Yahoo News Australia PM Makes Pitch for Second Term as Polls Waver
(Bloomberg) -- Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said a second term in office would see him “building Australia’s future” by bolstering education, manufacturing and health care as polls show dwindling enthusiasm among voters for his center-left government.
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Albanese used his first major speech of 2025 to make his pitch to voters ahead of a national election which must be held by May 17. Australians face a choice between “our determination and optimism or their fear and negativity,” he said, referring to the center-right opposition.
“This is a time for building, for looking after people and looking to the future, for a Labor government investing in the hard work and aspiration of all Australians,” the prime minister said in a speech to the National Press Club in Canberra on Friday.
Albanese is facing an uphill battle to hold onto power, with Australians increasingly frustrated by three years of economic difficulties including a national housing crisis and escalating cost-of-living pressures which have seen interest rates climb to a 13-year high.
If his center-left government is defeated, it would be Australia’s first in almost a century to lose office after just one term.
A Freshwater poll published by the Australian Financial Review on Jan. 20 had the Liberal-National coalition leading the government 51% to 49% on a two-party preferred basis, while a Resolve poll published two days later in the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age found a similar result.
Resolve said that voters were pessimistic about the year ahead, with 54% responding that they didn’t believe their income had kept up with inflation over the past year, and 50% expecting cost-of-living pressures to get worse “in the near future.”
Meanwhile, opposition leader Peter Dutton has seen his personal standing rising in recent opinion polls, with Resolve finding more Australians would prefer him as leader than Albanese.
In his speech on Friday, Albanese announced new incentives to address a skilled worker shortage in the construction industry, while trumpeting his government’s record on reducing inflation and locking in two consecutive budget surpluses.
“My job is get on with building a better Australia, that’s what I intend to do,” he said.
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