Election entree: leaders cut to campaign chase
The nation can strap itself in for a long campaign before an election most likely in May. After months of lockdowns, the Prime Minister is back taking the national temperature.
Scott Morrison had a hair cut, made spring rolls in Box Hill and turned up at Toyota’s Altona plant spruiking an electric car plan – all in the full glare of the nation’s media.
Now the nation straps itself in for a months-long run-up to an election most likely in May. After months of lockdowns in NSW and Victoria – and weeks of quarantine at The Lodge after returning from overseas trips – the Prime Minister is back among the voters and taking the national temperature.
Coalition insiders also say he is using the run-up to Christmas to highlight the “tangible benefits’’ of the policies he took to the Glasgow climate change summit. Those policies remove the climate change “barnacle’’ and allow the Prime Minster to focus next year on the Coalition’s electoral strength – the economy.
A 2022 election is now a certainty. While the Prime Minister has the right to call an election, either a House of Representatives and half-Senate or double-dissolution election, the Constitution and the Commonwealth Electoral Act provide ground rules.
A federal election must be held on a Saturday and there must be a formal campaign after the issue of the writs for an election of 33 days.
This means an election can no longer be called for December 11, leaving only December 18 this year for an election. But December 18 would be the closest election to Christmas Day since the polls conducted during the Spanish flu 100 years ago and the Great Depression 90 years ago.
Senior government sources now expect the Prime Minister to call an election for May following an early budget in April, a repeat of the scenario Mr Morrison used to defeat Bill Shorten in 2019.
With unemployment expected to dip to 4 per cent and a strong economic rebound likely after the end of lockdowns senior Liberals believe they will have a strong story to sell.
Mr Morrison’s Melbourne trip on Tuesday followed a whistlestop visit to the Hunter Valley coal region in NSW on Monday, where he announced a $1.5m partnership with the Port of Newcastle for a hydrogen hub. He is using his tour to begin framing the government’s key election themes.
So far, he has spruiked the Coalition’s economic management, pandemic record and handling of national security. The climate pivot has been strictly framed through an economic lens. Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese has also embarked on a shadow campaign of his own, conducting a morning media blitz before visiting the southern Sydney suburb of Oatley Park in the seat of Banks – held by the Liberals on a margin of 6.3 per cent – to announce a $200m plan to fix up local waterways.
Last week, Mr Albanese travelled to New England to visit a wind farm and was also in Melbourne. Bill Shorten told the Today show on Tuesday he thought Mr Morrison was “thinking about having an election in December, but his overseas trip was such a Barrie Crocker that now I suspect he’ll run to May”.
“Here’s my tip,” the former Labor leader said. “Scott Morrison will bring forward a budget miraculously, and he’ll try and buy his way out of his electoral unpopularity.”
At the Toyota Hydrogen Centre in the Melbourne suburb of Altona North, Mr Morrison was selling the Coalition’s embrace a 2050 net-zero target.
The selling point was a government plan to have 1.7 million electric vehicles on the road by 2030, with Mr Morrison framing the climate conversion as a necessary part of the economic recovery to be achieved through “technology, not taxes” and by “backing Australians’ choices”.
Katie Allen, the Liberal MP for the climate-conscious seat of Higgins, was with him, saying her constituents would be “enthusiastically embracing electric vehicles”. Later Mr Morrison made gnocchi at an Italian restaurant before eating at a Chinese restaurant in the seat of Chisholm, held by the Liberals on 0.5 per cent.
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