Australian politics and news RECAP: Anthony Albanese renews faith and religious relationships on Easter Sunday

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As he returned to a former stomping ground to celebrate Easter, Anthony Albanese was also praying for a second coming as prime minister, AAP writes.

Mr Albanese marked Easter Sunday by attending a Mass at St Mary’s Cathedral in Sydney, the site of his former school, alongside his fiancee Jodie Haydon.

It was standing room only as the prime minister was among hundreds of fellow worshippers, where he reminisced about his eight years at St Mary’s Cathedral College.

“It’s an important part of my life. When in year six the Christian Brothers heard that I was going to have to leave the school because we weren’t able to afford school fees ... in an act of generosity, (they) said ‘just pay what you can’,” he told reporters in Sydney.

“That is indeed the Christian ethic in practice, and it was wonderful to be back here this morning.”

Mr Albanese also took time after the service to speak to Archbishop of Sydney Anthony Fisher and nuns at the church, reflecting on his time at the cathedral as an altar boy and on school sports teams.

“And you must be pretty tired?” Archbishop Fisher enquired.

“I am but ... the adrenaline kicks in,” Mr Albanese said.

Sunday was the first time in 25 years western Easter and Greek Orthodox Easter coincided on the same day, with the prime minister following up Catholic Mass to break bread with head of Australia’s Greek Orthodox Church, Eminence Archbishop Makarios.

Mr Albanese and Archbishop Makarios met with Greek community members at a restaurant in Sydney, which was packed with diners celebrating the holy day in the city.

Earlier in the day, Mr Albanese professed his devotion to another of his public faiths, the South Sydney Rabbitohs, during an appearance on Nine’s Sunday Footy Show.

Clutching a rabbit mascot that has been passed down through his family, he was quizzed on his beloved team and the future NRL side based in Papua New Guinea.

“(I) came out of the womb with a red and green eye,” he said.

Read the full story here.

The Prime Minister has done his best not to drop the ball on Easter Sunday as he continued along the election trail - flexing his rugby skills on the NRL’s Sunday Footy Show.

His appearance followed an earlier security scare where police and some of the PM’s security detail apprehended a man outside of Channel Nine’s North Sydney headquarters moments prior to the PM’s arrival.

The leftie was fed balls by host and former star Andrew Johns as he did his best to fire each one through a stationary target while on the clock.

The PM has once previously joked that his mother raised him “in three great faiths: the Catholic Church, the Australian Labor Party, and the South Sydney Rabbitohs”.

Some fans on social media hailed his impressive arm, while others hoped he might show more competence in other politics-based endeavours.

“He’s getting my vote for that,” one person said.

Another wrote, “Can pass the footy as good as he passes the blame”.

One thing’s for certain: The PM’s effort was nowhere near as embarrassing as John Howard’s bowling flop on the cricket field during a visit to Pakistan two decades ago.

With pre-polling ahead of the Federal election set to open this Tuesday, the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) are prompting their ​​voting centre finder tool​​ to help electors locate their nearest early voting centre.

The tool allows users to enter their home suburb to find out which electorate they live in and where they can cast their vote at the hundreds of centres expected to open.

It comes as the election campaign has slowed over the Easter period, with both major parties scaling back activity.

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There is concern, however, within the Coalition that their policy pitch may have come too late to gain traction — particularly with many Australians taking advantage of the Easter–Anzac Day window to take up to 10 days off work.

The campaign is expected to return to full force on Tuesday as pre-polling opens and both leaders prepare to face off in their third televised debate, hosted that evening by Nine in Sydney.

It’s now too late to enrol or update your details for the 2025 federal election, as the roll closed at 8pm local time on Monday, April 7, 2025.

Find your closest early voting centre​​ here​​.

In the latest security concern on the campaign trail, a man has been arrested outside Channel Nine’s North Sydney headquarters just moments before Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was expected to arrive.

