‘Election up for grabs’: PM on alert despite polling
Kat Wong and Dominic Giannini |
Labor will try to avoid complacency despite a clear lead in the polls as the coalition turns to tough-on-crime policies in its last-ditch push for power.
Anthony Albanese visited one of Labor’s most marginal seats on Monday as the latest Newspoll showed Labor’s primary vote was at its highest point in a year.
It was the latest in a series of surveys that have showed the government well ahead on a two-party preferred basis ahead of the May 3 election.
But Mr Albanese pointed to the lessons learned during Labor’s losing 2019 campaign, when it was tipped to win only to be beaten by the coalition on polling day.
“(In) 2019 the bookies paid out and guess what? That didn’t occur, that was a very unwise thing to do,” he told reporters on the NSW south coast on Monday.
“There’s no complacency from my camp.
“This election is certainly up for grabs.”
The opposition has been under pressure to reveal its full policy costings, and on Monday, it unveiled a plan to make Australia safer as it attempts to claw back lost ground.
Opposition Leader Peter Dutton announced a $750 million package to improve community safety by tightening laws and borders, while also establishing a pilot scheme that would reveal the identities of registered sex offenders to parents and guardians.
“Australians underestimate how big an issue this is at this election – people do feel unsafe,” Mr Dutton told reporters in Melbourne’s east.
Mr Albanese said the government already set up a National Child Offender System that allows police in each state and territory to share information about offenders.
But Mr Dutton said the prime minister was being “loose with the truth” as the system’s data was not publicly available.
The opposition leader pushed a suite of tough-on-crime policies in an attempt to wrestle votes from Labor in outer urban electorates.
“There’s a lot of anger in the suburbs and I think you’re going to see that expressed,” Mr Dutton said.
“We are the underdog … (but) there’s no doubt in my mind that we can win the election.”
“The people we’ve spoken to, they feel less safe in their community and, financially, they’ve just been smack between the eyes in a way that they just can’t balance their budgets.”
The prime minister was in the seat of Gilmore, held by Labor on a 0.2 per cent margin, when journalists grilled him on his government’s lack of action on gambling advertising ahead of the May 3 election.
A landmark gambling harm inquiry chaired by late-Labor MP Peta Murphy suggested a total advertising phase-out, but almost two years later, the government has not acted on this key recommendation.
The prime minister acknowledged there was “more to do” but claimed his government had done more to tackle problem gambling than any previous administration.
With early voting starting on Tuesday, the Australian Electoral Commission is preparing to deliver what it calls Australia’s largest peacetime logistical event, with more than 18 million people registered to vote and 60 million ballot papers being printed.
The Newspoll, published in The Australian, showed a lift in Labor’s primary vote to 34 per cent, with the coalition on 35 per cent.
On a two-party preferred basis, Labor is at 52 per cent, ahead of the coalition’s 48 per cent.
Mr Dutton was favoured as preferred leader in areas such as defence and the economy, but Mr Albanese was preferred on the electorate’s dominant concern, the cost of living, along with housing and health.
AAP
