Congrats on getting through the third leaders’ debate. Last night’s panel gave it to Peter Dutton, but it was a solid performance from both, so both campaigns would be happy.

And Labor is pretty happy that Dutton gave its campaign more grist for the ‘he cuts, you pay’ advertising campaign, when he said that he wouldn’t know what he would do with the budget until he was in government.,

When John Howard came into power, there was $96 billion of debt from Labor at that point. John Howard didn’t outline the budget from opposition and it is not something you can do from opposition,”

Albanese jumped on that:

“There will be cuts afterwards – he’s just confirmed that – but they won’t tell you what they are.”

Labor is already planning more election ads that target the unknown Coalition cuts it says Dutton is planning, while the Coalition has told the AFR it will start its own election blitz in these final days of the campaign.

The AEC anticipates about half of the record number of Australians registered to vote at next week’s election will do so ahead of 3 May, with pre poll centres about to be swamped.

That doesn’t leave a lot of time for Dutton to find the momentum he says is coming. The Coalition is champing at the bit to release its defence policy, which will outspend Labor’s and offer more to the US through pillar two of Aukus. But with Newspoll showing that women and younger people are already turning away from the Coalition, defence spending is unlikely to win them back.

We’ll cover all the day’s events, with some fact checks and will answer more of your questions. Coffee number two is on and coffee number three will be right behind it.

Ready? Let’s get into it.