Anthony Albanese begins day five of the election campaign in Western Australia

Anthony Albanese is in Perth on day five of the federal election campaign.

Transcript

00:00It's a bit interesting to see the Prime Minister travelling west so early in the election campaign,

00:07but WA has been very good to Labor in recent years.

00:10At the last election, just three years ago, Labor picked up four seats in WA.

00:15It would love to hold all of them.

00:17The Prime Minister has tried to make a real point during this last term in office of not

00:22taking WA for granted.

00:24He's made something like 30 trips out west over the past three years and has now come

00:29here very, very early on.

00:31If Labor can hold all four of those seats here in the west, plus be competitive in the

00:35new seat of Bullwinkle, that's a three-way contest between Labor, the Liberals and the

00:40National Party, that would make it pretty difficult for Peter Dutton to find a path

00:45to office.

00:46He is coming with an offering for the west here today, $200 million for the St John of

00:50God Midland Hospital.

00:51So clearly trying to continue to make that case to WA voters, to keep up that relationship

00:56and make clear he's not taking them for granted.

00:58And Tom, a YouGov poll has Labor favouring better in recent weeks.

01:02How is the government responding to that?

01:04Yeah, there's actually been a few polls that have come out over the past couple of days,

01:09Gemma, all showing sort of shifts in Labor's direction just in the past couple of weeks

01:14or so.

01:15A News poll this morning, a Resolve poll as well, and that YouGov poll you've mentioned.

01:19Now, none of them are showing commanding leads for Labor or anything like that.

01:23This is still a very tight contest.

01:25But clearly that little shift towards Labor just at the start of this campaign.

01:30That said, Labor figures say they're not reading too much into the polls at this point.

01:34Here's the Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles speaking on this this morning.

01:37This is a close election.

01:39I think everyone knows we're coming from behind.

01:41That's the way in which we're proceeding here.

01:45But we're also really focused on making sure that we are telling the story to the Australian

01:50people about what we've done in relation to focusing on cost of living relief, which

01:55has really been our focus since the time that we've come into power.

01:59So the Deputy Prime Minister making the point there, this is still a very close contest.

02:04Politicians will always tell you the only poll that counts is the one on election day,

02:07but they certainly keep an eye on the polls on the way through.