Australia and Oceania countries

Australians head to polls with their sights on Trump, living costs

03 May 2025 02:36 (UTC +04:00)

Australians vote in a national election on Saturday that polls show will likely favour Labor Prime Minister Anthony Albanese over conservative challenger Peter Dutton, with voter appetite for change dampened by worries over Donald Trump's volatile diplomacy, APA reports citing Reuters.

Polling booths in Australia - among the few democracies with mandatory voting - will be open from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. (2200-0800 GMT, although a record 8 million out of 18 million eligible voters had already cast ballots before Saturday.

Both major parties have focused on cost-of-living pressures but opinion polls show that global uncertainty driven by Trump's stop-start tariffs rapidly became a top issue for voters during the campaign.

The election, Albanese said on Friday, has come down to a choice between the certainty of Labor or the conservative Liberal-National coalition's "cuts and chaos". The prime minister flew thousands of kilometres across three states to pitch to voters on the final day of the campaign.