{"id":214835,"date":"2019-05-18T04:55:12","date_gmt":"2019-05-18T08:55:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=214835"},"modified":"2019-05-18T04:55:12","modified_gmt":"2019-05-18T08:55:12","slug":"polls-open-in-australian-election-opposition-tipped-to-win","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2019\/05\/18\/polls-open-in-australian-election-opposition-tipped-to-win\/","title":{"rendered":"Polls open in Australian election; opposition tipped to win"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The government goes to the election holding 74 seats in the chamber that is expanding at this election from 150 seats to 151. (Pixabay Photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

CANBERRA, Australia \u2014 Polling stations opened across Australia on Saturday in elections that are likely to deliver the nation’s sixth prime minister in as many years.<\/p>\n

Opinion polls suggest the conservative Liberal Party-led coalition will lose its bid for a third three-year term and Scott Morrison will have had one\u00a0of\u00a0the shortest tenures as prime minister in the 118-year history\u00a0of\u00a0the Australian federation.<\/p>\n

Morrison is the conservatives’ third prime minister since they were first elected in 2013. He replaced Malcolm Turnbull in a leadership ballot\u00a0of\u00a0government colleagues in August.<\/p>\n

The centre-left Labor Party opposition under its leader Bill Shorten has been campaigning hard on more ambitious targets to reduce Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions.<\/p>\n

Australia is the world’s largest exporter\u00a0of\u00a0coal and liquefied natural gas. It is also one\u00a0of\u00a0the world’s worst carbon gas polluters per capita because\u00a0of\u00a0a heavy reliance on coal-fired electricity.<\/p>\n

As the driest continent after Antarctica, it is also particularly vulnerable to the impacts\u00a0of\u00a0climate change, such as wildfires and destructive storms.<\/p>\n

The government has committed Australia to reduce its emissions by 26% to 28% below 2005 levels by 2030.<\/p>\n

Labour has promised a 45% reduction in the same time frame.<\/p>\n

Shorten, a 52-year-old former labour union leader, has also promised a range\u00a0of\u00a0reforms, including the government paying all the patients’ costs for cancer treatment and a reduction\u00a0of\u00a0tax breaks for landlords.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am quietly confident that there is a mood to vote for real change,\u201d Shorten told reporters in his hometown\u00a0of\u00a0Melbourne on Saturday.<\/p>\n

Morrison, a 51-year-old former tourism marketer, said he had closed Labor’s lead in opinion polls during the five-week campaign and predicted a close result.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt’s not the time to engage in Bill Shorten’s big, risky project\u00a0of\u00a0big taxes and big spending,\u201d Morrison told Nine Network television on Saturday from the island state\u00a0of\u00a0Tasmania, where he continued to campaign in a seat he hopes his party will win from Labor.<\/p>\n

Morrison promises lower taxes and better economic management than Labor.<\/p>\n

An opinion poll published in The Australian newspaper on Saturday put Labor ahead\u00a0of\u00a0the conservatives 51.5% to 48.5%.<\/p>\n

The Newspoll-brand poll was based on a nationwide survey\u00a0of\u00a03,038 voters from Monday to Friday. It has a 1.8 percentage point margin\u00a0of\u00a0error.<\/p>\n

Political analyst William Bowe said it was unclear how the greater support for Labor evident in polls would translate into seats.<\/p>\n

He said the conservatives had been \u201ctrying to plot a narrow path to victory\u201d by targeting their campaigning on vulnerable Labour seats in Sydney, Tasmania and the Northern Territory.<\/p>\n

Neither the ruling coalition nor Labor holds a majority\u00a0of\u00a0seats in the House\u00a0of\u00a0Representatives, where parties need a majority to form a government. The government lost two seats and its single-seat majority in the lower chamber in blood-letting over the dumping\u00a0of\u00a0Turnbull in the face\u00a0of\u00a0poor opinion polling.<\/p>\n

The government goes to the election holding 74 seats in the chamber that is expanding at this election from 150 seats to 151.<\/p>\n

Labour has 69 seats, with independents and minor parties holding the remainder.<\/p>\n

Both major parties are promising that whoever wins the election will remain prime minister until he next faces the voters’ judgment. The parties have changed their rules to make the process\u00a0of\u00a0lawmakers replacing a prime minister more difficult.<\/p>\n

During Labor’s last six years in office, the party replaced Prime Minister Kevin Rudd with his deputy Julia Gillard, then dumped her for Rudd.<\/p>\n

Morrison will vote in his Sydney seat on Saturday, and Shorten will vote in his Melbourne seat.<\/p>\n

Polling on Australia’s west coast began two hours after the east coast stations opened. East coast stations will close at 6 p.m. (0800 GMT), two hour before voting ends in the west.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CANBERRA, Australia \u2014 Polling stations opened across Australia on Saturday in elections that are likely to deliver the nation’s sixth …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":214836,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-214835","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","category-news-w","mauthors-rod-mcguirk","mauthors-the-associated-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214835","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=214835"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214835\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":214837,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214835\/revisions\/214837"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/214836"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=214835"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=214835"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=214835"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}