Australia is heading to a national vote on May 21 with the center-right Liberal National coalition government campaigning for a fourth term in office after grappling with a pandemic and a slew of climate change-related disasters.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison is hoping to woo voters with an economy that’s looking strong as the government seeks a come-from-behind win off a narrative of solid economic management. However the opposition Labor Party, led by Anthony Albanese, is currently far ahead in opinion polling.
Here are the top five priorities for Australia’s next leader:
1. Cost of living
The number one election issue mentioned by Australian voters in most opinion polls is rising cost-of-living pressures. Prices are still rising due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Some economists expect inflation to rise above 4% later this year, the highest it has been since 2008 and far above the current wage growth.
The government included payments for low-income households and a cut to the petrol tax in the recent budget as a way to ease living cost pressures, but both are temporary measures. The Labor Party has promised to increase wages without really saying how it is going to do this.
All of this is in addition to rising rents, which hit their highest annual growth last year since 2007, according to CoreLogic. When combined with expected interest rate rises before the end of 2022, former Liberal Party leader John Hewson said there was an economic “time-bomb” waiting for the next government. “A big cost-of-living risk is that inflation is much worse than they’ve projected and the Reserve Bank reacts even more, puts interest rates up even more,” he said.
2. Budget deficit
It isn’t just Australian households struggling to keep debt down. The government is having the same problem.
Australia adopted an expansionary policy during the pandemic, investing in businesses and workers to soften the economic blow from COVID-19. It has worked well, with unemployment now down to 4% and growth on track to rebound to pre-pandemic levels.
But it has left the government with debt on track to exceed more than A$1 trillion ($751 billion) by 2023-24. While the budget estimates showed debt peaking earlier and shrinking faster, it was mostly due to to surging commodity prices.
3. China
Just weeks out from the election, Australia’s Pacific neighbor the Solomon Islands is on the brink of signing a security deal with China, a sign of just how complicated the region is expected to get for the next prime minister.
China is Australia’s largest trading partner but in the past few years their relationship has deteriorated rapidly, to the point where both countries have almost no high-level contact publicly. Both sides of politics are in favor of taking a tough line on China, with Morrison making national security a central part of his reelection platform and Labor desperate to avoid looking weak on foreign policy.
Whoever wins will have to face a complicated relationship, with trade restrictions still in place on Australian exports to China. Australia is investing heavily in the U.S., partnering with it in both the Quad security agreement and the AUKUS nuclear submarine deal with the U.K.
The major parties are in lockstep on these moves, but former Liberal leader Hewson said there was “no maturity” in Australia’s debate on China. He said since Beijing would be a major global player over coming decades, either Morrison or Albanese would “have to work collaboratively with them.”
“I don’t see that either side is prepared to say anything like that,” Hewson said.
4. COVID-19
Australian health authorities are warning of a surge in COVID-19 cases over the southern hemisphere’s winter months, in addition to a potentially deadly influenza season. The government has rolled out a fourth COVID-19 vaccine dose to senior citizens to boost their immunity ahead of the winter outbreak, but Deputy Health Officer Sonya Bennett said they were still expecting a rise in cases.
“We haven’t had experience with transmission in winter with COVID yet,” she said at a press conference last month. Australia only lifted its zero COVID policy during the summer months in late 2021 while both the U.S. and the U.K. saw rapid rises in COVID-19 infections during their winter.
5. Climate change
Australia is on the front lines of global warming. It is one of the world’s largest coal exporters and is also experiencing devastating natural disasters. There were the 2019/20 fires, which eradicated huge tracts of bushland across the east coast, and this year’s flooding in New South Wales and Queensland. The Great Barrier Reef is currently undergoing its sixth major bleaching event.
The Morrison government claims Australia is well on its way to meeting its climate action obligations and has said Australia will hit net zero emissions by 2050. Labor is promising to reduce emissions faster than the government if it wins office, cutting them by 43% by 2030.
Neither side is promising a rapid move away from burning or exporting fossil fuels though. Jill Sheppard, a political analyst at Australian National University, said any major change in climate policy was unlikely in the near future. “Probably the best hope for climate action would be a hung parliament or at least a very strong Greens Party cross bench,” she said.
