Australia's Prime Minister Scott Morrison called federal elections for next Sunday, May 21, starting a battle from behind to stay in power after three years shaken by floods, forest fires and the COVID-19 pandemic.
The conservative Morrison government is struggling to attract Australia's 17 million voters, lagging behind the opposition Labour Party in a series of opinion polls despite presiding over a recovering economy with an unemployment rate of four percent, the lowest in 13 years.
“This election is about you. No one else's. It's about our country and its future,” Morrison said.
“I know that Australians have been through a very difficult time. I also know that Australia will continue to face very difficult challenges in the coming years,” he said at a press conference in Canberra.
Polls show that much of the electorate is wary of the 53-year-old leader, who presents himself as the typical Australian family man and is not afraid to announce his Christian Pentecostal faith.
In a harsh period leading up to the vote, politicians, including two disgruntled members of their own Liberal Party, accused him of being a thug and an autocrat, and one said he “had no moral compass.”
The opposition leader of the Labour Party, Anthony Albanese, 59, aims to end nine years of rule by the Liberal-National Party, a cautious activist who focuses on Morrison's performance in the face of crises. It's a tactic that seems to be working.
A recent Newspoll poll showed that Labour is leading the coalition at 54 percent versus 46 percent on a bipartisan basis.
Morrison and Albanese were statistically tied as prime minister of choice for the next three-year term.
Multiple polls show that the cost of living, with gasoline prices rising markedly since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, is a key concern ahead of the elections, in which voting is compulsory.
In a pre-election spree, the government announced a series of gifts, including a fuel tax cut and a tax refund for about half of the adult population.
But the extreme weather events attributed to the planet's overheating and the government's response have also puzzled many Australians.
(With information from AFP)
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