Federal election 2025: Do the major parties have egg on their faces?

With just a few days to go until Australia votes to determine the nation’s 48th Parliament, the polls continue to point to an ALP win.

The national Resolve and Morgan Polls both have the ALP in front 53-47 on a two-party preferred basis, while the latest Essential and DemosAU Polls both have the ALP leading 52-48.

Unless they are missing something, the big question now, it would seem, is whether Labor can form a government in its own right, or whether they will need to negotiate a working arrangement with cross-benchers to establish a minority government.

We’ll come back to that in a moment, but first let’s reflect on what has happened since our last update.

Among many developments, three things stood out most to us.

Firstly, the debates.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has now squared off in four debates with Opposition leader Peter Dutton.

After appearing to gain the ascendency in the first two debates, in which the two leaders traded details of their respective ‘policies’ (we use the term lightly), the third debate got personal.

Albanese looked shaky when Dutton accused him of blatantly lying about the Coalition record on Medicare and health spending.

“You couldn’t lie straight in bed, Prime Minister,” Dutton said.

“You can go to personal abuse, it’s a sign of desperation Peter,” Albanese responded.

AAP fact checks later showed Albanese’s claim that the former Coalition government had cut $80B from federal health spending to be a fabrication and our own fact checks (previously reported) show that bulk-billing rates have fallen significantly under the current ALP administration.

Both continued to talk up their suite of tax breaks, rebates and debt forgiveness.

Channel Nine moderator, Ally Langdon, probably summed it up best when she concluded: “I’m not sure that anyone at home is feeling that either of you are being fiscally responsible at the moment, and we’re really concerned about the level of debt we’re going to be leaving our grandkids.”

Dutton was voted the winner, 2 to 1, by the panel.

The final debate drew out an unexpected focus over the Welcome to Country and, you got it, the price of eggs.

Dutton caught many people by surprise by giving his honest (personal) view that the Welcome to County was “overused” and that to do it at the start of every meeting or football game “cheapens its significance”.

Albanese dodged the question.

Any points for honesty Dutton gained, however, were quickly eroded in an ensuing quick-fire Q&A in which he said the price of a carton of eggs was about $4.20.

Albanese reckoned it was about $7.

Clearly, neither man does the shopping.

Albanese then faltered when asked to name three things that would become cheaper in a second term under the ALP.

Answer? We’re still waiting.

In the end, Albanese won over 50 per cent of the audience, Dutton 25 per cent and 25 per cent remained undecided.

The second thing to stand out was the record level of pre-polling.

According to Nine News, of the 18 million people on the electoral role, a record-breaking 2.4 million had cast their ballots by Monday, April 28, reportedly 400,000 more than the same time in 2022.

This has been widely attributed to Easter and Anzac Day falling in the three weeks prior to election day, however it is often thought that a surge in pre-polling indicates more voters have strong, active views.

If so, it’s hard to see what may be driving this given the copy-cat approach of both major parties.

Fear over the growing cost-of-living crisis? A Trump factor perhaps? Or is it the near-complete absence of climate change in the debate, a topic that dominated at the last election.

In any case, the high level of pre-polling seems to have been largely anticipated by both major parties who finished articulating their main policies (again, we use the term lightly) over a week ago.

So, what has filled the silence since?

Well, that brings us to the third stand-out development – the attack on the TEALs.

Climate 200 founder Simon Holmes a Court appealed to TEAL supporters to dig deep to top up a $1M fighting fund to save four high-profile teal MPs – Monique Ryan (Kooyong), Zoe Daniel (Goldstein), Sophie Scamps (Mackellar) and Kate Chaney (Curtin) – who were being “outspent and outnumbered”.

Media reports have indicated several unidentified groups putting up billboards and posters and handing out disparaging flyers at pre-poll booths – some of these suggesting the TEALs are, in fact, a shade of GREEN.

This begs the question of whether such material is helping or hindering TEAL candidates.

Recent Vote Compass data shows the majority of women under the age of 29 are identifying with the political left, but not necessarily with the ALP.

With The Greens back-watered by both major parties, we may well ponder if these GEN-Zs are looking at the emergence of strong TEAL women in politics and feeling inspired.

And just in case you’re wondering what happens if neither big party wins enough seats to form a majority government, here’s how (we understand) it works.

Technically, the ALP is still in government and, as such, will have the first opportunity to present a case to the Governor-General that it can continue to effectively govern with the support of a sufficient cohort of cross-benchers.

If it can’t, then the LNP coalition will have an opportunity to do the same; albeit if it wins fewer seats than the ALP, any such minority would likely be unstable and therefore very unlikely.

Any arrangement seems fraught however, in light of the vicious attacks on the TEALs of late.

So what if neither major party can convince the Governor-General?

Well, then it gets messy.

The most likely scenario would be that we would have to have another election.

Another scenario, however unlikely, would be the formation of a ‘grand coalition’ between the ALP and the LNP (or either of the Liberal or National parties).

Let’s face it, stranger things have happened recently.

We’ll all know soon enough.

Postscript: My iphone has been constantly dinging since our last update like the sound of a patriotic trumpet – can anybody help me with that?

Ross Barry