Australian election 2025: Albanese, Dutton on Day 34 of May 3 election campaign
Anthony Albanese and Peter Dutton are hitting the road again as the penultimate day of campaigning for Saturday’s federal election gets under way.
Both leaders are setting a frenetic pace in the final days before Australians vote, trying to visit as many marginal electorates as they can.
The final RedBridge-Accent national poll before Saturday’s election has Mr Albanese extending Labor’s two-party-preferred lead an extra point to 53 per cent to the Coalition’s 47 per cent, News Corp reported.
The Prime Minister is in Perth for his 33rd visit to the west as the country’s leader. Western Australia was the state that secured Mr Albanese a majority government at the 2022 election and he has gone all out to keep the 10 seats Labor won then.
Meanwhile, Peter Dutton will be starting the day in his hometown Brisbane. Queensland is a stronghold for the Coalition and a major issue for Labor, which holds only five of the 30 lower house seats.
Both Mr Dutton and Mr Albanese are keen to win back the three seats the Greens surprisingly won in inner-Brisbane in 2022 – Griffith, Ryan and Brisbane.
The Opposition Leader has promised to visit 28 electorates in the final week, as opinion polls show it will be a massive task for him to pick up the 21 seats the Coalition needs to secure a majority in the 150-seat parliament.
Neither leader is expected to make any more major announcements, but the costs of those promises already made will be front and centre.
Shadow treasurer Angus Taylor will reveal the Coalition’s costings, three days after Jim Chalmers unveiled the government figures.
Despite Mr Chalmers’ criticising the opposition for not revealing their costings, he waited until the Thursday before the May 21 election in 2022 to show how Labor would fund their promises.
Both major parties have pledged eye-watering sums of taxpayer dollars to fund their election commitments, with Labor accusing the Coalition of keeping their costings secret.
Labor, on the other hand, said it had managed to “offset” its re-election campaign pledges and rustle up an extra billion dollars in savings when it released its updated costings on Monday.
Mr Taylor has promised the Coalition’s costings would find the savings needed.
More than four million Australians have voted, with early voting ending on Friday before most people head to polling booths on Saturday.
More to come