CANBERRA, May 3 (Xinhua) -- Australia's election day has arrived at the end of a five-week campaign dominated by cost-of-living and housing issues as well as U.S. tariffs.
Polls opened at over 7,000 locations across Australia on Saturday, with voters set to decide if Prime Minister Anthony Albanese's center-left Labor Party will govern for a second term or if the conservative Coalition of the Liberal and National Parties led by Peter Dutton will win power.
If voters elect Labor for a second term, it would make Albanese the first leader of either major party to win consecutive elections since 2004.
A victory for the Coalition would make Dutton Australia's 32nd PM and make Albanese's Labor government the first since 1931 to be defeated after a single term in power.
Although Saturday is election day, only about half of the 18 million registered voters are expected to cast their ballots between 8 a.m. and 6 p.m. local time, with a record-high number having already done so early at pre-poll locations and by post.
Voting in the election is mandatory for all Australian citizens aged 18 and over who are registered on the electoral roll maintained by the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC), with those who fail to do so facing small administrative fines.
Voter turnout for federal elections has steadily declined since 2007 and, for the first time since compulsory voting began in 1925, fewer than 90 percent of registered voters cast a ballot in the 2022 election.
When Australians vote in federal elections, they fill in two ballot papers: one for the lower house of the federal parliament, the House of Representatives, and one for the upper house, the Senate.
All 150 seats in the lower house, where the government is formed, will be filled at the election, as well as 40 out of 76 seats in the Senate. Each lower house seat represents an electorate, geographic divisions that each contain approximately the same number of voters, while senators represent their state or territory.
AEC staff will begin counting votes as soon as polls close and analysts usually declare a winner on election night.
If neither major party wins a clear majority of seats in the lower house, known as a hung parliament, they will enter negotiations with minor parties and independents will be conducted for their support to form a minority government.
On the domestic front, the election campaign has been fought on housing, cost-of-living, energy and healthcare issues.
Both Labor and the Coalition have made multi-billion-dollar pledges to increase housing supply and subsidize more doctor visits through a funding boost for Medicare, Australia's universal healthcare system.
The Coalition has promised to halve the federal sales tax on petrol and diesel for one year in a bid to ease cost-of-living pressures, while Labor has said it will wipe 20 percent off every Australian's student debt and deliver tax cuts in 2026 and 2027.
If elected to govern, the Coalition has said it would abandon Australia's 2030 emissions reduction target and build seven nuclear power plants at the sites of retired coal-fired power plants, with the first two to be operational in the mid-2030s, as part of its plan to reach net-zero emissions by 2050.
Labor has repeatedly called the nuclear proposal unrealistic and has instead committed to an emissions reduction approach centered on renewable sources of electricity such as wind and solar.
A major inflection point in the campaign came when U.S. President Donald Trump announced sweeping global tariffs, including 10 percent on imports from Australia.
Albanese said at the time that the tariffs were "not the act of a friend" and has ruled out negotiating with the U.S. on pharmaceutical, biosecurity and media laws that the Trump administration has identified as trade barriers. Dutton has vowed to "stand up" to the U.S. President if he becomes PM. ■