Anthony Albanese and Peter Dutton locked horns in the fourth and final debate of the 2025 election campaign on Sunday night.
With less than a week to go before the 3 May election date, here were the key moments from the Channel Seven debate, hosted by political editor Mark Riley.
The debate was moderated by Riley, but the result was decided by 60 uncommitted voters.
The panel of voters gave the result to Albanese with a clear 50% of voters backing him.
Dutton was backed by 25%, with the remaining 25% not picking either man as the winner.
Days after Melbourne’s Anzac Day dawn service wasinterrupted by far-right extremists heckling an Indigenous welcome to country, both men strongly criticised those actions.
But Dutton went on to say thathe believed welcome to country speeches were “overdone”, and should be kept only for important ceremonies – suggesting welcomes were not needed “for the start of every meeting at work, or the start of a football game”.
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Albanese said it was “a matter of respect but it is also up to the organisations that are hosting the event … it is up to them and people will have different views and people are entitled to their views”. He noted that in New Zealand, the national anthem was sung in Māori language as well as English.
“But we have a great privilege from my perspective, of sharing this continent with the oldest continuous culture on earth, and when I welcome international visitors to Parliament House, they want to see that culture,” Albanese said.
The Coalition has jumped on what it has called a “weird” comment from Albanese, where the prime minister appeared to suggest that Donald Trump doesn’t have a mobile phone.
Asked whether he ever texted the US president, Albanese responded: “I’m not sure he has a mobile phone, the US president … it is not the way it works, with any global leader.”
Trump, famously a prolific social media user who has written and sent many of his own tweets according to reports, has often been pictured with a mobile phone.
Dutton, sensing an error, needled several times about whether Albanese had the phone number of other world leaders. Later, Dutton said: “I think the answer there was no.”
Albanese, arguably, was trying to say that you don’t conduct diplomacy by sliding into the DMs of another world leader – but a clumsy answer again opened himself up to concerns about whether his relationship with Trump is in the freezer, as the Liberals like to claim.
It was the fourth debate, and we’ve heard a lot of this before.
Albanese went on the attack against Dutton as a “risk” to Australia, claiming the Liberal leader would cut essential services and harm the economy – leading to his best line of the night, painting the Coalition as a risk to the current state of Australia after a tough few years.
“Peter can attack me. I tell you what I won’t let him do. I won’t let him attack the wages of working people. I won’t let him attack the changes we’ve put in place for cheaper childcare. I won’t let him abandon free Tafe so that people can get an opportunity in life. I won’t let him get away with this nonsense about economic management,” Albanese said.
“We inherited a deficit of $78bn. We turned that into a $22bn surplus. We delivered another surplus, and we halved the deficit this year. Inflation is now 2.4%, in the bottom half of the Reserve Bank band. It was six and rising when we came to office.
“We have worked hard. The Australian people have worked hard, in order to get that under control. And they deserve better than this pretence that everything was hunky dory in 2022.”
Dutton, too, repeated damaging attack lines against his opponent. The Liberals have worked hard to portray Albanese as loose with the truth, to varying levels of success, including onwhether he really did fall off a stageearlier in the campaign.
Dutton painted Albanese as a liar, and again alleged that Labor would seek to alter negative gearing if re-elected. Albanese has flatly rejected this, saying negative gearing wasn’t on their agenda because it wouldn’t help housing supply.
At one point, Albanese claimed the Liberal party would overturn Labor’s same-job, same-pay laws, which Dutton has ruled out. It led to Dutton’s best line of the night, saying “that is not true”.
“Honestly, this whole campaign, it’s hard to believe anything you say. And this is the case, obviously, with the $275 [that Labor promised would come off power bills before the 2022 election]. You have never mentioned it again. The promise you have made in relation to migration, the numbers blow out every quarter. You’ve made promises in relation to housing. You haven’t delivered any housing,” Dutton said.
“You have created an economic mess in our country, and our job as a Liberal government, as was the case for John Howard, is to clean up the Labor mess.”
We have reported this week that Duttonhas not visited the sites of any of his proposed nuclear power stationsduring the campaign; the Liberal leader hasn’t come within 50km of any of the locations.
Dutton said on Sunday he would visit nearly 30 electorates over the next week, but he couldn’t promise that any of those visits would be to a site where he wants to build a nuclear reactor.
Asked about this, Dutton said he was “proud” of his nuclear policy and admitted it wasn’t necessarily a vote-winner, but one he believed in. But after several follow-up questions, he declined to say whether he would visit one of those locations in the coming week.
“So that’s a no,” said Riley.
In a final segment, the leaders were shown several images and asked to give an immediate reaction. Shown a carton of a dozen eggs, and asked how much they thought it cost, Dutton wasn’t close, suggesting $4.20, while Albanese guessed $7 – the true price was above $8.
After the debate, the panel of viewers gave Albanese a much better result when asked about the cost of living; 65% of respondents said the PM had better answers on that issue, and only 15% said Dutton.
Asked what three items would decrease in price under their leadership, Albanese noted free Tafe (opposed by the Coalition), childcare, and flailed for a moment before then putting forward Labor’s income tax cuts. Dutton quickly noted electricity, gas and groceries.
Shown a picture of Elon Musk, Albanese offered “Tesla”, the electric car company he runs; Dutton called him an “evil genius”.