24 hrs to polling day; Minecraft saves Woolies; Pratt's $7.8b promise

24 hrs to polling day; Minecraft saves Woolies; Pratt's $7.8b promise

News in brief

Twenty four hours away from election day and both PM Anthony Albanese and Opposition Leader Peter Dutton appear confident of winning tomorrow’s poll, although experts say an Albanese win is most likely. The trickier question is whether Labor will be returned as a majority or minority government.

 

Woolworths released its March quarter revenue figures yesterday, and while sales were up in the supermarket division, in part thanks to Minecraft collectibles, the Big W department stores are struggling.

 

Visy packaging magnate Anthony Pratt has pledged to invest $US5 billion - $7.8 billion Aussie dollars – in American manufacturing, ahead of his meeting with Donald Trump at the White House.

 

The United States and Ukraine have reached a deal over access to Ukraine’s natural resources, a move that Kyiv sought to solidify President Donald Trump’s backing in ceasefire talks with Russia.

 

A new study shows that just an hour of weight training a week – three 20 minute sessions at home – can help people gain significant muscle mass and strength.

 

Fear-o-meter

Are you better off today than you were three years ago? That’s the question Peter Dutton wants voters to think about as they head to the polls. The follow-up is would Peter Dutton and the Coalition have done a better job than the ALP?

 

Anthony Albanese says the election is a “choice between two fundamentally different visions for the direction Australia should go”. The follow-on to that question is which vision – Labor or the Coalition’s – is more attractive?

 

Why do voters elect new governments? Sometimes the incumbents are so on the nose they get turfed. Scott Morrison’s parliament in 2022 is an example. At other times, the opposition inspires and gets elected (Kevin Rudd in 2007). In recent times in Australia, there been an unusual amount of chaos in leadership that’s affected results (Gillard/Rudd, Abbott/Turnbull, Turnbull/Morrison).

 

This weekend’s election comes at a time of relatively stable leadership for both parties, so the questions are ‘do voters want to turf out Anthony Albanese’, and ‘has Peter Dutton provided a grand enough vision for Australia’. The answer to both is no.

 

It means Anthony Albanese will win the election tomorrow and head the 48th parliament of Australia.

Who's talking today?

On property prices increasing in April across all capital cities:

 

"This is a remarkable result. We haven't seen every capital city and every regional market up in value over the rolling quarter, or for that matter, the year to date, for a long time. There's been a lot more diversity in the market than this. [But] even though this is a very broad-based positive result, it's definitely not shooting the lights out.

 

...And you've got to admit, it happened during April, which was a month of disruption, not just the tariff announcements and then the subsequent drop in confidence. There was also back-to-back long weekends. We saw a drop in listings coming to market, but we did see clearance rates coming right down as well to the low 60% range."

It’s Friday the 2nd of May 2025, and Anthony Albanese and Peter Dutton are both confident of winning tomorrow's poll, Minecraft collectibles help Woolworths, and Visy's Anthony Pratt promises to invest $7.8 billion in the US. Plus Washington and Kyiv make up and do a deal on natural resources, and a new study says even a small amount of weight training helps.

Greed-o-meter

City	Station	Show	Share
Syd	2GB	Ben Fordham Live	15.6%
Melb	3AW	Ross Stevenson & Russel Howcroft	20.6%
Bris	Nova	Ash, Luttsy & Nikki Osborne	13.6%
Adel	Triple M	Roo, Ditts & Loz	14.0%
Perth	Nova	Nathan, Nat & Shaun	19.8%

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The second set of radio ratings of the year was published yesterday. For every radio station, the most important program is the breakfast show: it typically attracts the largest audience, and the conventional wisdom in radio is that if a station can win the breakfast slot, it can win the rest of the day. This is the #1 breakfast show in each of the main markets around Australia:

Listen to today's episode 🎧 

Source: GfK

Yes, this is too much information.

But Sean Aylmer and Adam Lang are getting very close to setting out on Royal Far West's Ride For Country Kids - a 380km ride through western NSW. The training has intensified, with many hours spent on the bike, and as a result chamois cream has been purchased and deployed. Talk about getting outside your comfort zone.

 

But the goal here is to raise as much money as possible to improve life options for kids from rural communities. If you can help by donating a few dollars to the Fear & Greed team, it will be gratefully appreciated. You can donate here. And we'll be giving supporters a shout-out on the podcast too!