Welcome to KortJackson.org's coverage of the Australia 2022 election, with predictions by yours truly.
The composition of the 47th Parliament of Australia shall be decided by election on May 21, 2022
So, how did we get to this election? In 2019, Scott Morrison pulled off a shock upset, winning a narrow majority government where the polls had predicted a fairly comfortable Labor win. The Coalition(a formal agreement of conservative leaning parties in Australia consisting of the Liberal Party, the Nationals, the Country Nationals and the Liberal National Party of Queensland) was returned for a third term, with a total of 77 seats, just one more than required to form a majority government (76 of 151).
While there wasn't as many citizenship queries as was with the last parliament that would trigger a gaggle of by-elections, this 46th term of the Australian parliament was just as interesting. The term began with raging bushfires that devastated no small part of the the country, and caught Scott Morrison saying "I don't hold a hose, mate." which even ScoMo admitted during this election wasn't entirely helpful. After the bushfires, Australia came to grips with another existential crisis: the pandemic of COVID-19.
Initially, the government's response was heralded by many Australians, and the government quickly recovered in the polls. But delays with vaccines and infighting with various state governments on what policies to pursue let to the government falling in the polls again. In the meantime during this term, the opposition Australian Labor Party saw Bill Shorten step down in favor of Anthony Albanese and in time would regain the lead in the polls as the government's response to COVID-19, floods, and inflation left many Australians wanting something different.
One positive change that has occurred is that both major political forces have made it much harder to succeed in fomenting or securing a leadership spill (election to challenge the current leadership of the party). As such, both the Liberal Party (the senior Coalition partner) and the Labor party will go into the election with the same leadership either from the start of the term or close to it. The Nationals (the junior Coalition party) did have a leadership spill, leading to Barnaby Joyce returning as their leader (and by Coalition agreement, the Deputy Prime Minister of Australia).
As the 46th Parliament did conclude, the Coalition once again did lose their majority: Craig Kelly from the seat of Hughes chose to leave the Coalition and join Clive Palmer's United Australia Party (no relation to the UAP of the past that would eventually turn into today's Liberal Party of Australia) and then George Christensen bolted the Coalition for Pauline Hanson's One Nation party and a bid for the Senate.
Just like last time, May 21, 2022 was the dead last date ScoMo (as he is more affectionately known) could call a election to renew the House of Representatives and still hold a mandatory half-Senate election. While incumbent state (and territory) governments usually saw re-election during the pandemic (Queensland (ALP), the Northern Territory (ALP), the Australian Capital Territory (ALP + Greens), Western Australia (ALP) and Tasmania (Liberals) all returned their incumbent governments), the South Australia state election earlier this year saw a heavy defeat of the incumbent government at the time as the state switched from the Liberals to Labor. Polls show some tightening in the final days and a tantalizingly similar result in 2019 that saw ScoMo pull off a miracle, but there's no doubt Scott Morrison and the Coalition is working from even further behind (and also have the "teal independents" who are raising considerable challenges in normal safe Coalition seats). 2019 proved you can't rule ScoMo out, but 2022 may prove to be just too much for him to overcome.
