Australians head to the polls on Saturday with the opposition Labor party, led by Anthony Albanese, hoping to end nine years of conservative rule.
The Liberal-National coalition government, headed by Scott Morrison, goes into the election with 75 MPs in the 151-seat House of Representatives, one short of the majority needed to govern without crossbench support.
Labor has been ahead in opinion polls since the campaign began, but the lead has narrowed in the final week of the campaign, and the party is haunted by its failure at the last election, in 2019, when the polls wrongly suggested it would win.
The six-week election campaign has largely been an attritional slog between two uninspiring leaders, but enlivened by high-profile independent candidates and minor parties challenging the offerings of the government and opposition.
Morrison’s Liberal party has come under pressure in formerly safe inner-city seats, which have been targeted by grassroots campaigns backed by millions of dollars in donations from the lobby group Climate 200 and supporting, almost exclusively, female candidates.
The independents are running on a platform of stronger action to address the climate crisis, establishing a national anti-corruption body and addressing gender inequality, all areas where Morrison’s government is seen as weak.
Despite the push by the independents and the Greens to put global heating on the agenda, neither major party has committed to strong climate action. The coalition committed, after much reluctance from the rural-based National party, to a target of net zero emissions by 2050, but includes new gas projects in its technology-led recovery. Three weeks into the campaign a Nationals senator, Matt Canavan, declared the net zero ambition “all over bar the shouting”.
Labor presented a modest plan hinged on building more efficient transmission lines and reducing industrial emissions, which has been supported by the business lobby as at least representing some steps towards a credible policy.
Among the seats targeted by independent campaigns is Kooyong, the inner-city Melbourne seat held by the treasurer, Josh Frydenberg.
Government MPs in target areas, including Frydenberg, have attempted to distance themselves from the unpopular Morrison and instead called in the conservative former prime minister John Howard to campaign extensively in an attempt to keep their seats.
If even a few independent candidates are successful it could result in a hung parliament, the first since 2010. In the upper house, where minor parties have a better chance of election and overall majorities are rare, the Greens hope to gain three seats, which would bring the party’s Senate team to 12.
Morrison has focused his campaign on electorates in the outer suburbs and regional cities that have traditionally been held by Labor, in what has been described as an emulation of the “red wall” strategy employed by Boris Johnson in the 2019 UK election.
