.

Here’s the costing Angus Taylor isn’t sharing two days out from a federal election: the Coalition’s commitment to slash net migration by 100,000 from next year will smash a $24bn hole in the budget.

That more than erases the Coalition’s claimed $14bn improvement in the deficit over the four years versus Labor’s election policies. It shatters the Coalition’s pitch as better economic managers.

Labor set for return, with help of Trump and Musk, but it needs dose of colour from Teals and Greens - Renew Economy

It seems a quaint inheritance from legacy media: Wait until nearly the last moment of an election campaign to announce gravely the publication’s preferred choice of government, along with some harrumph about how – on the balance of probabilities – the other party is simply not fit for office.

It seems almost superfluous now, because these not so many people are waiting to be guided by the newspapers, or anyone else, for that matter.

More than a quarter of voters have already cast their ballot, and it seems pretty certain that two-thirds of all votes cast by the close of the polls on Saturday will not be for Labor, and two thirds of them won’t be for the Coalition either.

Also read >

As Dutton champions nuclear power, Indigenous artists recall the profound loss of land and life that came from it - The Conversation
Dutton’s ‘independent’ nuclear modelling was created by a pro-nuclear think tank - Crikey
A climate election? The Coalition wants to take Australia backwards, while Labor is standing still - Adam Morton for The Guardian

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Bernard Keane: Election ’25: Two campaigns, one strategy, few good policies and absolutely no winners - Crikey

Lagging behind in the polls at the start of the year, Anthony Albanese came charging out of the blocks. Peter Dutton was asleep, and has spent the entire campaign falling over his own feet to catch up.

Regardless of the outcomes tomorrow, the turnaround in federal politics since January has been remarkable. Peter Dutton looked like the next prime minister back then, while Labor looked like a rabbit caught in the headlights.

But Anthony Albanese charged out of the blocks in early January, catching Dutton napping, and implemented a basic but effective strategy that has delivered a big lift in Labor’s primary vote and a big drop in Dutton’s comparative appeal.

Dump Dutton, obliterate him … and breathe again - The Politics

The opposition leader has sunk to nauseating levels in his self-righteous drive for power and the prime ministership. He must be stopped.

The major mastheads have had their say on tomorrow’s election. Now it’s our turn.

We want Peter Dutton and his team not just to lose, but to be crushed and ground into the dirt. Why? Because it may be the only way to force the conservative side of politics to take a hard look at itself and reconstitute as a constructive force which reflects modern Australia — whether in government or opposition.

For this to happen, Dutton must never darken the door of the parliament again.

Dave Milner: Capitalism has already eaten democracy anyway - The Shot

Two weeks before Germany’s 1933 election, the nation’s wealthiest oligarchs, titans of finance, mining, banking, textiles and insurance, were summoned to Göring’s palace across the river from the Reichstag. There, Hitler explained the nature of his plan, leaving out the ethnic cleansing but explicitly mentioning the end of free elections. ‘Private enterprise cannot be maintained in the age of democracy,’ he told the gathered elite. ‘We must first gain complete power if we want to crush the other side completely.’ You will profit more if the people are less free, was the core of Hitler’s proposal to the oligarchs.

First, Hitler needed money to win the ‘last election’. The Nazis held out their weird fashy hats and the capitalists naturally poured money in with the wannabe dictator.