The Labor leader was attending the studios to make an appearance on the NRL Sunday Footy Show program when security who went ahead of him spotted the man allegedly acting erratically.

He was arrested by NSW Police about 11am but not before allegedly jumping on a car parked along Denison Street and acting aggressively.

A NSW Police spokeswoman said officers from their North Shore Police Area Command attended after the alert was raised.

“Police arrested a man aged in his 20s after he allegedly jumped onto a car. Checks revealed the man had also breached his bail conditions,” she said.

It’s understood the incident wasn’t linked to the PM’s appearance but his assisting security officers had helped detain the man until he was placed in a secure NSW Police vehicle.

The man has been taken to Chatswood Police Station where he is expected to be interviewed at a later stage. So far, no charges have been laid.

It comes after several other high-profile security incidents along the campaign trail, including one involving alt-right activists targeting Mr Albanese in a Melbourne hotel lobby in recent days.

Opposition leader Peter Dutton has also faced disruptions from protesters during campaign events, including by climate activists posing as media during an early-morning tour of a brewery.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has marked Easter Sunday with a return to familiar ground by attending morning mass at Sydney’s St Mary’s Cathedral, where he once served as an altar boy.

Alongside his fiancée Jodie Haydon, the Labor leader greeted Archbishop Anthony Fisher and Father Don Richardson ahead of the 9am mass in the church, which is one of the city’s largest Catholic services.

Mr Albanese has previously reflected on how his Catholic upbringing shaped his commitment to social justice, values he says continue to influence his political life.

He has once previously joked that his mother raised him “in three great faiths: the Catholic Church, the Australian Labor Party, and the South Sydney Rabbitohs”.

At the service, Archbishop Fisher said Mr Albanese “must be pretty tired” with the election campaign, to which he said: “But the adrenaline kicks in”.

The Easter mass has been a pause in what’s been a tightly run and disciplined campaign but as the holiday truce between leaders winds down, the Prime Minister is expected to ramp things up.

With early voting set to open on Tuesday, the next leaders’ debate on Tuesday night and just weeks until the May 3 poll, Mr Albanese has appeared confident but measured.

The PM is expected to stay in Sydney for a series of engagements throughout Sunday.

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Greens leader Adam Bandt has been quizzed if he’s getting ahead of himself by asking government departments to prepare for the possibility of a hung parliament.

Asked on ABC Insiders why he was requesting for documents specifically to include the Greens’ priorities, Mr Bandt said it was common practice for parties to enquire about such material ahead of an election.

David Speers: “Despite the Prime Minister saying he is not going to negotiate to the Greens, you are actually writing to the head of Treasury today and to the head of the Prime Minister’s department to start preparing for negotiations?”

Adam Bandt: “Before every election, the officials prepare a ‘red book’ and a ‘blue book’ in the case of either side winning,” he said.

“This election, the ‘red book’ and ‘blue book’ will be pretty light reading and more pamphlets rather than detailed policy descriptions.

“A third (of voters are) now voting for someone else (rather than major parties).

“And with the experts saying we are heading for a minority Parliament, every chance of that, we are saying that given that we know that they are looking at things like negative gearing and capital gains tax, let’s do the work now to get the policy work done so we can put some of those ideas on the table and have a discussion about them in the early days of the next Parliament.”

As Speers has touched on in his questioning to Mr Bandt on Insiders, the Prime Minister has previously — as recently as his Thursday press conference — publicly rejected the idea of doing any deals with the Greens.

Treasurer Jim Chalmers also said Greens-style tax changes aren’t on Labor’s agenda, even though he confirmed this week Labor has received “advice” on the impact of a shake-up to negative gearing.

Greens leader Adam Bandt has acknowledged that any plan to incorporate dental care into Medicare would need to be phased in over time due to workforce limitations and gradual uptake by patients.

The Greens have made free dental one of their headline policies this election, featuring oversized tooth props at press events and even turning Bandt’s Instagram profile picture into an image of his face superimposed onto a tooth.

