Tina, a volunteer at the polling booth kisses a sausage dog named Frankie outside the Waverley suburb polling station on the day of the national election in Sydney, Australia, on Saturday, May 21, 2022. - Reuters
SYDNEY, May 21 (dpa): Australians headed to the polls on Saturday for parliamentary elections.
A close race is expected in the election, which pits incumbent Prime Minister Scott Morrison and his conservative Liberal party against Labor and its leader Anthony Albanese.
More than 17 million people are being called on to vote on who will fill 151 seats in the lower house and half of the 78 seats in the Senate.
More than half of eligible voters cast ballots in advance, leaving about 8 million people to vote on Saturday, national broadcaster ABC reported citing the Australian Electoral Commission.
Voting is compulsory in Australia. The 2019 turnout was around 92%. Elections take place every three years.
Surveys long put Labor ahead, but the party's lead narrowed in the days ahead of the election.
In the last election in 2019 the Liberals, who are in a coalition with the even more conservative Nationals and have been in power for almost a decade, had a surprise win after Labor was long expected to come out top.
The key topics in the election campaign were the economy, climate change and national security.
Many Australians see the climate crisis as a huge problem, especially after recent extreme flooding on the east coast.
The country has also suffered from other extreme weather events and climate-related disasters including severe bush fires, drought and coral bleaching in recent years.
Morrison is a staunch supporter of the coal industry.
The pandemic has hardly been discussed during election campaigning - though the country recorded more than 50,000 new infections on Friday.
Morrison and Albanese cast their votes in Sydney early in the morning. Meanwhile, queues formed at polling stations as Australians went to vote. A special feature of Australian elections is the post-voting "democracy sausage" that many collect from a barbecue at the polling station.
Campaign workers were still handing out leaflets outside polling stations in the hope of swaying undecided voters.
Melbourne IT consultant Jeff Scicluna, 55, told dpa he was casting his ballot for Labor.
"We need a change of policy direction towards improving real wages, more immediate and direct climate change actions and a more humane refugee policy," he said.
In Manly, a beachside suburb of Sydney, Liberal party campaign worker Mark Westfield gave a different view.
"You have to give Morrison credit for the good economic situation we're in, we've got the lowest unemployment in decades. There's not much more a government can do really," he said.
Initial results expected by the end of Saturday. - dpa
