Coalition costings at last; visit from a Trump heavyweight; and trouble behind Liberal lines

Good afternoon readers, and welcome to today’s election edition of Afternoon Update. We’ve got just one day of campaigning to go and five million Australians have already voted – which is, in the Coalition’s eyes, the perfect time to release their costings. (For the record, Labor opted for similar timing in 2022.)

The shadow treasurer, Angus Taylor, told reporters this afternoon the Coalition would improve the budget bottom line by $14bn over the forward estimates and deliver a $40bn improvement in the level of gross debt, declaring: “You will not see a permanent cost-of-living crisis under a Dutton government”.

But the long-awaited costings of more than 200 policies showed that if returned to power, the Coalition would gut a long list of environment and clean energy programs, including scrapping the Net Zero Economy Agency, reversing Labor’s tax breaks for electric vehicles, and redirecting money slated for the home batteries program.

Anthony Albanese spent the second-last day of the campaign high-fiving children in Perth alongside Labor MP Sam Lim (also known as the first dolphin trainer to be elected to parliament), while Peter Dutton visited an agriculture field day in Tasmania and checked out a mobile petrol bowser.

The opposition leader is facing pressure internally and externally over the Coalition’s public service policy and a “backflip” over reforms to the curriculum. But Albanese is not getting too cocky – noting if he wins on Saturday, he’d be the first PM to be re-elected since the early 2000s.

One of the architects of Donald Trump’s 2024 victory has claimed in video calls with undercover reporters from Europe-based organisations Correctiv and the Centre for Climate Reporting that he made an unpublicised visit to Australia to advise the Liberal party about “structural issues” related to the opposition leader ahead of the federal election.

A Coalition spokesman has denied LaCivita had any connection to the Dutton campaign. This afternoon, Liberal senator Jane Hume said such advice “wouldn’t be unusual”, and that campaign teams “talk to each other all the time, particularly centre-right campaign teams, from right around the world”.

In a statement, LaCivita told Guardian Australia he doesn’t work for the party but provides consulting to a “wide variety of business interests”.

Campaigning in Western Australia, Albanese said Dutton was concerned with fighting “culture wars”.

Meanwhile, Dutton has walked back on his previous comments about a “woke agenda” in schools, telling reporters today the Coalition has no proposals to reform what students are being taught. He says has been “very clear” on the topic, as he has been on a range of issues many, many, many times this campaign.

And the lead Senate candidate for the Canberra Liberals, Jacob Vadakkedathu, has hammered Dutton’s policy to slash 41,000 positions from the Australian public service in the ACT, calling the Coalition’s plan “unrealistic” and “not practical”. In Sydney, Bennelong candidate Scott Yung appears to be distancing himself from the Liberals, as a paid ad on WeChat spruiks his “independent thinking”.

“I know we’ve got a mountain to climb.”

If Labor wins the election on Saturday, Anthony Albanese will the first leader since John Howard to retain office for two consecutive terms. Speaking on ABC radio Sydney on Thursday morning, the PM was asked about the latest YouGov poll, which showed Labor would win 84 seats – a clear majority – if an election was held immediately.

He didn’t understate the battle it would take to win over Australians, telling Hamish McDonald he had “no expectations” of securing victory after the “shock” election loss for Labor in 2019.

Joe Exotic, also known as Tiger King, is continuing to hit the socials in support of Anthony Albanese’s federal election campaign. This time, he’s generated an image of the pair of them with some kangaroos, which has done something deeply disturbing to the prime minister’s head.

Exotic, who is in prison in the US, said on X he was not paid for the endorsement but made a “public offer to work for their zoo for free for six months or any other wildlife conservation if he would call president Trump and ask for me to be released”.

Asked about the update on Triple M Perth, Albanese mused whether he had heard about “what we were able to do with Julian Assange”, but added: “I’m not sure that the Joe Exotic issue is within my remit”.