The federal coalition has pledged to cut the cost of medications for everyday conditions under a $150 million plan, as cost of living remains an election focus ahead of Labor's official campaign launch on Sunday.
Opposition leader Anthony Albanese also said a Labor government would set up a royal commission into the unlawful robodebt scheme - but Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the issues had already been addressed.
The announcements on day 20 of the federal election campaign come as Labor prepares for its official launch in Western Australia where it is hoping to pick up the seats of Pearce, Swan and Hasluck.
"We've got the quality, there's one thing we're missing. Quantity. We want more Labor seats in WA," Mr Albanese told party faithful in Perth on Saturday afternoon alongside MP Anne Aly, who holds the seat of Cowan on less than a one per cent margin.
Meanwhile, Mr Albanese and Mr Morrison have agreed to a second election debate on the Nine Network, it has been announced.
The debate on Sunday 8 May will be broadcast on Channel Nine and streamed online, the network said.
The Greens have also announced they will preference Labor ahead of the coalition at the election on 21 May.
Morrison announces plan for cheaper medications
Speaking to reporters in Tasmania on Saturday, Mr Morrison said the price of medications listed under the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) would be cut from 1 January next year.
The $10 savings per script would see the price of PBS medicines drop from $42.50 to $32.50 and would ease the hip-pocket pressure on more than 19 million Australians each year, he said.
Mr Morrison said he understands cost of living pressures are "real" and are coming from "all around the world".
Prime Minister Scott Morrison and wife Jenny visit a chemist on Day 20 of the 2022 federal election campaign, in Launceston, in the seat of Bass. Saturday, 30 April, 2022. Source: AAP / MICK TSIKAS
"But what you can do is what we’re doing: you can provide that relief ... you can make the safety net more generous to help people who are on these medications, and you can reduce the non-concessional payment down by $10 on every single script."
But Labor's finance spokesperson, Senator Katy Gallagher, criticised the government's announcement, pointing to it having previously been announced by two ministers, despite it not being funded in the 2022 federal budget, and deleted from Hansard.
"Let's not forget where this shambles of an announcement from the government came from," she said, speaking alongside Mr Albanese and Labor's treasury spokesperson Jim Chalmers in Perth.
"I suspect it's the fact that we'll have more to say about this that has focused Mr Morrison's mind on making the announcement he has today.
"He's made an announcement his own government has abolished twice. Now, it's not about cost of living, it's about his political convenience."
Mr Morrison had earlier defended the decision not to fund the measure in the budget, saying the earlier announcement was an "error which was acknowledged at the time".
"What we did in the budget was put in place temporary measures to deal with the cost of living," Mr Morrison said.
"What this is, is the next step. Those temporary measures provide a transition to other longer-term measures and this is a longer-term measure."
Legislation was also needed to ensure current discounts remain in place, Mr Morrison said.
"This is an important change for the future and it will be done in a methodical way," he said.
National president of the Pharmacy Guild of Australia Trent Twomey welcomed the announcement.
"This reduction will help Australians struggling with the cost of living to make ends meet without delaying, deferring or skipping their prescription medicines," he said.
The medicines announcement comes as dominate the election campaign, with inflation spiking to a 20-year high, power prices rising and interest rates expected to rise as early as next week.
The Reserve Bank of Australia's (RBA) board meets on Tuesday to decide whether to proceed with the first cash rate rise in 12 years, taking it above a historically low 0.1 per cent.
The last time interest rates rose during an election campaign was in 2007 when the Howard government lost to Labor.
After exiting a week of COVID-19 isolation on Friday, Mr Albanese on Saturday faced questions about how Labor would ease cost of living pressures for Australian families.
"We have said we’ll make childcare cheaper. We’ve said we have a plan to actually lift wages. We have said we have a plan as well to take pressure off electricity prices," he said, saying more will be announced at the party's campaign launch on Sunday.
Senator Gallagher said the opposition's plans would put downward pressure on household budgets through cheaper childcare and energy prices.
"They're the levers available to us in government," she said.
Mr Albanese also announced $125 million in funding for 135 locally made electric buses, as part of a plan to shore up onshore manufacturing.
"A core part of my pitch to the Australian people is making more things here," he said.
"One of the lessons of the pandemic is we have to stand on our own two feet. We're vulnerable if we're at the end of supply chains.
Meanwhile, the prime minister was lauding the government's economic plan in Tasmania.
