Canberra : Australia’s prime minister has called for a May election that will be fought on issues including Chinese economic coercion, climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison on Sunday advised Governor-General David Hurley as representative of Australia’s head of state, Queen Elizabeth II, to set the election date.
Morrison will announce later on Sunday that Australia will go to the polls on May 14 or May 21.
Morrison’s conservative coalition is seeking a fourth three-year term.
Morrison led his government to a narrow victory at the last election in 2019 despite opinion polls consistently placing the centre-left opposition Australian Labor Party ahead.
The Liberal Party-led coalition is again behind in most opinion polls, but many analysts predict a tight result.
The last election occurred in the hottest and driest year Australia had ever experienced. The year ended with devastating wildfires across Australia’s southeast that directly killed 33 people and more than 400 others through smoke.
The fires also destroyed more than 3,000 homes and razed 19 million hectares (47 million acres) of farmland and forests during the Southern Hemisphere summer.
Morrison was widely criticized for taking a secret family vacation to Hawaii at the height of the crisis while his hometown Sydney was blanketed in toxic smoke.
He cut his vacation short due to the public backlash, but was further criticized over his explanation for his absence: ‘I don’t hold a hose.’ His government was criticized for its responses to the fires and also record flooding this year in some of the same areas in Australia’s southeast that were razed two years earlier.