CANBERRA, Australia – (`) – Australians will return on Saturday after a six-week campaign that has focused on pandemic-related inflation, climate change and fears that a Chinese military outpost will be built less than 2,000 kilometers (1,200 miles) away. go to the elections. off Australia’s coast.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s Conservative coalition is seeking a rare fourth three-year term.
He began the campaign in April by urging voters to stick with a government that had one of the lowest pandemic death rates of any advanced economy, rather than risk the opposition centre-left Labor Party.
Snap general elections late last year had been widely expected, and Morrison should reap the political capital of his administration’s success in containing the spread of COVID-19 in the first year of the pandemic.
However, its nickname “ScoMo” was changed by critics to “SloMo” a year ago when Australia’s vaccine rollout fell months behind schedule.
Australia has recorded more than double the number of COVID-19 deaths so far this year than in the first two years of the pandemic. Around 8,000 people have died from COVID-19 among Australia’s 26 million people. Just 2,239 died in 2020 and 2021. The more easily transmissible virus variants have clouded the government’s pandemic record.
The government changed voting rules on Friday to allow thousands of people recently infected with COVID-19 to vote by phone.
“Making this change so late in the process is not without risk, but we think it’s worth it, especially given the mood in the community, and that’s why we asked the government to make this change and the government has agreed,” he said Australian Elections Commissioner Tom Rogers.
Rogers said some polling stations would close Saturday because many of the 105,000 poll workers had contracted the virus or the flu. Army reservists were asked to fill in.
The pandemic and war in Ukraine have pushed up the cost of living and cast doubt on the Conservatives’ boast of being better managers of the economy than Labour.
After annual inflation rose to 5.1% in the March quarter, the central bank raised interest rates to 0.35% from 0.1% for the first time in more than 11 years.
Two weeks after cash rose a quarter percentage point to 6.75% in November 2007, Prime Minister John Howard’s Conservative government was voted out, ending more than 11 years in office.
Opposition Treasury Department spokesman Jim Chalmers described this month’s rate hike as a “full-blown cost-of-living crisis overseen by Scott Morrison.”
Labor has also targeted the government’s foreign policy credentials after China and Solomon Islands confirmed during the election campaign that they had a bilateral security pact. Labor described it as Australia’s worst foreign policy failure in the Pacific since World War II.
Australia already has a security pact with the Solomon Islands and is the most generous donor of foreign aid to the impoverished South Pacific island nation.
Foreign Secretary Marise Payne had proposed in November doubling Australian aid to the Pacific to A$2.88 billion ($2 billion) a year to counter China’s growing influence, the Australian newspaper reported on Friday, citing no mentioned sources. But she was rejected by colleagues on her cabinet’s National Security Committee.
Morrison declined to confirm or deny the newspaper report because of the secrecy of the committee’s deliberations.
Morrison declined the premise of a question when a reporter asked if he would consider doubling Pacific aid to counter Beijing’s moves.
“They are suggesting that if you just double down on funding in the Pacific, somehow the Chinese government has no clout or will not succeed in forcing or exerting its clout in the Southwest Pacific,” he said. “That is your assumption, and that assumption is not correct.”
Solomon Islands Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare said there will be no Chinese naval base in his country and China has refused to establish a military foothold in the islands.
Senior government lawmakers said the timing of the China-Solomon deal during an election campaign was evidence Beijing was trying to undermine the ruling coalition’s re-election prospects.
The government claims that Beijing wants a change in leadership because a Labor government would be less likely to stand up to Chinese economic coercion.
As well as campaigning against Labour, Morrison’s conservative Liberal Party is fighting a new challenge from so-called blue-green independent candidates for re-election to key MPs in government strongholds.
Marketed as greener than the Liberal Party’s traditional blue colour, the blue-green independents want stronger government action to reduce Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions than either the Government or Labor are proposing.
The government aims to cut Australia’s emissions by 26% to 28% below 2005 levels by 2030. Labor has promised a 43% cut.
Recent opinion polls have placed Labor just ahead of the Coalition. But the pollsters’ credibility has yet to recover since their spectacular failure in the 2019 election.
The split of the vote between Government and Labor in 2019 was 51.5% versus 48.5% – the mirror image of what Australia’s five most prominent polls had predicted.
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