By Kirsty Needham and Samuel McKeith
SYDNEY (Reuters) -Australians voted on Saturday in a national election that polls show will likely favour Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s Labor Party over the conservative opposition, as worries about Donald Trump’s volatile policies overshadowed calls for change.
Albanese said in televised comments from Melbourne that his centre-left government had “built really strong foundations”.
“We have real wages going up, we have inflation going down,” the prime minister said, before travelling to his home district in Sydney to cast his vote.
Albanese, ending a five-week election campaign, has pledged to improve housing affordability and strengthen Australia’s universal healthcare system during his second term in a campaign where cost of living has taken centre stage.
Opposition leader Peter Dutton also started his day in Melbourne, a key battleground, where he urged voters to choose his Liberal-National coalition “to get our country back on track”, before heading to his home state of Queensland.
“I think a lot of quiet Australians have come out today to support the coalition,” Dutton said after lodging his vote in his Brisbane district, which he narrowly holds for the Liberal Party.
The election comes less than a week after Canada’s Liberal Party returned to power in a major political comeback, powered by a backlash against Trump’s tariffs and remarks on Canadian sovereignty.
Both of Australia’s major parties have focused on assuaging cost-of-living concerns but opinion polls show that global uncertainty driven by Trump’s stop-start tariffs rapidly became a top issue for voters during the campaign.
Labor has tried to cast ex-policeman Dutton, who has pledged to sharply reduce immigration and cut thousands of public service jobs, as a Trump-lite conservative, hoping some of Australians’ negative sentiment towards the U.S. president will rub off on the opposition leader.
Dutton has sought to distance himself from comparisons with Trump adviser Elon Musk’s agency-cutting fervor but fell behind Labor after the U.S. president placed tariffs on Australia. Dutton had led in opinion polls as recently as February.
Australia is a close U.S. security ally and generally runs a trade deficit with the United States. Even so, it was not spared Trump’s tariffs with a 10% duty imposed on Australian exports.
Polling booths in Australia – among the few democracies with mandatory voting – opened at 8 a.m., although a record 8 million out of 18 million eligible voters had already cast ballots before Saturday. Polls close at 6 p.m. (0800-1000 GMT depending on time zone).
Volunteers at local polling centres fired up barbecues and some beachside voters arrived to cast their ballots wearing tight-fit swim trunks called “budgy smugglers”.
In the Sydney suburb of Bondi, voter Ben McCluskey said he felt upbeat about Labor winning a second term.
“I’m slightly positive. Hopefully it’s gonna be a minority government and the Greens get a balance of power,” the engineer, 41, said.
Nearby, Lucy Tonagh, a 28-year-old childcare worker, said rising living costs were front of mind for her at the ballot box.
“I feel like the cost of living and also childcare because that’s a key issue I find. There need to be more teachers,” Tonagh said.
Overseas, tens of thousands of Australians were expected to cast ballots at booths set up in 83 countries, Australia’s foreign affairs department said.
Political strategists said Trump was not likely to be the decisive factor in the election – Albanese has run a strong campaign and Dutton made mistakes, including a short-lived proposal to ban public servants working from home. But the Trump effect, they said, has added to reservations for voters who became risk-averse.
A Newspoll published on Friday in The Australian newspaper showed Labor leading 52.5%-47.5% against the Liberal-National coalition, under Australia’s two-party preferential voting system.
Several polls suggest Labor may be forced into a minority government. Preferences among supporters of the minor parties and independents could be crucial under Australia’s ranked-choice voting system.
(Reporting by Kirsty Needham, Sam McKeith, Cordelia Hsu and Zahra Matarani in Sydney; Editing by Stephen Coates and Edmund Klamann)
