Go early, go hard
Two million cast their vote
THERE may be eight days until the election but some two million Aussies have already made up their minds.
According to the Australian Electoral Commission, 2.16 million people have already cast their ballots.
Since Monday, 1.3 million people have voted in person at pre-poll booths. Another 882,000 have returned a postal vote.
That figure could balloon out to close to 2.5 million if the number of Australians who requested a postal ballot return it.
The rapid increase in early voters in 2019 led to a parliamentary committee recommending the length of pre-poll be cut from three weeks to just 12 days.
But that hasn’t seemed to stop an electorate that appears to already have made up their mind.
The increase, likely paired with internal Liberal Party research and external opinion polls, could have been the reason behind Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s mea culpa on Friday morning.
Speaking in the marginal Melbourne seat of Chisholm, Mr Morrison promised voters he’d change his “bulldozer” ways.
He blamed the pandemic for the way he’d approached the role and vowed better days were ahead.
“As we go into this next period on the other side of this election, I
know there are things that are going to have to change with the way I do things,” Mr Morrison said in a moment of candour.
“Because we are moving into a different time.”
The 11th hour rhetoric shift is set to define Mr Morrison’s last week of the campaign.
The Prime Minister hopes there will be enough swinging voters remaining to pull him through.
Just last week, he told the Australian Financial Review he believed the polls were the softest they’d been in many years.
“We’re not at push comes to shove, yet,” he said.
It’s an opinion John Howard shares. Prior to Mr Morrison’s frank admission, the former prime minister told Sydney radio he expected undecided voters to “right
at the end break for us”.
However, Mr Howard added: “It is hard to tell. The longer you are in power the harder it is.”
In Cairns, Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese seized on what he said was a “desperate” comment from Mr Morrison.
“If you look up desperation online, you’ll see a photo of Scott Morrison,” he said.
“We can’t just have three more years of the same.
“Nothing quite says the law of diminishing returns like Abbott, Turnbull, Morrison.”
Instead, the Labor leader urged Australians to vote for “a builder, not a bulldozer”.
“What he’s saying is, ‘if you vote for Scott Morrison, I’ll change’. Well, if you want change, change the government.”