Both major parties are under pressure with polls predicting minority government is the most likely outcome of Australia’s federal electionAustralian election campaign 2025: live updatesSee all our Australian election 2025 coverageGet our morning and afternoon news emails, free app or daily news podcastPut away the tarot cards, dump the tea leaves in the compost bin, cover up the crystal ball and stop searching for the smoke signals – the prime minister has finally named the date, putting an end to months of election speculation and starting the countdown to polling day.After drawing a big red texta circle around 3 May on his calendar at The Lodge, and dumping an extra large handful of kibble into Toto’s bowl as he rushed out the door, Anthony Albanese kicked off the election proper with a promise to “make you better off over the next three years.” Continue reading…Both major parties are under pressure with polls predicting minority government is the most likely outcome of Australia’s federal electionAustralian election campaign 2025: live updatesSee all our Australian election 2025 coverageGet our morning and afternoon news emails, free app or daily news podcastPut away the tarot cards, dump the tea leaves in the compost bin, cover up the crystal ball and stop searching for the smoke signals – the prime minister has finally named the date, putting an end to months of election speculation and starting the countdown to polling day.After drawing a big red texta circle around 3 May on his calendar at The Lodge, and dumping an extra large handful of kibble into Toto’s bowl as he rushed out the door, Anthony Albanese kicked off the election proper with a promise to “make you better off over the next three years.” Continue reading…
Put away the tarot cards, dump the tea leaves in the compost bin, cover up the crystal ball and stop searching for the smoke signals – the prime minister has finally named the date, putting an end to months of election speculation and starting the countdown to polling day.
After drawing a big red texta circle around 3 May on his calendar at The Lodge, and dumping an extra large handful of kibble into Toto’s bowl as he rushed out the door, Anthony Albanese kicked off the election proper with a promise to “make you better off over the next three years.”
“This election is a choice between Labor’s plan to keep building or Peter Dutton’s promise to cut,” he told an early morning press conference after visiting the governor-general.
“If the Liberals had their way, you and your family would be worse off right now. And if they get their way, you will be worse off in the future.”
Albanese seemed confident, comfortable, focused as he addressed the nation; a world away from the wobbly start he had last campaign, flubbing the interest and unemployment rates on day one in 2022. Deriding Peter Dutton’s approach, he said “now is not the time for cutting and wrecking, for aiming low, punching down or looking back”.
Analysts and politicians expect this election will be won and lost in the suburbs of Sydney, Melbourne and regional Tasmania.
Labor can afford to lose only two seats before being tipped into minority government territory or, worse, becoming the first one-term government since the Great Depression. But Peter Dutton has a mountain to climb to win the nearly 20 seats he must claim for the Coalition to achieve an overall majority. Most polls indicate we’re headed for a hung parliament, where neither party wins the 76 seats they need to govern outright, meaning negotiations with independents and minor parties on the crossbench will be key.
The Greens and independents – whether branded as teal, “community” or neither – are looking to make gains of their own from both Labor and the Coalition, as well as preserve hard-fought victories from 2022.
Then there’s Clive Palmer. His $100m-plus spend in recent election campaigns has netted him little parliamentary benefit, but with his new Trumpet of Patriots party this is the last chance to set fire to a truckload of cash before new political donation rules come into effect at the 2028 election. His latest attempt to copy Donald Trump’s electoral homework might be an interesting sideshow.
The major parties have been steadily losing voter share over recent elections, but the main game still comes down to Albanese and Dutton.
Labor’s policy offerings will go heavy on the tax cuts and energy debates unveiled in the budget, cost of living, Medicare, childcare and Albanese’s “future made in Australia” grab bag of energy transition, manufacturing, critical minerals and skills policies. Albanese and his team are also expected to campaign robustly on the threat they claim a Dutton government would pose to improvements made over the past three years.
Labor is seeking to turn the screws on the opposition leader in the heat of the campaign, betting that his small target policy offering will be exposed and wilt in the glare of the daily media spotlight. Already he’s been wobbling in the glare of a quasi-campaign of the last few weeks.
Dutton is calling this election a “sliding doors moment”, promising a greater focus on defence, national security and community safety – but some of the particulars for day-to-day Aussie remain, to a large extent, a curious mystery. We know his plan to cut the fuel excise, but not much more on the cost of living, beyond promising to cut what he deemed “wasteful” Labor spending – including tens of thousands of public servants, which Labor says would blow out waiting times for key government services like welfare and family supports.
For three years, Dutton has been thumbing his nose at all conventions of how a party leader is meant to act – that you’re “meant” to hold Canberra press conferences, you’re “meant” to appear at the National Press Club. On the campaign trail, will he do what others before him have done – hold press conferences each day to take tough questions on policy? Will he front up for televised debates with his opponent?
Other than this week’s announcements on cutting the fuel excise and setting up a gas reserve, and the divisive nuclear plan out on the never-never, the Coalition has largely been a policy-free-zone so far. Dutton is running out of time to announce his own ideas before it will look as though he is purposely holding back his plans or that he has none.
But Albanese has big worries of his own on the campaign trail. After a wobbly result in the Victorian state by-election for Werribee, and growing backlash to the Labor state government, the Coalition are bullish about picking up seats in Labor’s southern heartland: Chisholm and McEwen could fall to the opposition, according to a YouGov poll in mid-February. Lyons in Tasmania, Boothby in South Australia and Lingiari in the Northern Territory are also on Dutton’s radar.
In New South Wales, Labor seats such as Bennelong, Gilmore, Eden-Monaro, Hunter, Shortland and Paterson could fall Dutton’s way, based on that YouGov poll and feelings on the ground from campaigners. The Coalition may have a chance of pulling back a few Perth seats lost at the last election when Western Australia turned its back on Scott Morrison (although the state election result was discouraging), while Dutton’s camp also have their eyes on teal seats such as Curtin in Perth, Mackellar on Sydney’s northern beaches and Goldstein in Melbourne.
On his best day, with that menu of seats before him, Dutton could get within striking distance of victory. On Albanese’s best day, so could he.
Even discounting potential losses in wafer-thin margin seats such as Bennelong, and the possibility of losing seats such as Wills (Melbourne) or Richmond (NSW north coast) to the Greens, Labor have their eyes on new seats in most states. ALP sources say their biggest hopes for pickups include Sturt in South Australia, Braddon in Tasmania and Leichhardt in Queensland, where the incumbent Warren Entsch is retiring.
Labor is also expected to put resources into winning Brisbane and Griffith from the Greens in Queensland; Bass in Tasmania; Fowler in NSW; and Menzies and Deakin in Victoria, where the Liberal members hold tiny margins. The new seat of Bullwinkel, which stretches east from the Perth suburbs, is a toss-up.
The Coalition also faces fight strong independent challenges in the Sydney seat of Bradfield, the regional/outer metropolitan Victorian seats of Wannon, Monash and Flinders, and the NSW seats of Calare (central west) and Cowper (mid-north coast).
Albanese and Dutton both spent time in Lingiari, Leichhardt, Lyons, Gilmore and Bullwinkel well before the official campaign began.
The five-week campaign will fly by for the candidates (perhaps less so for the voters). Both leaders hop onto their private jets, dragging the nation’s media around the country on the political nerd equivalent of a Contiki tour.
Now all eyes are on that big red texta circle.
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