Chalmers & Albo lose ground in polls + How to beat the sneeze this spring

Sacha Barbour Gatt (0:07)

Hello, happy Monday, and welcome to The Briefing, Sacha Barbour Gatt with you. More Australians than ever are dealing with hay fever this spring, one in four of us now fighting off a runny nose and itchy eyes. And with climate change affecting the seasons, experts say it could get worse.

Janet Davies (0:23)

The assumption that hay fever is just a springtime issue is probably one that I think we have to revisit and keep our minds open.

Sacha Barbour Gatt (0:33)

That chat is coming up in the second half of this episode, but first, let's get into the headlines with producer Tessa Randello. It is Monday, October 5th.

Morning, Sacha, and starting this week in politics, and Labor suffered a hit in the latest opinion poll, which shows support for not only the party but also its most senior members is slipping. Labor's lost one point in the primary vote to sit on 28%, with One Nation leading by one point on 29 and the Coalition on 21

Two party preferred the government dropped two to make it 50-50 with the opposition, while Anthony Albanese remained steady as preferred PM with 31% of voters. But Pauline Hanson climbed two points to 26%, making it a five-point race. Yes, but it was the net favorability ratings that the PM and Treasurer suffered the biggest hits in. So that's a polly's favorability rating minus their unfavorability rating. And Albo's dropped 10 points to minus 27 That's his lowest rating ever. The Treasurer, meantime, lost nine points to sit on minus 23%, which was his worst ever rating as well. Now, the poll of a thousand people was taken from Monday to Friday last week during a bruising period for the government, during which the RBA lifted the official cash rate again to a 15-year high. That sparked conversations around how much money governments are spending, but amidst cost of living pressures. Albanese flagged relief was on the way in the December budget update. However, in an appearance on ABC's Insiders yesterday, Chalmers downplayed that.

Jim Chalmers (2:07)

I think people understand that the mid-year update will necessarily be a pretty tight ship, and that's because of these pressures on our budget, the ones that are existing already, but also these additional pressures coming at us from around the world.

Sacha Barbour Gatt (2:21)

Now, the Treasurer did promise more savings were on the way, and he also appeared to talk up responsible economic management as a way to address inflation, and that was a record that he had to defend last week after interest rates were increased, and obviously that broader conversation, as you mentioned, Tessa, about government spending and their role in it. The Coalition actually did call on the Treasurer over the weekend to resign. Tim Wilson, the Shadow Treasurer, got up and said he's a terrible, no, sorry, the word was disastrous Treasurer, but then he was subsequently questioned on the costings of a bunch of the Coalition's election promises and was questioned about how inflationary they could be. And he kind of said, oh, well, we're still waiting for numbers on that. So as always, the opposition is quick to try and capitalize on the feeling of the people, which is fair because people are feeling worried, they're feeling scared. Some are feeling worse than that in the wake of the latest interest rate decision, but also the outlook, the outlook is not looking good either. So I think the fact that we're seeing these polling numbers as well for Albo and for Jim Chalmers is not surprising at all.

Changing pace now and Australian security agencies have confirmed they're investigating after it was revealed a Flydubai pilot who allegedly tried to hijack an Israel-bound flight spent time here as a student. On Wednesday last week, the man allegedly tried to take control of a flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv by stabbing the pilot with an ax mid-air. The plane dropped more than 16,000 feet in just over 30 seconds. The injured pilot then managed to get the door open to the cockpit, letting in passengers who managed to restrain the attacker. The co-pilot's name is being reported by a number of news outlets as Hamam El Hamami. In 2014, he was granted a student visa in Australia and arrived the following year to start at one of our universities before then leaving the country in 2017

His visa was eventually cancelled in 2019 because he was no longer enrolled in the course. Australian Federal Police, the Victorian Joint Counterterrorism Team, Victoria Police and ASIO are now all involved in an investigation into his links here. That's as far as we know. We don't know what specifically they are probing of his time in Australia, but just the fact that he was here over that time period back in the mid-2010s. Look, over the weekend, we also heard from a UAE prosecutor who did call the incident an alleged terrorist attack and confirmed that a crash axe was used. Those are typically kept inside the cockpit to use in case of emergencies. Meantime, a Flydubai spokesperson says the circumstances surrounding the incident remain under investigation.