Australian Prime Minister Calls Elections for May 21

CANBERRA, Australia – AustraliaThe prime minister has called for a May 21 election that will fight over issues including China’s economic coercion, climate change and Covid-19 epidemic.

Prime minister Scott Morrison on Sunday advised Governor-General David Hurley as the representative of Australia’s head of state, Queen Elizabeth II, to set an election date.

Morrison’s conservative coalition is seeking a fourth three-year term. Date is the latest date available to him.

He urged voters to stick with a government that delivers one of the lowest pandemic mortality rates of any advanced economy rather than risk the opposition Labor Party.

“This election is a choice between a government you know and have delivered and a Labor opposition you don’t know about,” Morrison said.

Morrison led his government to a narrow victory at the final election in 2019 despite opinion polls repeatedly placing the centre-left opposition Australian Labor Party ahead.

The Liberal-led coalition lags behind in most opinion polls, but many analysts predict a mixed result.

The last election took place in the hottest and driest year Australia has ever experienced. The year ends with devastating forest fire across Australia’s south-east, which directly killed 33 people and more than 400 others as a result of smoke.

The fires have also destroyed more than 3,000 homes and razed 47 million acres of farmland and forests during the Southern Hemisphere summer.

Morrison has been widely criticized for taking a secret family vacation to Hawaii at the height of the crisis while his hometown of Sydney was engulfed in toxic smoke.

He cut his vacation short due to public backlash, but drew more criticism when explaining his absence: “I don’t hold the faucet.”

His government has been criticized for its response to the fires and also record floods this year in some of the same areas in the south-east of Australia that were leveled two years earlier.

Both government and opposition set net zero carbon emissions target by 2050.

Morrison was widely criticized at the United Nations climate conference in Glasgow, Scotland, in November for not setting more ambitious goals for the end of the decade.

The government has set a target of reducing emissions by 26% to 28% from 2005 levels, while other countries have committed more closely.

The Australian Labor Party has promised to reduce emissions by 43 per cent by 2030.

Australia is successful first step in preventing the death toll from the Covid-19 pandemic largely through restrictions on international travel.

But the more contagious delta and omicron variants have proved harder to contain.

The opposition has criticized the government for the pace of Australia’s vaccine rollout, which has been seen as “a walk-in”, as it has been months behind schedule. Australia’s population is currently one of the most vaccinated in the world.

The government has defended its pandemic record and recorded Australia as having the third lowest death toll of the 38 countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

With China Having imposed formal and informal trade sanctions against Australia in recent years, the government argues that Beijing wants Labor to win the election because the party is less likely to suffer economic coercion.

Labor was recognized for thwarting the government’s plan in 2014 to sign an extradition treaty with China. Bilateral relations have since deteriorated and the government is now warning that Australians risk arbitrary detention if they visit China.

Some experts say that both political factions are largely united on issues of national security and that the government is in favor of containing differences over China.

“The government is seeking to create awareness of differences between the government and the opposition on an important national security issue, which is China, seeking to create awareness of differences while implementing economy doesn’t exist,” said Dennis Richardson, former head of the Department of Defense, Foreign Affairs and the Australian Security Intelligence Organization spy agency and former Australian ambassador to the United States.

“It is not in the national interest. That only serves the interests of one country and that is China,” Richardson added.

at Blogtuan.info – Source: nbcnews.com – Read the original article here