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Given a slight favorite in the polls carried out before the election, Anthony Albanese won the legislative elections on Saturday, ending nine years of conservative government.
Anthony Albanese’s Labor Party won the legislative elections on Saturday 21st May, a victory which marks the return to power of this party after nine years of conservative government. « This (Saturday) evening I spoke to the Leader of the Opposition and the new Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, and congratulated him on his election victory, » Prime Minister Scott Morrison said.
« The Australian people voted for change, » said Anthony Albanese in his victory speech. He also indicated that he would participate in the Quad Summit on Tuesday in Japan.
Some 17.2 million voters chose the 151 seats in the House of Representatives for a three-year term. Forty of the 76 seats in the Senate were also renewed for six years. The party or coalition that wins the majority in the lower house will automatically be responsible for forming the government.
According to projections published by the ABC channel after counting half of the votes, the Labor Party wins the largest number of deputies in the House of Representatives. But with only 72 seats secured so far, he was not yet certain of winning the absolute majority of 76 deputies necessary to form a government without having to find an ally.
Anthony Albanese, given a slight favorite in the polls to become the next Prime Minister, had asked voters to « give him a chance ». « Give this country a chance, we have plans, » he said, describing current Conservative Prime Minister Scott Morrison as « the most divisive I have ever seen ».
Scott Morrison, in power since 2018, appeared to have reduced Labor’s lead in the polls in recent days. The last two polls published before the election, Thursday and Friday, gave Labor a six-point lead, but the gap was tending to narrow.
A climate issue
In a country plagued by increasingly severe floods, fires and droughts, Labor promises to do more for the environment. After declaring his victory, Anthony Albanese promised on Saturday to transform Australia into a « superpower » in renewable energies.
During the election campaign, Scott Morrison had hammered home a message that had worked last time: Labor cannot be trusted in the economic sphere. He had boasted of new data showing Australia’s unemployment rate fell to 3.9% in April, its lowest level in 48 years, as an « extraordinary achievement » that shows his plan is working.
He had called Anthony Albanese « a fragile element » because of his high-profile gaffes, including his forgetfulness of the national unemployment rate in front of the press. « That’s the kind of stuff prime ministers need to know, » Scott Morrison said in an interview on Friday. « We have seen that he is not up to the task and that it is beyond him ».
Anthony Albanese had promised, meanwhile, firm action against corruption, after the failure of the Morrison government to set up a federal anti-corruption policeman. He called the Morrison administration « the least open and least fair junk government in Australian political history ».
Anthony Albanese, 57, is a working man, brought up in Sydney council housing by a single mother. Of Italian origin through his father, he would be, if elected, the first Australian head of government not to bear an Anglo-Saxon or Celtic name. But his opponent Scott Morrison, 54, is tough. Three years ago he won re-election despite unfavorable polls in what he called a « miracle ».
With AFP
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