MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — Australians will go to the polls on May 3 for general elections with high costs of living and a shortage of housing likely weighing against the government as Prime Minister Anthony Albanese 's center-left Labor Party seeks a second three-year term.
Albanese drove to Governor-General Sam Mostyn's official residence on Friday to trigger the election and announced the date later at a news conference at Parliament House.
“Over the last few years, the world has thrown a lot at Australia. In uncertain times, we cannot decide the challenges that we will face, but we can determine how we respond,” Albanese said.
“Our government has chosen to face global challenges the Australian way: helping people under cost-of-living pressure while building for the future,” he added.
Opposition leader Peter Dutton later launched his conservative coalition's campaign by promising better economic management after 29,000 small businesses had failed across Australia during three years with Labor in charge.
“It’s a choice about who can better manage our economy and, of course, the question that Australians need to ask is are you better off today, is our country better off today, than three years ago?” Dutton said to reporters.
Many expect Dutton’s coalition to pick up seats in the House of Representatives.
An Australian government has not been ousted after a single term since 1931, when the nation was grappling with the Great Depression. But Australian governments almost always lose ground in their second election and Labor only holds 77 of the 151 seats in the House of Representatives, where governments need a majority. Redistributions mean there will be only 150 seats after the next election.
One likely outcome is a minority government supported by independent or minor party legislators.
The 2022 election brought a record 19 lawmakers who were not aligned to either the government or opposition into the Parliament.
Unaligned lawmakers could be crucial to whether Labor or Dutton’s conservative Liberal Party forms Australia’s first minority election since the 2010 election.
Adam Bandt, leader of the minor Greens party, said his lawmakers would support a Labor minority government if Labor met Greens' demands.
Those demands included a ban on new coal and gas extraction projects, provding free dental care for all and capping rent increases, he said.
“With a minority government on the cards this election, this is a once-in-a-generation chance to keep Peter Dutton out and get Labor to act on the housing crisis, the cost-of-living crisis and the climate and environment crisis,” Bandt said.
The Greens supported a Labor minority government elected in 2010 and initated a short-lived Australian carbon tax which was repealed by a conservative government after the next election.
Cost of living pressures have increased across Australia since Albanese came to power, with 12 interest rate hikes since the last election. However, Australia’s central bank reduced the benchmark cash rate by a quarter percentage point to 4.1%, in February in a sign that the worst of the inflationary pressures has passed.
Albanese promised to reduce a housing shortage by building 1.2 million homes over five years, but the 2023 pledge has got off to a slow start.
Dutton has promised to reduce competition for housing by reducing immigration. He would also allow Australians to spend savings in their compulsory workplace pension funds on down payments to buy new homes.
Both parties have pledged to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to net-zero by 2050. But the government would rely on renewable energy sources including solar panels and wind turbines to replace coal and gas, while the opposition would build seven state-funded nuclear power plants.
The opposition also advocates adding new gas-fired power generation to maintain electricity supply until nuclear power arrives.
FILE - Australia's then Defense Minister Peter Dutton addresses Parliament House in Canberra, July 24, 2019. (AP Photo/Rod McGuirk, File)
FILE - Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese gestures during a press conference in Sydney, Australia, Dec. 12, 2024. (AP Photo/Mark Baker, File)
President Donald Trump said “I’m not joking” about trying to serve a third term, the clearest indication he's considering ways to breach a constitutional barrier against continuing to lead the country after his second term ends at the beginning of 2029. “There are methods which you could do it,” Trump said in a telephone interview Sunday with NBC News from Mar-a-Lago, his private club.
The 22nd Amendment, added to the Constitution in 1951 after President Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected four times in a row, says “no person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice.”
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Calls from the U.S. to Roustan Hockey headquarters in Canada in recent weeks have been anything but routine, as bulk orders of name-brand sticks have suddenly become complicated conversations.
“These customers want to know: When their orders ship, will they have to pay an additional 25% tariff? And we respond by saying, ’Well, right now we don’t know, so they postpone their order or cancel their order because they want to know before they order what the cost is going to be,” said Graeme Roustan, who owns the company that makes and sells more than 100,000 hockey sticks annually to the U.S. market.
The prospect of 25% tariffs by Trump on Canadian imports, currently paused for some goods but facing full implementation Wednesday, has caused headaches if not havoc throughout the commercial ecosystem. The sports equipment industry is certainly no exception, with so many of the products manufactured for sports -loving Americans outside the U.S.
▶ Read more about the effects of possible tariffs on the price of sporting goods
U.S. immigration officials are asking the public and federal agencies to comment on a proposal to collect social media handles from people applying for benefits such as green cards or citizenship, to comply with an executive order from Trump.
