Peter Dutton has made a last-minute pitch to make crime a major election focus, announcing a new $750 million funding package a day before early voting begins.
The opposition leader unveiled plans for a UK-style child sex offender register that would allow parents to check if someone their children are interacting with has a history of crimes against minors.
“This register is an idea whose time has come – and it is now time to put it into force to protect our kids,” Dutton said in a statement.
“The scheme will serve as a powerful deterrent to offenders and importantly will enable parents to be fully informed about their child’s safety.”
A pilot program of a similar program is currently running in Western Australia.
Just under half of the funding announced by Dutton will be put towards a taskforce to lead crackdown on illicit drugs.
When asked about the Coalition’s announcement this morning, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said his government had already introduced a child sex offender register and was acting against drug importation.
“I do find it rather perplexing that the Coalition… (are) seemingly unaware of the National Child Offender System, they’re unaware of the $350 million crackdown on illegal tobacco and the work that the Australian Border Force have been doing there,” he said.
Polls spell trouble for Coalition with early voting to begin
Dutton’s announcement comes just a day before the first ballots of the election are cast, with early voting to begin tomorrow, and a series of recent polls suggest he is running out of time to convince voters.
The latest Newspoll, released overnight in The Australian, showed that while Labor has maintained its 52-48 two-party preferred lead over the Coalition, it has increased its first-preference support to 34 per cent – higher than the 32.58 per cent it attracted at the last election.
It also showed Albanese has a 52-36 lead over Dutton as preferred prime minister, with 12 per cent undecided – the Labor leader’s best result on that measure in almost a year.
The Coalition’s first preference vote was steady at 35 per cent, roughly even with its 2022 result.
However, a Redbridge and Accent Research poll of 20 marginal seats released on Saturday showed Labor had reached a 54.5-45.5 two-party lead.
That’s an increase of 2 percentage points since the previous poll less than a week earlier, and a 3.5 percentage point swing since the last election in those seats.
Asked about Labor’s lead in the polls, Albanese said there was no complacency in his party.
“We certainly take nothing for granted,” he said from the ultra-marginal seat of Gilmore, on the NSW South Coast, which Labor won by just 373 votes or 0.02 per cent in 2022.
“The truth is that no prime minister has been re-elected after serving a full term since John Howard in 2004.
“We have a mountain to climb. We are a couple of steps up that mountain, but there’s a long way to go.”
The two leaders will face off in the third debate of the campaign tomorrow night, The Great Debate – live and exclusive on Channel 9, 9Now and Stan at 7.30pm AEST.
