When will Scott Morrison call the election?

When will the election be called? With the possible dates for a regular federal poll narrowed to two weekends in May, it’s the question on the minds of everyone holding a passing interest in politics.

Setting the date of the election is entirely within the power of Prime Minister Scott Morrison, with a few constitutional limitations.

At this point, the only possible dates to hold the election are May 14 and May 21 – unless the PM wants to split the Senate and House of Representatives elections and send Australians to the polls twice in a year (highly unlikely).

So the question is when he will make the trip to see the Governor-General and actually call it on.

There has to be a minimum of 33 days for the campaign before polling day. That’s led to the modern timetable of a prime minister visiting the GG on a Sunday and the writs issued on Monday.

But in 2019 Mr Morrison kicked things off on a Thursday.

That could happen again this year.

The complicating factors are Easter and Anzac Day falling during the campaign, and a scheduled sitting of the lower house next week.

Once the trigger is pulled, there is a whole series of events that have to happen at particular times before the election.

The key ones are the close of the electoral rolls (seven days after the writs are issued) and the close of candidate nominations (10 days after).

These things can happen on public holidays (yes, even though the Australian Electoral Commission are bureaucrats, once an election is in motion they basically work all the time) but it’s more inconvenient.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison departs Government House after meeting with the Governor-General to call the 2019 election.Credit:Alex Ellinghausen

So if the traditional writs-on-Monday timing happened for May 14, Morrison would call it this Sunday and the rolls would close on Easter Monday. Not terrible, but inconvenient.

There’s a similar problem with the minimum timetable for a May 21 election – it would be called on Easter Sunday as families around the country tuck into their chocolate eggs and the rolls would close on Anzac Day. Seems unlikely.

You could avoid all those public holidays by calling the election on April 14 for May 21. That would put the close of rolls on the Thursday after Easter and the close of nominations on Sunday, April 24.

But the government is likely to want to call it earlier than that to avoid the sitting week scheduled to start on Monday. Parliamentary days have tended to be better for Labor over the past year, plus with the Senate not sitting at all before the election it would be a lame-duck session where nothing concrete could actually be achieved.

The sitting week problem also dogs the other timetable that would dodge the public holidays: starting the campaign for a May 21 election next Tuesday. It would be pretty expensive to fly all those MPs to Canberra for a single day’s sitting that can’t achieve anything!

So, when will the election be called?

It’s looking pretty good for the PM to head to Yarralumla tomorrow.

That would give voters until next Thursday (the day before Easter) to make sure they are properly enrolled to vote. Candidate nominations would close on Easter Sunday, but really, the party organisations should be ready to go.

Jacqueline Maley cuts through the noise of the federal election campaign with news, views and expert analysis. Sign up to our Australia Votes 2022 newsletter here.

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