He has said it will be a key policy they will push Labor on in the event of a minority government after the May 3 poll.

But when questioned on the feasibility of the policy on ABC Insiders on Easter Sunday, which has been costed by the Parliamentary Budget Office at $45 billion, Mr Bandt confirmed the Greens expect a gradual rollout.

“In that costing... that’s basically what they’ve said would happen,” he told ABC’s Insiders host David Speers.

“It would take a while, based on international experience and based on their modeling, as people found out about the scheme, utilisation stepped up. So it would, in fact, slowly step up.”

The policy has raised concerns about the whopping cost to taxpayers and whether there are enough dentists available to meet a surge in demand.

Mr Bandt said while access may be a challenge in some areas, action was needed as the main barrier for Australians getting the care they need was still affordability.

“We know the main reason that people are avoiding going and seeing the dentist at the moment is cost,” he said.

“Now there will be some areas, of course, where it might be difficult to find a dentist, but the main reason is cost.

“In a wealthy country like ours, we think that people should be able to… afford to go and see the dentist.

“And one of the key messages that came back from that was that people were not choosing dentistry because of the massive debts they’d be left with, and we want to fix that as well with free education.”

Mr Bandt added that part of the Greens’ long-term vision involves growing the dental workforce by making education more accessible.

“We conducted a Senate inquiry into this that looked at things including the workforce,” he said.

Shadow NDIS Minister Michael Sukkar says the Coalition is committed to maintaining the integrity of the scheme, promising no drastic cuts but a focus on managing its growth.

“The NDIS, obviously, it’s growing at greater than 10 per cent at the moment. That target is about 8.4 per cent,” he said.

“I think we have to try and meet the targets.

“We’ve got a funding envelope now for the next four years that is quite ambitious, though, I might say, to get growth down from where it is at the moment... It’s going to be hard.

“I (have been) told by the department, they’re very confident that that can happen.

“At the moment, we’ve got a huge implementation schedule that we’ve sort of touched on, that sort of flows from the legislation.

“I think a lot of the future growth in the NDIS will depend on some of those administrative decisions that now are at an agency level, including how plans are created, how they’re structured, how the payments are made.

“We don’t want money wasted with fraud and foreign criminal cartels and gangs. That’s what we want to stop.

“But we want to make sure that everyone who needs the support gets it.”

Greens leader Adam Bandt has flagged a negative gearing shake-up if Australians vote in a minority government at the May 3 federal election.

Speaking to ABC’s Insiders, Mr Bandt said a fair phase-out of negative gearing would form part of negotiations with Labor in the event it needs Greens support to govern.

“We’ve got to diffuse this time bomb in a way that is fair,” Mr Bandt said, arguing that current tax concessions for investors are fuelling the housing affordability crisis.

He said the Greens’ policy would allow existing investors to continue negatively gearing one property in addition to their family home, but remove concessions for those with multiple properties.

“If you have one investment property, the existing arrangement applies, but in the future, if you (have) two to 200 investment properties you can pay the same tax as everyone else has to,” he said.

“You shouldn’t expect a handout from the Government for that.”

“For us there are three things that need to be done: One is winding back the handouts in a way that is fair. The second is (to) start to put caps on rent increases. We have that in the ACT at the moment.

“The third is (to) build more homes that can be rented out at affordable rates.”

Mr Sukkar warned in an earlier interview that a potential minority government with the Greens could provide Labor the opportunity to abolish negative gearing and change capital gains tax.

“If the government is planning to abolish negative gearing and change CGT after the election, they’ve just got to come clear with the Australian people. We know they’re itching to do it,” he told ABC Insiders.

“They went to two elections vehemently arguing for it, so we know they want to do it, and perhaps a minority government with the Greens will give them the opportunity to do what we know they want to do, and that’s abolish negative gearing and ultra CGT.”