LIVE: Election 2025 – Anthony Albanese LOSES IT with reporter over legitimate question

The PM was asked about homophobic comments made by Labor MP Jerome Laxale’s father.

Alain Laxale, was seen taunting a man handing out Liberal pamphlets in the marginal seat of Bennelong on Sydney‘s Lower North Shore.

Laxale senior asked the Liberal staffer about their ‘boyfriend’.

The man replied, ‘I’m not gay, buddy,’ to which Laxale Senior reportedly said, ‘How’s your bum? How’s your bum, sore today?’

Laxale, the member for ultra-marginal seat, apologised for his father’s ‘deeply offensive and completely unacceptable’ comments.

But Albanese refused to comment on the scandal.

‘You want me to speak to families? I want to keep families out of it.,’ he told reporters.

He added: ‘I don’t talk about people’s family. I don’t like people talking about mine.

‘I don’t talk about others. I don’t talk about Peter Dutton’s family.

He insisted Laxale was a ‘great candidate for Bennelong’.

Asked for a second time whether he would condemn the comments, the PM gave the reporter a further ticking off.

‘It’s beneath you to ask whether I support homophobic comments. because of course I don’t,’ he said.

‘And frankly, it’s offensive even suggesting it.’

After Penny Wong triggered a political earthquake when she suggested the Voice was ‘inevitable’, the PM has been doing his best to insist the Voice is ‘gone’.

But what about the other two aspects of the Uluru Statement of the Heart?

The framework is made up of three pillars: ‘Voice, Treaty, Truth’.

The Voice, a separate indigenous body with powers to influence government legislation, was soundly defeated in the 2023 referendum.

It remains unclear what will happen to treaty and truth-telling.

‘The Australian public has delivered their verdict on the Voice to Parliament, what happens to truth telling and treaty if you get a second term?’, a journalist asked the PM on Thursday.

But Albanese dodged the question.

‘We’re focused on practical reconciliation,’ he responded, pointing the reporter to his speech at the Garma festival last year where he repeated the Labor’s party’s commitment to supporting the Uluru Statement from the Heart.

On Wednesday it was revealed that on the day before the election was called, the government refused to rule out whether work was still progressing on Voice, Treaty and Truth.

At Senate Estimates on 27 March, Senator Wong refused multiple times to answer a simple question from Liberal Senator Michaelia Cash: ‘Is the Prime Minister still committed to Voice, Treaty, Truth?’

Instead, Senator Wong directed a government official to answer.

‘The government remains committed to the principles of the Uluru Statement and continues to engage in good faith with leaders and communities around next steps,’ Greta Doherty, First Assistant Secretary of the Social Policy division responded.

‘Government acknowledges there is considerable work underway at a state and territory level on treaty and truth-telling process – and government welcomes this work.’

The Opposition Leader has backflipped on promises to change the national school curriculum.

Earlier in the campaign, he vowed to re-work the curriculum to promote ‘critical thinking, responsible citizenship and common sense’.

‘You have seen other academics that are out as part of protests on the streets, and teachers similarly, and that is been translated into the classroom,’ he said earlier in the campaign.

‘That is not something I support. I support young Australians being able to think freely … and not being told and indoctrinated by something that is the agenda of others.’

But now the Opposition Leader (pictured, below) has seemingly dropped any plans to rewrite the curriculum.

‘We don’t have any proposal to change the curriculum,’ he told reporters this morning.

It marks the third backflip of the campaign after the Coalition abandoned its plans to ‘end’ work from home and walked back its proposals to cut 41,000 public sector jobs.

Anthony Albanese did not pass up on the opportunity to highlight the Coalition’s backflip at his own press conference later on.

‘I noticed today we have seen another backflip from Peter Dutton over school curriculum,’ the PM told reporters.

‘The current school curriculum was put in place by the former government, not us.

‘But they looked for culture wars in every corner that they can find one, every dark corner is where they are looking.’

The Oppostion Leader’s choice of tie has raised eyebrows during the cost of living crisis.

Kyle Sandilands grilled the PM on whether he had ever used illegal drugs.

‘Can you ever imagine you and I blowing a spliff together?’, the KIIS 106.5 shock jock asked the PM.

‘I can’t imagine that, Kyle, but each to their own,’ Albanese responded.

‘You’re more of a bong guy, right?’, Sandilands asked.

The PM responded: ‘Mate, I’m off the beers at the moment’, before trying to change the topic of the conversation to something more serious.

But that didn’t stop Sandilands.

‘What about the nose beers?’, he asked. Nose beers is a slang term for cocaine.

The PM merely laughed while co-host Jackie O expressed surprise that he seemed to know what Sandilands was referring to.

‘I do live in Marrickville, or I used to before I moved to Canberra,’ the PM responded.

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton ruled out legalising marijuana on the same show yesterday.

The PM would not be drawn on his personal view of the issue, insisting it was a matter for the individual states.

Albanese attended Sandilands’ n2023 wedding to Tegan Kynaston at the historic Swift Mansion at Darling Point in Sydney’s eastern suburbs.

Albanese copped some criticism for attending after it was revealed convicted drug smuggler Simon Main and ‘King of the Cross’ John Ibrahim were among the bridal party.

But he defended the decision, saying: ‘I enjoy weddings and I will be going to the wedding.’

Labor frontbencher Anika Wells has appeared to offer a third position on the Voice in as many days.

Foreign Minister Penny Wong sparked a firestorm when she suggested the Voice, like the struggle for marriage equality, was inevitable in a podcast interview with the Betoota Talks podcast.

The Prime Minister denied that’s what she had said, insisting that the Voice is ‘gone’.

But now the Minister for Aged Care and Sport has suggested that the Voice may continue in another ‘form’.

Appearing on the ABC’s News Breakfast this morning, Wells was asked directly: ‘Voice to Parliament, will it make a comeback do you think at some point?’

She responded: ‘The Voice in the form we took to the referendum is gone.

‘We respect the opinions and the votes of people, they made that very clear, but we’re always looking for ways to help First Nations people and for that policy to be tangible and credible.’

Treasurer Jim Chalmers has touted Wells as a future leader of the party.

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton seized on Wells’ comments, claiming it was evidence that ‘the Voice, in some form, presumably through legislation, is going to be a part of the Albanese government’s next term in power, if they’re successful on Saturday’.

‘I’ll just ask Australians to think about that for a second,’ he said.

‘You sent a very clear message to the prime minister that you said no to the Voice, and now the prime minister is saying back to you, “well, we’ve got this secret plan, when we’re in government, to reintroduce the Voice in the form of legislation”.’