Election called: PM puts his fate in the hands of the people

Anthony Albanese needs more than a Rabbitohs win to become the first PM since John Howard to be re-elected in more than two decades.

Anthony Albanese’s offer to the Australian people to “choose the way forward” is fitting and solemn way to call the election after three years of tumultuous and precarious times at home and overseas.

The Prime Minister has put his fate in the hands of the people who will decide that fate on May 3 – just five weeks away.

It has come down to this and the campaign will decide his fate and ours.

After all the speculation – for almost a year – about an early election Albanese has called it just about when he always said it would be.

It’s not exactly the economic plan coming to fruition that Labor wanted and there will be arguments that he should have gone earlier and without a Budget but falling inflation, just, and one interest rate cut in three years in office has provided Albanese with enough of a trend to declare “we have turned the corner”.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese holds a press conference at Parliament House in Canberra. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

But, the public polling and his slim two-seat majority suggest that at the beginning of the campaign a minority Labor government is the most likely result.

Always saying he has been “underestimated” Albanese still insists he can win in his own right and took Thursday night’s victory of his beloved South Sydney Rugby League as an “omen”.

Albanese took the Rabbitohs’ omen to heart – or at least to feet – wearing South Sydney red and green socks on his early-morning visit to Yarralumla to call the election.

Given the experience of a distracting and failed referendum in his first 18 months, an ongoing cost-of-living crisis and global storms ahead Albanese is going to have to hope for more than a Rabbitohs win to prove once more he has been underestimated and become the first PM since John Howard to be re-elected in more than two decades.