Australia- 2022 General Election
">Australia is a constitutional democracy with a freely elected federal parliamentary government. In a free and fair federal parliamentary election in May 2019, the Liberal Party and National Party coalition was re-elected with a majority of 77 seats in the 151-seat House of Representatives. The House subsequently reconfirmed Scott Morrison as prime minister.
Australia’s major party leaders go head-to-head to score a change in government - ScoMo vs Albo. Prime Minister Scott Morrison battles it out with leader of the Australian Labor Party Anthony Albanese. The parliamentary elections must take place at least every three years. The country's last election was in May 2019, meaning the government plans to run close to a full term. May firmed as the likely month for the election. Australia's ruling coalition, trailing in the opinion polls, brought forward its annual budget by two months, signalling it will call an election at the latest possible time. Voting options will include in-person and postal services with safety measures in place.
The timing for federal elections is determined by a combination of the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918 (the Act) and the Australian Constitution. If the Government intends to hold a normal (House of Representatives and half-Senate) federal election, election day must be no later than 21 May 2022. The Act requires at least 33 days between the issue of the writ (the writ is an instruction to the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) to hold an election) and polling day (although it can be as long as 68 days after Parliament is dissolved). As the election date is generally not known until the Prime Minister calls an election, the election campaign generally happens in the period between the issue of the writs and polling day.
Scott Morrison deployed the skills he picked up as a party functionary and worked on how best to secure a party room majority and then transform focus group results into electoral gold. But there was little evidence so far of a critical mass of voters just itching to ditch him in favor of something better or even substantially different.
The Leader of the Opposition is Labor Party leader Anthony Albanese. He is also the Federal Member for the electorate Grayndler - Australia's smallest electorate - that covers suburbs in Sydney's inner west like Marrickville, Balmain, parts of Newtown etc. Albanese pledged to reform the way power is divided up between states, territories and the Commonwealth if he wins the federal election, saying there needs to be clearer delineation over who is responsible for what.
In the two-party-preferred poll trend constructed by the Poll Bludger's William Bowe, the government and the opposition were even at the start of 2021, but by December 2021 the two-party average was 53.6 percent for Labor and 46.4 percent for the government. This is a swing of 5.1 points to Labor compared to the 2019 election result, and quite sufficient to give the party a majority in the House.
By early 2022 Morrison's personal approval rating was hovering near its lowest levels in 18 months following a slow COVID-19 vaccination program and prolonged lockdowns and border closures. A Resolve Strategic poll commissioned for Nine-Fairfax newspapers in January 2022 showed the percentage of voters intending to give their primary vote to Labor has increased from 32 to 35 per cent since November 2021.
Those intending to put their No.1 vote to a Coalition candidate had, by contrast, dropped from 39 per cent to 34 per cent, reflecting a growing dissatisfaction with the performance of Morrison and his team. Also worrying for Mr Morrison is that his former double-digit lead over Labor leader Anthony Albanese as preferred prime minister had been dramatically cut. He was now seen as preferred for the top job by 38 percent of respondents, while Mr Albanese is at 31 percent.
Anthony Albanese needed a net gain of eight seats to win a Labor majority at this year's election - but he will face strong resistance from Scott Morrison who wants to cling on to the electorates he has while trying to expand his ranks. The Liberal-National Coalition has 76 seats, the exact amount needed for a majority government, while Labor has 68. Albanese will need eight more to form a government in his own right. Alternatively, he could win five and govern in minority with support from Greens member Adam Bandt and left-leaning independent Andrew Wilkie.
When addressing Australia's National Press Club on 26 January 2022, the leader of Australia's opposition party Anthony Albanese said that Canberra's relations with China will remain "difficult" even if his Labor Party wins the upcoming elections. "It will be difficult because the posture of China has changed. It is China that has changed, not Australia that has changed," he noted. Both the current ruling Liberal Party of Australia and the Australian Labor Party hold similar stances toward China. Albanese promised that a Labor government would deal with China "in a mature way," by not being provocative for the sake of it to make a domestic political point.
Australian Defense Minister Peter Dutton was a potential rival of incumbent Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison. He may harbor thoughts of becoming the next Liberal leader, replacing Morrison. With the election looming, Dutton intended to pile some pressure on Morrison, in a bid to gain more political capital. Dutton challenged former Australian prime minister Malcolm Turnbull in 2018. Although the attempt failed, his ambition to become prime minister still remained. Dutton, a representative of China hawks in Australia, has repeatedly made tough remarks against China especially since he was sworn in as the minister for defense in March 2021.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison set May 21 as the date for Australia's general elections. The vote will be a battle to stay in power for Morrison after three years rocked by floods, bushfires and the pandemic. Australians are set to vote for the House of Representatives and half the Senate, as Morrison hopes to become the first incumbent prime minister to win two elections consecutively since John Howard in 2004.
Opinion polls show that the opposition Labor Party has been ahead of Morrison's center-right coalition since June 2021. In an opinion piece ahead of the elections, Morrison said that despite the many challenges Australians have faced since the last election three years ago — including bushfires, floods, and the COVID-19 pandemic — the country has fared much better than others. "But I know our country continues to face very real challenges and many families are doing it tough," he said. He called on voters to stick with the government that delivered one of the lowest number of pandemic deaths in any advanced economy rather than risk the opposition Labor Party. "This election is a choice between a government that you know and that has been delivering and a Labor opposition that you don't," Morrison said.
The Labor party said that it would offer a better economic alternative for the Australians. Labor leader Anthony Albanese stressed that food, fuel, child care and health care costs had spiked while wages had stayed flat since the conservative coalition came to power in 2013, adding that a Labor government would soften pressure on family budgets. "So when you cringe next time you pay your supermarket bill, remember it was the Morrison government that went out of its way to keep a lid on your pay packet," Albanese said as he made his pitch in an opinion piece.
In May 2022 the Liberal Party lost more than 12 seats during the election. While vote counting had not been completed at the time of Morrison’s concession speech, the Labor Party’s victory appeared certain, winning at least 72 of the parliament’s 151 seats. Morrison’s Liberals nabbed just 54, while independents and third parties – led by the Greens, who secured their best election results yet – have netted 11 thus far, according to ABC. Labor needs 76 seats to form a majority government.
While Labor emerged as the clear winner of the weekend election, it was not immediately clear if the party will secure 76 seats in Australia's 151-seat assembly and form a single-party government once all votes are counted. If they fall short of an absolute majority, however, the left-leaning party can form a coalition with some of the independent deputies or the country's Greens.
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