The 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 (21), and return to power after an absence of almost nine years. All 151 seats in the House of Representatives and 40 of the 76 seats in the Senate will be up for grabs.
The centre-right Liberal-National coalition, simply called the Coalition, led by Prime Minister Scott Morrison, has won the last three Australian federal elections (in 2013, 2016 and 2019 – the current prime minister has been in office since 2018), but this time In addition to the natural wear and tear of so long in power, it faces criticism for 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 he was the target of protests for the strict restrictions adopted to face the pandemic in the country: severe lockdowns, vaccine passports (imposed by the states and supported by the prime minister, who later began to criticize them) and for almost two years banning Australian citizens from traveling abroad (with a few exceptions) and the arrival of non-resident foreigners to the country – this earned the nickname “Fortress 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 draw on their retirement savings to make a down payment.
The idea, however, has been criticized by pension funds and economists polled by the Financial Times, who said such a policy would raise prices in an already overheated housing market.
Regarding the criticism he suffered during the pandemic, Morrison made a kind of mea culpa this week and said that he intends that an eventual new management of his will be “more inclusive”.
“During a crisis and a pandemic, you need to act fast, be determined, and that means sometimes not everyone will agree with you and you won’t 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 warfare”), with a pro-market platform and which even promises not to revoke tax cuts. promoted by the Coalition for higher-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 the lives of citizens” at the behest of “militant unions”. and that the prevalence of “cancel culture” will leave Australians “walking on eggshells forever”.
Relations with China
As has happened in almost every election 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 deal with Australia’s partner Solomon Islands.
“It is strange that the Labor Party does not say that China is interfering [na região do Indo-Pacífico) – de alguma forma, eles estão
dizendo que é culpa da Austrália [a assinatura do acordo]”, said the prime minister.
Albanese responded 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 failing to consult the opposition on the Aukus defense deal, agreed 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, 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 angered Paris.
#Responses #pandemic #Black #Summer #weigh #centreright #Australian #election