The Guardian - Australia news live updates: Scott Morrison says he will support ‘whoever is elected’ as Peter Dutton confirms bid for Liberal leadership

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Australia news live updates: Scott Morrison says he will support ‘whoever is elected’ as Peter Dutton confirms bid for Liberal leadership

Link [2022-05-26 02:17:54]

PM says Australia needs to ‘respond’ to China’s Pacific plan; Plibersek apologises for comparing Dutton to Lord Voldemort as former defence minister launches charm offensive; new foreign affairs minister Penny Wong turns her focus to the Pacific. Keep up with all the day’s developments here

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The PM is asked what he thought of Tanya Plibersek saying Peter Dutton looks like Voldemort, and reiterates that he wants to “change the way politics operates”:

It was a mistake. It shouldn’t have been said. We all make mistakes from time to time.

What we need to do is to move on from them and it is how we respond to them. Tanya Plibersek responded appropriately. I want to change the way that politics operates.

Quite clearly, one of the issues that came up, we might have discussed it in previous weeks on this program, is we couldn’t tell from opposition where all the pots of money had been stored by this government.

They abused the process of the contingency reserve to create funds for use during the election campaign. We will go through those line by line because it is taxpayers’ money, not Liberal party or National party money that was being allocated in the billions, frankly, during this campaign.