Anthony Albanese defends response to cost-of-living crisis, blames Liberals for mess

Anthony Albanese has defended his government’s money management and attacked the Coalition’s record on Medicare in an interview on Sunday.

Speaking to 60 Minutes, the Prime Minister was pushed on whether his job could be on the line over Labor’s response to Australia’s cost-of-living crisis.

With Australians weathering soaring housing costs and higher bills for the basics, polls have consistently shown it is top-of-mind for Australians as they prepare to cast their ballots.

“Well, cost-of-living measures of course have been put in place by us,” Mr Albanese said.

“All of them have been opposed by (Opposition Leader) Peter Dutton. And what we’ve managed to do here is to aim for that soft landing of bringing inflation down without throwing people on the unemployment scrap heap.”

In response to a question about lower inflation not translating to supermarket prices, Mr Albanese blamed the Coalition for “pouring petrol on the fire by having a $78 billion deficit”.

“Now we turned that $78bn Liberal deficit into a $22bn Labor surplus,” he said.

“We have produced two budget surpluses. We have had a major repair job to do, but we’ve always been focused as well on the future and that’s what this election campaign will be about.”

But in a sign of the election campaign to come, Mr Albanese also turn on the Coalition’s record on health, but was challenged over whether he was planning to resurrect a Mediscare-style campaign but insisted he was not running a negative campaign.

The Albanese government has leant into revamping the health system with a series of major policies, including $573m targeting women’s healthcare and its signature $8.5bn pledge to make 90 per cent of GP appointments bulk-billed by 2030.

The Coalition took the wind out the of the latter’s sails by promising to match the funding and raise it by half a billion as Mr Albanese formally unveiled the election pitch to a rally of Labor Party faithful last week.

Labor has since ramped up attacks on the opposition’s handling of Medicare, particularly a rebates freeze last decade that independent experts have attributed to fewer GPs bulk-billing.

“Peter Dutton has a record that’s negative,” Mr Albanese said.

“He did rip tens of billions of dollars out of the health system.”

Stefanovic remarked that it sounded as though he was promoting “Mediscare 2.0”, a nod to Labor’s 2016 campaign that forced former Coalition prime minister Malcolm Turnbull to promise that “Medicare will never, ever, ever be privatised”.

But Mr Albanese insisted he was not pushing a “negative campaign” but “a positive one”.

“What I’ll do is go through the policies,” he said.

“I want to bring Australians together. I want to lift people up, not punch down on people.”