MELBOURNE: Australia’s Prime Minister Scott Morrison called federal elections for May 21, launching a battle to stay in power after three years rocked by floods, bushfires and the Covid-19 pandemic.
Morrison’s conservative government is struggling to woo Australian voters and is lagging behind the opposition Labour party in opinion polls despite presiding over a rebounding economy with a 13-year-low unemployment rate of four percent.
“It’s a choice between a strong future and an uncertain one. It’s a choice between a government you know and a Labour opposition that you don’t,” Morrison told a news conference in Canberra.
Polls show much of the electorate distrusts the 53-year-old leader, who fashions himself as a typical Australian family man. Aiming to end nine years of Liberal-National Party rule is 59-year-old Labour Party leader Anthony Albanese.
The opposition leader started the six-week race to the poll pushing a message of optimism before highlighting bruising attacks on Morrison’s character emanating from his own government.
“He’s running in an election campaign, whereby his deputy prime minister has said he’s a hypocrite and a liar,” Albanese told media in Sydney. “We can and we must do better. The pandemic has given us the opportunity to imagine a better future and Labour has the policies and plans to shape that future.”
A recent survey showed Labour leading the coalition 54 percent to 46 percent on a two-party basis. Morrison and Albanese were in a statistical tie as preferred prime minister for the next three-year term.
Multiple surveys show the cost of living, with gasoline prices notably soaring since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, is a key concern ahead of the election, in which voting is compulsory.
The government announced an array of giveaways before the election, including a fuel tax cut and a tax rebate for about half of the adult population. Extreme weather events blamed on an overheating planet and the government’s response have also unnerved many Australians.
Morrison is a strident supporter of Australia’s vast fossil fuel industry. He has vowed to mine and export coal for as long as there are buyers, touted a “gas-fired recovery” from the pandemic, and resisted global calls to cut carbon emissions faster by 2030.
Morrison has been panned over his handling of climate-related disasters in Australia. During the 2019-2020 Black Summer bushfires, which killed more than 30 people, Morrison took his family on a Christmas holiday to Hawaii.
More recently, a deadly two-week east coast flooding disaster in late February and early March left residents seething at a perceived lack of government preparation and emergency help.
Morrison has also struggled to win over women voters after his handling of rape allegations made by a female political staffer in government, as well as young voters repelled by his pro-coal stance. He has defied the odds before, winning what he described as a “miracle’ election in May 2019 despite trailing in most polls.
