Highlights
- Mr Morrison announced a $14 million commitment for Alice Springs to support a community-led response to reduce crime rates and improve access to mental health services.
- The Coalition promises not to raise or introduce any new taxes, should the party be re-elected.
- Labor is refusing to be drawn on the detail of its tax policy in response to the prime minister's pledge.
After attending a church service in Sydney to mark Orthodox Easter, Prime Minister Scott Morrison has shifted campaigning to the Northern Territory.
There, the Coalition's promising millions of dollars in investment to tackle crime and increase jobs as part of its bid for the key seat of Lingiari, currently held by retiring Labor M-P Warren Snowden.
He says the plan was developed with Country Liberal Senate candidate Jacinta Price, after he was criticised for not understanding the issue earlier in the year.
Labor is pledged to train an additional 500 Indigenous health workers and invest in life-saving dialysis and rheumatic heart disease treatments, should it win government.
The money will deliver up to 30 new dialysis units to treat chronic kidney disease and double the federal funding to combat Rheumatic Heart Disease with $12 million for prevention, screening and treatment.
Labor senator Penny Wong says her party will also invest $15 million to improve water supply in remote communities so to enable them to have dialysis units for the first time
"First Nations Australians are for times more likely to die from pneumatic heart disease, four times more likely to have kidney disease. And more than twice as likely to die from suicide in their youth. The First Nations people, First Nations communities of this land need a Prime Minister who will take responsibility and deliver on his promises. For all Australians."
Scott Morrison has doubled down on the Coalition's promise not to raise or introduce any new taxes, should the party be re-elected.
The pledge will see $100 billion added to the national debt as part of a "lower tax guarantee" over the next four years.
The Coalition will also cap government taxation revenue at 23.9 per cent of gross domestic product.
Labor is refusing to be drawn on the detail of its tax policy in response to the prime minister's pledge.
And while the party's leader remains in isolation for a third day, its treasury spokesman has outlined its safeguard mechanisms for curbing climate emissions in Australia.
Businesses will be given two choices - cut emissions or purchase carbon credits, with current abatements costing $24 per tonne.
Jim Chalmers has told the A-B-C that cuts to foreign aid spending and concerns about global warming are factors in the Solomon Islands' recent signing of a security pact with China.
"We need to earn the trust and we need to earn the friendship of our Pacific neighbours and we need to rebuild our diplomatic capacity. Part of that relies on being credible partners on climate change and part of that relies on being meaningful partners when it comes to development assistance."
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