Taking the stage at a Launceston campaign rally, Mr Morrison told the crowd the election is about a strong economy underpinning a strong future as he urged Australians to stay the course with the current government.
"You may not like everything we've done, you may not like me that much, but that's not the point," Mr Morrison said.
"The point is you know what our plan is ... now is not the time to take a risk on what you don't know."
Labor pledges robodebt royal commission
Labor has announced it would launch if it won government.
Government services spokesman Bill Shorten said on Saturday that key questions remain unanswered after a $1.2 billion settlement between robodebt victims and the federal government was reached in 2020.
"The robodebt campaign over four years was the government going to war with its own people and it didn't have the legal authority," he told reporters.
The automated matching of tax and Centrelink data to raise debts against welfare recipients for money the coalition claimed to have overpaid was ruled unlawful in 2019.
But the government has never detailed who was accountable for the scheme and which ministers knew of its problems.
Mr Morrison was social services minister when it was conceived but has denied personal responsibility for the scheme.
Labor has long called for a royal commission into robodebt, which Mr Albanese described as "a human tragedy, wrought by this government".
"Against all evidence and all the outcry, the government insisted on using algorithms instead of people to pursue debt recovery against Australians who in many cases had no debt to pay," he said.
"It caused untold misery. Only an Albanese Labor government will find out the truth."
The Australian Council of Social Service is backing the plan, calling it appropriate and proportionate.
"We need to properly probe the decisions and processes that led to this woeful situation and make sure nothing remotely similar ever happens again," CEO Cassandra Goldie said.
"We also need to probe the underlying thinking."
The royal commission would be tasked with establishing who was responsible for the scheme, what advice was used in its implementation and complaints handling processes.
It would also look at the cost to taxpayers of the debacle and harm caused to those targeted.
Labor says the royal commission has $30 million budgeted against it and the terms of reference would be in place before Christmas if it forms government in May.
The prime minister hit back at the proposal, saying the issues had already been addressed.
"There have been numerous inquiries into this and there have been court matters which we fully co-operated in," Mr Morrison said.
"Almost $750 million in reimbursements have been made by the government and the changes to the scheme have been put in place. The problem has been addressed."
Any inquiry would need to start with the process of income assessment, averaging of incomes, which was introduced by the Labor Party, Mr Morrison said.
"I find it quite hypocritical that a scheme the Labor Party actually introduced for income averaging in assessing people's welfare entitlements, that they now seek to criticise the government for," he said.
"The Labor Party do this all the time. They just come out and make these assertions."
But Mr Shorten said Australians still did not know "how this reckless scheme was unleashed".
"We do not know whether poor legal advice was given or whether legal advice was simply never sought," he said.
"We do not know if public servants were inappropriately heavied and politicised. And without knowing the true origins we do not know what safeguards could be put in place to prevent a repeat."
Labor will also launch a user audit of the myGov government services digital portal to assess its reliability and functionality.
Morrison pressed on speculation over timing of China-Solomon Islands security pact announcement
Mr Morrison was on Saturday asked about remarks made by Home Affairs Minister Karen Andrews speculating whether China timed the announcement of a Solomon Islands security deal, with the election campaign.
Earlier this week, Ms Andrews told 4BC radio that Beijing is "clearly very aware that we are in a federal election campaign here at the moment".
"I think that there’s a number of things we should be looking at with what is happening with China in the Pacific region," she said.
"The one thing we should be at least taking notice of and paying some attention to is the timing of the announcements and the deals in relation to the Solomon Islands.
"Beijing is very clearly aware that we're in a federal election campaign here at the moment and now we have significant focus on what is happening in the Pacific Islands, what China is doing.
"Now, why now? Why in the middle of a federal election campaign is all this coming to light?"
Ms Andrews continued: "I mean, we talk about political interference and that has many forms, so I think we need to be very much aware of what Beijing is doing."
She did not provide any evidence to back up the comment.
Mr Morrison told reporters on Saturday the government is "very aware of the influence that the Chinese government seeks to have in this country."
"We, in fact, introduced laws to prevent it. So any suggestion that the Chinese government doesn't seek to interfere in Australia - well, we didn't put that legislation in for no reason.
"We put it in there to ensure that Australian security could be safeguarded from foreign influence in our own country."
When asked whether he believed the announcement was designed to coincide with the election, Mr Morrison said: "All I'm saying is that there is form on foreign interference in Australia. There is."
With additional reporting by Emma Brancatisano.