The March 5 notice raised alarms from immigration and free speech advocates because it appears to expand the government’s reach in social media surveillance to people already vetted and in the U.S. legally, such as asylum seekers, green card and citizenship applicants – and not just those applying to enter the country. That said, social media monitoring by immigration officials has been a practice for over a decade, since at least the second Obama administration and ramping up under Trump’s first term.
▶ Read more about what the new proposal means and how it might expand social media surveillance
Elon Musk gave out $1 million checks on Sunday to two Wisconsin voters, declaring them spokespeople for his political group, ahead of a Wisconsin Supreme Court election that the tech billionaire cast as critical to President Donald Trump’s agenda and “the future of civilization.”
Musk and groups he supports have spent more than $20 million to help conservative favorite Brad Schimel in Tuesday’s race, which will determine the ideological makeup of a court likely to decide key issues in a perennial battleground state.
A unanimous state Supreme Court on Sunday refused to hear a last-minute attempt by the state’s Democratic attorney general to stop Musk from handing over the checks to two voters, a ruling that came just minutes before the planned start of the rally.
Two lower courts had already rejected the legal challenge by Democrat Josh Kaul, who argues that Musk’s offer violates a state law.
▶ Read more about Musk in Wisconsin
The group of Democrats, most of whom serve as their state’s top election official, is telling Congress the legislative proposal to add a proof of citizenship requirement when registering to vote could disenfranchise voters and upend election administration.
On Monday, the House Rules Committee is expected to consider the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, known as the SAVE Act, which would require proof of citizenship to register to vote. The letter signed by 15 secretaries of state was sent Friday.
Voting by noncitizens is rare, but Republicans say any instances undermine public confidence. Last week, President Trump directed, among other things, an update to the federal voter registration form to require proof of citizenship. Legal challenges are expected.
In the letter, Democrats say it’s the “job of election officials to verify the eligibility of citizens to cast a ballot, not the job of citizens to convince the government that they are eligible to exercise their right to vote.”
Trump says Wednesday will be “Liberation Day” — a moment when he plans to roll out a set of tariffs that he promises will free the United States from foreign goods.
The details of Trump’s next round of import taxes are still sketchy. Most economic analyses say average U.S. families would have to absorb the cost of his tariffs in the form of higher prices and lower incomes. But an undeterred Trump is inviting CEOs to the White House to say they are investing hundreds of billions of dollars in new projects to avoid the import taxes.
It is also possible that the tariffs are short-lived if Trump feels he can cut a deal after imposing them.
“I’m certainly open to it, if we can do something,” Trump told reporters. “We’ll get something for it.”
At stake are family budgets, America’s prominence as the world’s leading financial power and the structure of the global economy.
▶ Read more about what you should know regarding the impending trade penalties
Trump will sign executive orders twice today, first at 1 p.m. ET and again at 5:30 p.m. ET, according to the White House.
Immigration remains a strength for Trump, but his handling of tariffs is getting more negative feedback, according to a poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.
About half of U.S. adults approve of Trump’s approach to immigration, the survey shows, but only about 4 in 10 have a positive view of the way he’s handling the economy and trade negotiations.
The poll indicates that many Americans are still on board with Trump’s efforts to ramp up deportations and restrict immigration. But it also suggests that his threats to impose tariffs might be erasing his advantage on another issue that he made central to his winning 2024 campaign.
Views of Trump’s job performance overall are more negative than positive, the survey found. About 4 in 10 U.S. adults approve of the way Trump is handling his job as president, and more than half disapprove.
▶ Read more about the findings from the poll
Trump said Sunday that “I’m not joking” about trying to serve a third term, the clearest indication he is considering ways to breach a constitutional barrier against continuing to lead the country after his second term ends at the beginning of 2029.
“There are methods which you could do it,” Trump said in a telephone interview with NBC News from Mar-a-Lago, his private club.
He elaborated later to reporters on Air Force One from Florida to Washington that “I have had more people ask me to have a third term, which in a way is a fourth term because the other election, the 2020 election was totally rigged.” Trump lost that election to Democrat Joe Biden.
Still, Trump added: “I don’t want to talk about a third term now because no matter how you look at it, we’ve got a long time to go.”
▶ Read more about Trump’s comments on a third term
President Donald Trump talks to reporters as he walks on the South Lawn of the White House, in Washington, Sunday, March 30, 2025. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
President Donald Trump walks down the stairs of Air Force One upon his arrival at Joint Base Andrews, Md., Sunday, March 30, 2025. (AP Photo/Luis M. Alvarez)
