Scott Morrison and Anthony Albanese will begin their final days of campaigning in Melbourne before voting in Sydney, as the leaders bid to win last-ditch votes ahead of the close of polls on Saturday night.
The marginal Victorian seat of Chisholm, held by Liberal MP Gladys Liu, is in Labor’s sights, while the Coalition is trying to win Corangamite from Labor’s Libby Coker. Both leaders dashed across states on Friday as they tried to cover as much ground as they could into seats they hoped to win.
Scott and Jenny Morrison campaigning in Perth.Credit:James Brickwood
After six weeks of campaigning, neither side has expressed much confidence they will win the required seats for a majority government. Labor is ahead in the published opinion polls, but the experience of the shock loss in 2019 has made the party cautious.
One Tasmanian Liberal, who asked not to be named so they could discuss the Coalition’s election prospects, said there was a genuine possibility the government could lose the seats of Bass and Braddon and fall short of winning Lyons from Labor.
“I would like to think that Gavin [Pearce] and Bridget [Archer] have done enough to deserve re-election and I think they have. But when the swing is on, the swing is on – and I suspect things might be better in Tasmania than elsewhere,” the MP said.
In a tight election that both sides expect will go right down to the wire, the loss of those three seats would leave the Coalition with a mountain to climb to retain government.
Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese signs a t-shirt during a visit to a pre poll site in the seat of Bass, in Launceston, Tasmania.Credit:James Brickwood
A senior source in Labor’s campaign HQ, who asked not to be named so they could discuss the party’s election prospects, said the ALP believed Morrison was being sent to seats he was unlikely to win, such as Werriwa in Sydney and McEwen in Melbourne because “they need a narrative to keep the show together”.
“They’re trying to stop outbreaks of disunity. Two things are clear, Morrison is not liked by voters and Anthony has had a better second half of the campaign”.
They characterised Labor’s standing as “cautious, not complacent and quietly confident” the party was well positioned to take government, after having learned the lessons of the 2016 and 2019 defeats.
A Victorian Liberal MP said the party was still hopeful of winning Corangamite, which takes in some of regional city of Geelong, but conceded the party could fall just short.
On Thursday, a strategist in Liberal HQ said the election was incredibly close and the two major parties were in a race to 74 seats, in order to – at a minimum – be able to form government with two members of the crossbench.
Strategists from both sides concede the Liberal-held seats of Swan, Boothby and Reid are likely to fall to Labor while the Liberal held seats of Chisholm, Brisbane and Bennelong are on a knife edge.
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