What are the major issues in Australia’s election?

Australians will head to the polls in May for general elections that will be dominated by the soaring cost of living, the economy, energy and China. Affordable housing is in short supply, interest rates remain high and the major parties are starkly divided on how to wean the nation off fossil fuel-generated electricty.

The major parties also differ on how to deal with China, which is at once Australia’s largest trading partner and its greatest strategic threat. Here’s what you need to know about the main issues: Australians have endured one of the sharpest rises in the cost of living in recent history and the current government has been at the helm through the worst of it. Egg prices surged 11% last year, according to government figures. Australian rents rose 4.8% last year after a 8.1% spike in 2023, property analyst CoreLogic said. The central bank’s benchmark cash rate rose from a record low 0.1% to 0.35% two weeks before Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s center-left Labor Party came to power at elections in May 2022.

The rate rose a dozen times since then, peaking at 4.35% in November 2023. Inflation peaked that year at 7.8%. The central bank reduced the cash rate by a quarter percentage point in February to 4.1% in an indication that the worst the cost of living crisis had passed. Inflation has put some builders out of business, exacerbating a shortage of housing which in turn has inflated rents. The government has provided tax cuts and assistance for some rent and energy bills, but critics argue government spending has contributed to maintaining elevated inflation. Albanese promised in 2023 to build 1.2 million homes through incentives over five years starting mid last year, an ambitious target in a country of 27 million people. Early building approval figures suggest his government will miss that target.

The opposition has promised to reduce competition for housing by reducing immigration. It’s also promised to allow Australians to spend money held in their compulsory workplace pension funds, known as superannuation, on down payments to buy a home. Both parties agree on the goal: to achieve net zero emissions by 2050. The opposition has promised to build seven government-funded nuclear power plants across Australia, the first providing electricity in 2035.

The government argues Australia’s existing coal and gas-fired generators won’t last long enough to meet the nation’s needs until nuclear power arrives. It plans to have 82% of Australia’s energy grid powered by renewables by 2030.

Beijing barred minister-to-minister contacts with Australia and imposed a series of official and unofficial bans on commodities including coal, wine, barley, wood and lobsters that cost Australian exporters up to 20 billion Australian dollars ($13 billion) a year. The thaw started almost immediately with the election of the center-left Labor Party in 2022. Chinese Premier Li Keqiang wrote to congratulate Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on his election victory within days.

All the trade barriers were gradually lifted and Albanese met President Xi Jinping during a state visit to Beijing in 2023. Albanese often says about China: “We will cooperate where we can, disagree where we must and engage in the national interest.”

Opposition leader Peter Dutton, a longtime critic of China, has said bilateral relations would improve even further with a tough and uncompromising approach. He has accused Albanese of self-censorship to avoid offending Beijing. “Australia must be willing to criticize any nation whose behaviour imperils stability in the region, and that’s what a coalition government I lead will do confidently and in concert with like-minded countries,” Dutton told the Lowy Institute international policy think tank in Sydney this month.

Associated Press