Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has urged voters to consider how much worse off they would have been if the Coalition had been in power for the past three years, as he pulled the trigger for a May 3 election and expressed confidence that he would win a majority.

Seeking to become the first elected prime minister since John Howard in 1998 to be given a second term, Albanese acknowledged that people were not better off now than three years ago, as he had once promised they would be. But he said their plight would have been far worse had Opposition Leader Peter Dutton been at the helm.