CANBERRA, Australia –
There was no even change in the early vote count in Australia’s election on Saturday, signaling a close result in a close race that will decide whether Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s Conservative government can defy the odds and govern for a fourth term of office. three years.
Opposition leader Anthony Albanese’s centre-left Labor Party ended the six-week campaign as favorite to win its first election since 2007. But Morrison defied opinion polls in 2019 by leading his coalition to a narrow victory.
His coalition has the narrowest majority: 76 seats in the 151-member House of Representatives, where parties need a majority to form a government.
Minor parties and independents appeared to be taking votes from the major parties, increasing the likelihood of a hung parliament and a minority government.
A record proportion of mail-in votes due to the pandemic, which won’t be added to the count until Sunday, adds to the uncertainty in the early count.
As well as campaigning against Labour, Morrison’s Conservative Liberal Party is fighting a new challenge from so-called Teal Independent candidates for re-election of key government lawmakers in party strongholds.
One of them is Zali Steggall, who won a Liberal Party seat in 2019 when she unseated former Prime Minister Tony Abbott.
It seemed likely that he would retain his seat in Sydney by a larger margin.
“The response was that people were really frustrated,” Steggal told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. “Cost of living issues, but also climate change, just didn’t figure into the policies and platforms of the major parties.”
Teal independents market themselves as a shade greener than the Liberal Party’s traditional blue color and want stronger government action to cut Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions than is proposed by the government or Labor.
Both leaders campaigned in Melbourne on Saturday morning before voting in their hometown of Sydney.
Albanese went with her partner Jodie Haydon, their 21-year-old son Nathan Albanese and their cavoodle Toto to vote at Marrickville Town Hall in their inner Sydney constituency.
Albanese declined to say whether Toto would move to the prime minister’s official residence in Sydney or Canberra if Labor wins.
“We’re not getting ahead of ourselves,” Albanese said. “I am very positive and hopeful with a good result tonight.”
He spoke of his humble upbringing as the only child of a single mother who became a disabled pensioner and lived in government housing.
“When you come from where I come from, one of the advantages you have is that you don’t get ahead of yourself. Everything in life is a bonus,” Albanese said.
Morrison voted with his wife Jenny at Lilli Pilli Public School in his South Sydney constituency.
He later used the rare interception of a boat of suspected asylum seekers trying to enter Australian waters as a reason why voters should re-elect his government.
The Australian Border Force said in a statement that the ship had been intercepted in a “likely attempt to illegally enter Australia from Sri Lanka”.
Australian policy was to return those on board to their point of departure, according to the statement.
Morrison argues that Labor would be weaker in preventing human traffickers from trafficking asylum seekers.
“I have been here to stop this ship, but in order to be there to stop those who may come from here, you need to vote Liberal and National today,” Morrison told reporters, referring to his coalition.
The boat carrying 15 passengers was intercepted near the Australian Indian Ocean territory of Christmas Island on Saturday morning, Australian newspaper The Weekend reported.
The number of asylum seekers arriving in Australian waters by boat peaked at more than 20,000 in 2013, the year Morrison’s coalition was first elected.
Morrison’s first government role was overseeing a military-led operation that turned back boats of asylum seekers and virtually ended human smuggling from Asia.
The first polling stations closed on the east coast of the country at 6:00 p.m. (08:00 GMT). The west coast is two hours late.
Due to the pandemic, around half of Australia’s 17 million voters have either voted early or applied for postal ballots, which is likely to slow down the count.
Voting is compulsory for adult citizens and 92% of registered voters cast their ballots in the last election.
Early voting for travel or work reasons began two weeks ago and the Australian Electoral Commission will continue to collect postal votes for another two weeks.
The government changed regulations on Friday to allow people recently infected with COVID-19 to vote by phone.
Electoral Commissioner Tom Rogers said more than 7,000 polling stations opened as planned and on time in Australia despite 15% of polling staff falling ill this week with COVID-19 and the flu.
Albanese said he had thought Morrison would have called an election last weekend because Australia’s prime minister was expected to attend a summit in Tokyo on Tuesday with US President Joe Biden, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and Indian Prime Minister. Narendra Modi.
“If we get a clear result today, whoever is prime minister will be on a plane to Tokyo on Monday, which is not ideal, I must say, right after a campaign,” Albanese said.
Analysts have said Morrison left the election until the last available date to give himself more time to reduce Labor’s lead in opinion polls.
In the last election of 2019, the vote split between the government and Labor was 51.5% against 48.5%, the exact opposite of what the five leading polls in Australia had predicted.
Reference-www.ctvnews.ca