Anthony Albanese of the Labor Party and Scott Morrison of the Coalition meeting in the House of Representatives in April 2020 | Photo: EFE/EPA/LUKAS COCH
Latest polls indicate that the Australian Labor Party, led by Anthony Albanese, is expected to win a majority in Australia’s federal elections, which will be held on Saturday (), and return to power after an absence of nearly nine years. All 21 seats in the Chamber of Representatives and 21 of 76 Senate seats.
The center-right Liberal-National coalition, simply called the Coalition, led by the first -Minister Scott Morrison, won the last three Australian federal elections (in 2016, and 2019 – the current prime minister has been in office since 2018), but this time he faces, in addition to the natural wear and tear of for so long in power, criticism of measures adopted (or not adopted) in the last three years.
Morrison was criticized for the slow pace of vaccination against Covid-19 and at the same time was the target of protests for the strict restrictions adopted to face of the pandemic in the country: severe lockdowns, vaccination passports (imposed by states and supported by the prime minister, who later began to criticize them) and a ban on Australian citizens from traveling abroad for almost two years (with some exceptions) and the arrival of non-resident foreigners to the country – this earned the nickname “Fortaleza Australia”.
His image was also tarnished by the faltering response to the so-called “Black Summer” forest fires, between 2019 and 2020.
To get the Coalition to react in the polls, Morrison promised at the last minute to create a program to allow first-time homebuyers to withdraw their retirement savings to give entry into financing.
The idea, however, was criticized by pension funds and economists interviewed by the Financial Times, who said that such a policy generates ria rise in prices in an already overheated real estate market.
) Regarding the criticism he suffered during the pandemic, Morrison made a kind of mea culpa this week and said that he wants a possible new management of his to be “more inclusive”.
“During a crisis and a pandemic, you need to act fast, be determined, and that means sometimes not even everyone will agree with you and you will not always get it right”, he said, in statements reproduced by ABC News. “But in the next step, we have the opportunity to take people forward with us on that plan.”
In addition to Morrison’s weariness, the Albanian opposition can benefit from a less aggressive rhetoric from Labor (which in previous elections had spoken of “class war”), with a pro-market platform and which even promises not to revoke tax cuts promoted by the Coalition for the highest income Australians.
However, the current prime minister claimed, in an interview with the Australian version of the Daily Mail, that if Labor wins, the state will be “at the center of everything”, “interfering with the economy and lives of citizens” at the behest of “militant unions” and that the prevalence of “cancel culture” will leave Australians “walking on eggshells forever.”
Relationships with China
As has happened in almost all After elections around the world, the relationship with China is also being discussed in the campaign. Morrison accused Labor of siding “on China’s side” by criticizing the government for not acting more forcefully against a recent communist regime’s security agreement with Australia’s partner Solomon Islands.
“It is strange that the Labor Party does not say that China is interfering ” said the prime minister.
Albanese replied that Morrison’s statement was an “outrageous insult” and claimed that the government was wrong to send representatives from the Ministry of the Pacific to discuss the matter with the Solomon Islands rather than the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. “[O acordo] it was a major failure of Australian foreign policy”, he criticized.
The Labor leader also attacked the current prime minister for not having consulted the opposition regarding the Aukus defense agreement, established last year with the United States and the United Kingdom.
Through the partnership, seen as a response to the growing Chinese threat in the Indo-Pacific, the Australians will have nuclear-powered submarines, which led to the cancellation of a billion-dollar contract to buy French submarines with diesel and electric propulsion and displeased Paris. )
