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Asia Pacific|Voting in a Fraught World, Australians Focus on Cost-of-Living Concerns
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/02/world/asia/australia-prime-minister-election.html
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Voters will decide who can turn Australia around from the throes of inflation and a housing crisis, and navigate relations with a volatile Washington.
May 2, 2025Updated 8:58 p.m. ET
Voters in Australia head to the polls on Saturday, the third major U.S. ally after Germany and Canada to hold elections in a global economic and political landscape upended by the second Trump administration.
The two men vying to lead Australia — Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, of the center-left Labor Party, and opposition leader Peter Dutton, of the conservative coalition — agree that the country finds itself in the most challenging environment in a generation. It is heavily dependent on the United States for its security, but derives much of its prosperity from trade with China, which is exerting its military ambitions closer and closer to Australia’s shores.
But most pressing for voters is a persistent cost-of-living crisis and worsening housing affordability that has further dampened the long-held optimism that Australia is a recession-proof country blessed with rich resources, high wages and stable, functioning government.
The most recent opinion polls have showed Mr. Albanese’s party headed for a second term with a majority of seats in the House of Representatives, a turnaround from earlier in the year, when the opposition was in the lead. Australia has a Westminister-style parliamentary system.
Here’s what to know about the election:
It’s the economy, mate
Mr. Dutton has gone to no fewer than 15 gas stations — The Guardian counted — on the campaign trail, playing up his party’s proposal to cut a tax to reduce payments at the pump. Mr. Albanese has again and again flashed his card for Medicare, Australia’s universal health care system, highlighting a promise to lower out-of-pocket costs.
As much as the global turmoil originating from Washington has dominated news cycles here in recent months, voters say their top concerns are bread-and-butter (bread-and-Vegemite, if you will) issues stretching average households. But both major parties have pledged only small-scale measures to alleviate economic pressures, rather than bold, ambitious ideas for the country’s direction.
