Federal election 2022: Scott Morrison, Anthony Albanese’s must-win seats
Must win NSW seats will be on Scott Morrison’s hit list in the last days of the unofficial election campaign, as both men vying to be prime minister sharpen their final pitches to voters.
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Must win NSW seats will be on Scott Morrison’s hit list in the last days of the unofficial federal election campaign, as both men vying to be prime minister sharpen their final pitches to voters.
As the Prime Minister sets his sights on Sydney, Labor leader Anthony Albanese has had to walk back his extremely ambitious claims of cleaning up as many as ten seats in Queensland at next month’s poll.
The Prime Minister will visit Hughes and Banks in Sydney’s south on Tuesday, where the Coalition is hoping to gain and hold ground respectively.
After two days of high-vis, hard hats and hugging puppies in Queensland, Mr Albanese will also travel south, with an address to a National Farmers Federation conference in Canberra.
Winning a string of seats in NSW to offset losses expected elsewhere in the country will be critical to Mr Morrison’s re-election chances, with this visit in what will be the final days before the May poll is called showing how seriously he sees the Sydney battleground.
Mr Morrison will visit a local packing and production business struggling with high petrol costs with his recent captain’s pick candidate in Hughes, lawyer Jenny Ware, to sell the Coalition’s fuel excise cut and other budget measures.
The Coalition is expecting Ms Ware will be able to return the seat to their ranks after sitting Hughes MP Craig Kelly defected from the Liberals to the United Australia Party.
But the candidacy of Ms Ware and several other Liberals preselected over the weekend remains uncertain amid a legal challenge currently before the NSW court of appeal about the validity of previous preselections made by Mr Morrison and a small committee.
Coalition sources have speculated Mr Morrison would not go to an election until the court matter is resolved, though he is not required to wait.
Later on Tuesday Mr Morrison will join Banks MP and Assistant Minister to the Prime Minister for Mental Health and Suicide Prevention David Coleman to meet a boy with cystic fibrosis who will benefit from the listing a new drug on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme.
The Prime Minister has been campaigning heavily on health issues so far in the lead up to the election, visiting a medical facility in Victoria on Monday to announce a $71.2 million pharmaceutical project.
Mr Morrison also criticised Labor’s “small target” election strategy and was forced to again strenuously deny claims he had racially vilified a rival during his own preselection for the Sydney seat of Cook in 2007.
The Prime Minister also urged voters not to think of the upcoming national poll as a popularity contest.
“Elections are serious things,” he said. “The Australian people know … it’s not a reality show, it’s not based on who they like or don’t like.
“They know it’s about the economy they will live in as a result of the decisions that are taken by their government.”
In Queensland Mr Albanese started on Monday morning with a bold prediction FM radio that Labor was “very hopeful of winning” an astonishing ten seats in the Sunshine state, rattling off their names from Brisbane in the south, to Capricornia in the centre, right up to Herbert and Leichhardt in the north.
But asked later in the day at a press conference to name the seats he thought Labor would pick up at this election, Mr Albanese declined, saying he would leave it up to the “commentators” to make such predictions.
In more signs the election is imminent, Labor’s headquarters in Sydney’s Surry Hills are already up and running, while a number of Liberal staffers have begun migrating north to the party’s base in Brisbane.
Senior Coalition sources are increasingly convinced Mr Morrison will seek to run a “short and sweet” 33-day campaign from this Sunday through to a May 14 polling day.
But the alternative date of a May 21 election has not been completely ruled out, nor has starting the official campaign before the weekend.
Originally published as Federal election 2022: Scott Morrison, Anthony Albanese’s must-win seats
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