Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese summoned an election for May 3, starting a campaign that must be widely disputed, centered on the cost of living and housing crisis in a slow economy.
Albanese is campaigning to become the first Australian leader in over two decades to win consecutive elections, a symptom of long -standing political fragmentation that has threatened the country’s prosperity period.
His opponent, liberal leader Peter Dutton, will try to take advantage of the global reaction against the incumbers that resulted in the fall of governments around the world in 2024. However, Australia did not vote to dismiss a first term administration in a century, and Dutton-a former police officer of Queensland-needs to recover a lot of ground.
“Your choice has never been so clear,” Albanese told reporters in Canberra on Friday. “This election is a choice between the labor party plan to continue building and Peter Dutton’s promises to cut.”
Arriving about the campaign is the global uncertainty generated by the administration of President Donald Trump and his plans for comprehensive tariffs to be announced next week.
The Albanese center-left government has faced difficulties in opinion polls, with the prime minister’s approval rate in negative territory and his party, the labor, tied with the Liberal-National Centro-right coalition. Albanese and the labor now have a five -week election campaign to reverse this situation.
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When Albanese took office in 2022, ending the nine years of labor opposition, he promised actions on climate change, restoration of political integrity and more rights for indigenous Australians. However, much of his mandate was dominated by persistently high inflation and high interest rates, as well as a dwelling scarcity aggravated by increased immigration.
Now, their biggest promises in the 2025 campaign revolve around aid for cost of living-newly legislated tax cuts and an extension of reimbursements to help cushion homes against increasing energy prices.
The Labor Party states that the worst pressure of the cost of living has passed, highlighting the slowdown of inflation and the decision of the Australian reserve bank (RBA) last month of cutting interest rates for the first time in over four years.
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The RBA will meet again next week and should maintain unchanged loan costs this time, while waiting more evidence that inflation is sustainably returning to its goal of 2-3%. Financial markets are pricing the bank meeting on May 19 and 20 as potentially the next for rates of rates, which means it will be after the election.
Few legislators expect Dutton to form a government on their own after the election. But there is hopes among his party members that he can recover frustrated seats in the Sydney and Melbourne suburban areas enough to have a chance to set up a minority administration.
At the very least, Dutton will seek to force Albanese with a minority government to defeat him in the next election.
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